3. Close application. Things work not upon us at a distance, with- out being applied ; as the plaster doth not cure till laid close to the wound. We ourselves must take home the truth if we would feel the virtue of it. The comfort and the mercy must be brought near to us that was before afar off and at a distance. While it remaineth in the conditional offer, it is as fair for others as for us, and for us as for others. But take it home : Rom. viii. 31, ' What shall we say to these things? ' Job v. 27, ' Hear it, and know it for thy good.' Every particular person must look upon himself as concerned in the offer of Christ, ex- cite his own heart to it, live in him, and receive his benefits.
Use 2. Have we any experimental knowledge of Christ ? Do we know him, and the likeness of his death, and the power of his resurrec- tion ? Search, but yet take these two cautions —
1. Look for experience in a way of sanctification and holiness rather than in a way of comfort and ravishing delight, for the one is not so necessary as the other. The Spirit may lay by his comforting office to promote his sanctifying work. Grod's interest is above your own, and the new nature is the greatest evidence. Consolation is not the highest and most necessary part of Christ's work. It is sin is the true cause of our trouble ; get that mortified, and you have an experience of Christ working in you. Your cure may be working, though you have not present ease.
VER. 10.] SERMONS UPON PHILIPPIANS III. 59
2. Look to the thing, not to the measure and degree. If the Spirit of God possesseth you, and ruleth you for God, and giveth you his nature and image, and inclineth you to God, there is a change, though not carried to such a degree.
Doct. 2. One great point or part of the experimental knowledge of •Christ is knowing the power of his resurrection.
We have showed you before that the knowledge of Christ is not a slight and superficial knowledge, but such whereby we are made sensible of his power, to what ends he died and rose again. It is not a naked speculative knowledge. We know Christ aright when we feel his power, and have experience within ourselves of the things which we know.
Now I must show you more particularly what is the power of his resurrection.
1. This power is the Lord's work in regeneration, whereby he bestow- eth upon us a new life, a spiritual life of grace ; for so it is explained : 1 Peter i. 3, ' Hath begotten us to a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.'
2. This new life is not only an obligation to live in all purity and holiness to the glory of God, but an inclination or a power to do so, because it is from the Spirit of Jesus ; for we live to God in the Spirit : ' But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies, by the Spirit that dwelleth in you,' Bom. viii. 11. The profes- sion of the name of Christ, into which we are baptized, inferreth an obligation, but the actual indwelling of the Spirit in us implieth an inclination, power, or ability to walk with God in all newness of con- versation.
3. This Spirit or renewing grace we receive from Christ : Titus iii. 5, 6, ' By the renewing of the Holy Ghost, shed upon us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord.' We have it from Christ as the second Adam, or head of the new creation. Look, as the first Adam was by his sin the fountain cause of spiritual death, for ' in him all sinned,' Bom. v. 12, and through the merit of his sin we were deprived of original righteousness : Bom. v. 19, ' For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners ; ' in place whereof an universal inclination to all evil succeeded : Gen. vi. 5, ' That every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually ; ' and our own particular actual sins do lay us lower under the state of death, and make our deliverance more difficult: Jer. xiii. 23, ' Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil ; ' so Jesus Christ is the beginning, root, and fountain cause of all the grace that we have ; he is the second Adam.
4. This gift of the Spirit is procured for us by the intervention of Christ's merit and mediation, whereby he satisfied divine justice, and acquired those things which divine love and mercy had prepared for us. They were lost in Adam, but purchased by Christ, who was made a curse for us, ' that the blessing of Abraham might come on the gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith,' Gal. iii. 13, 14.
5. Though this Spirit and renewing grace were purchased by Christ's death, it is conveyed and applied to us with respect to his resurrection,