[3.] Then again, we are rich in prerin/atifcs. ' We are the sons of God % adoption. ' What love,' saith the apostle, ' hath the Father shewed, that we should be called the sons of God,' 1 John iii. 1. And this we have by the poverty of Christ. Whatsoever Christ is by nature, we are by grace. He is the Son of God by nature, we are his sons by grace ; and being sons, we are heirs, heirs of heaven, and heirs of the world as much as shall serve for our good. All things are ours by virtue of our adoption, because we are Christ's, and Christ is God's. There is a world of riches in this, to be the sons of God.
And what a prerogative is this, that we have liberty and boldness to the throne of grace, as it is Eph. iii. 12; that we have boldness to appear before God, to call him Father, to open our necessities, to fetch all things need- ful, to have the ear of the King of heaven and earth, to be favourites in the court of heaven ! Every Christian may now go boldly to God, because the matter of distance, our sms, which make a separation between God and us, they are taken away, and the mercy of God runs amain to us, our nature in Christ standing pure and holy before God.
And then we have this grand prerogative, that all things shall turn to the best to Its, Rom. viii. 28. What a privilege is this, that there should be a blessing in the worst things ! that the worst things to a child of God should be better than the best things to others ! that the want and poverty of a Christian should be better than the riches of the world, because there is riches hid in his worst condition ! Moses esteemed the rebuke of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, Heb. xi. 26. A cross, or the want of any blessing sanctified, is better than the thing enjoyed that hath not God's blessing with it. A Christian is so rich, that he is blessed in his very afflictions and sufferings. It is a greater prerogative to have ill turned to our good than not to have the ill at all. It is an argument of greater power and of greater goodness, that God should turn the greatest ills, the greatest wrongs and discomforts, to the greatest good, as he doth to his children, for by them he draws them nearer to himself. Hereupon the apostle saith, 'All things are yours, things present and things to come,' &e., 1 Cor. iii. 22 ; reductively they are ours : God turns them to our good. He extracts good to us by them. All good things are ours in a direct course ; and other things, by an overruling power, are deduced to our good contrary to the nature of the things themselves. • What! did I say all things are ours ? Yea, God himself is ours ; and he hath all things, that hath Him that hath all things. Now, in Christ, God himself is become ours ; ' All things are yours, you are Christ's, and Christ is God's,' Rom. V. 2. ' We rejoice in God as ours.' If God be ours, his all-sufficiency is ours ; his power is ours, his wisdom, all is oui's for our comfort.
[4.] Again, for glory, the riches of heaven, which are especially here meant ; for however the riches of heaven be kept for the time to come, yet faith makes them present. When by faith we look upon the promises, we see ourselves in heaven, not only in Christ our head, but in our own per- sons, because we are as sure to be there as if we were there already. But for the joys of heaven, they are unutterable. The apostle calls them, Eph. iii. 8, 'unsearchable riches.' 'Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard, or hath entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things that God hath prepared for them that love him.' There shall be fulness of glory in soul
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and body ; both sliall be conformable to Christ. * At the right hand of God there is fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore,' Ps. xvi. 11.
Nay, the first fruits, the earnest, the beginnings of heaven here are unsearchable to human reason, the riches of Christ's righteousness imputed to us, the glorious riches of his Spirit in inward peace of conscience ' and joy in the Holy Ghost.' The comfort and enlargement of heart in all conditions, 'it is peace that passeth understanding,' and 'joy unspeakable and glorious.' It is not only unsearchable to human reason, but Chris- tians themselves, that have the Spirit of God in them, cannot search the depth of them, because we have the Spirit but in measure. We see then what excellent riches we have by the poverty of Christ.
Quest. Was there no other way to make us rich but by Christ's becom- ing poor?
Ans. God in his infinite wisdom ordained this way. He thought it best. We ma}" rest in that. But besides, to stay our minds the better, we were to be restored by a way contrary to that we fell.