(3.) By regeneration. Whereby we are brought actually into Christ's possession, and fitted for his use ; taken into his possession, for there is a spiritual union and conjunction between tis and Christ ; see 1 Cor. vi. 15-17, ' Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ ? Shall I take the members of Christ and make them the members ot a harlot ? God forbid ! Know ye not that he that is joined to a harlot is one bodv? For two, saith be, shall be
216 SERMONS UPON 2 CORINTHIANS V. [SeR. XXX.
one flesh. "What! but he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit' Mark there the grounds of the apostle's reasoning : he that is joined to a harlot is one flesh, and he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. What shall we conclude thence ? Tlmt all that is ours is Christ's: ver. 15, 'Shall I take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot ? God forbid !' Christ hath a right in all and everything that is a christian's. Members belong more to their bead than slaves to their master, because of their near conjunction; and from thence they receive life, strength, and motion. Being engrafted into Christ, we must submit to be guided and quickened by his spirit ; as fitted for his use, the new creature is fitted for the opera- tions which belong to it ; the withered branch is again quickened, that it may bring forth fruit unto God. God's best gifts would lie idle if this were not : Eom. vii. 4, ' Married to Christ, that we may bring forth fruit to God.'
(4.) By voluntary contract and resignation. W'hen we first enter into covenant with God, God giveth Christ, and all things with liim, and we give up ourselves, and every interest of ours, unto God : Cant. ii. 16, ' I am my beloved's, and he is mine.' So that to alienate our- selves, and use ourselves for ourselves, it is not only robbery, but treachery and breach of covenant, because by our own solemn consent we owned and acknowledged God's right in us, and yielded up our- selves to the Lord, to be employed, ordered, and disposed by him at his own will and pleasure: Eom. vi. 13, 'But yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead.'
[2.] The danger which will come by it, if we should live to our- selves, and not to God.
(1.) The creature doth not only withdraw itself from God. but sets up another god ; and so the crown is taken from God's head, and set upon the object of our own lust. The world is god, Mat. vi. 24 ; or the belly is god, Phil. iii. 19. "We leave the true God but a name, and set up ourselves as our own end, and the pleasing of ourselves as our chief good, and use all creatures to this end, and love the present life and prosperity more than God, and set up our own will in contradic- tion to God's ; all our labour and travail is to please ourselves and satisfy ourselves, and to break the bonds and cast off the yoke, and would be lords of ourselves and our own actions, and enjoy honours, and riches, and pleasures to ourselves.
(2.) There cannot a worse mischief befal us than to be given over to our own selves ; or, this is the sorest plague : Ps. Ixxxi. 12. ' So I gave them over to their hearts' lusts, and they walked in their own counsels.' There is nothing maketh us more miserable than to be given over to our own choices. And he said well that made this prayer to God — Libera me a malo liomine, a me ij^so. For pride, sensuality, and worldliness will necessarily bear rule where a man is given over to himself ; we have not a worse enemy than ourselves. It is self that depriveth us of heaven, that maketh us neglect and slight the grace of our Eedeemer. Man's own will is the cause of his own misery, and thou ofFendest thyself more than all the world can do besides. Therefore a man hath more cause to hate himself than other things.
\eR. 15] SERMONS UPON 2 CORINTHIANS T. 217
Use of all is to press us to this weighty dutj- of living to God, and not to ourselves. Xot to our own will and interest, but according to the will and for the glory of Grod.
3Iotwes —
1. Christ's self-denial, who came from heaven, not only to expiate our offences, but to give us an example. And wherein was the example ? He telletli us he came not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him, John vi. 38 ; and to promote his Father's glory: John viii. 50, ' I seek not my own glory.' He was still guided by his Father's will, and had his orders from heaven, for all that he did. Now how did he do the will of God, and seek the glory of God ? He did it with delight ; John iv. 34, ' It was meat and drink to him to do his Father's will.^ A will wedded to itself, and his own honour, and ease, and credit, is most unlike Christ. And he did it with much patience and self-denial : Kom. XV. 3, ' He pleased not himself ; ' that js, sought not the interests of that life he had assumed, but contradicted them by his tastings, temptations, sufferings, through the reproaches and ingratitude of men, and outward meanness and poverty of his condition. And especially by his death and passion, there he humbled himself, and made himself of no reputa- tion, Phil. ii. 4-8 ; that the same mind might be in us ; that we might learn that life, and all the comforts of life, should not be so dear to us as the love of God and everlasting life ; for Christ loved not his life in comparison of love to his Father and his church. He preferred the pleasing of his Father in the work of redemption before his own life. Christ emptied himself that God might be glorified. How unwilling are ye to go back two or three degrees in your pomp, or pleasure, or profit, for God's sake, when the sun of righteousness went back ten degrees !