And as it is a comfortable, so it is an honourable condition ; for Christ's servants arc so many kings. Christ is served of none but kings, and such kings as do not rule over slaves, but such kings as in Christ rule over the greatest and terriblest enemies of all. A Christian can think with comfort and encouragement upon those enemies that make the greatest tyrants of the world to quake ; he can think of death, of sin, of damnation, of judg- ment, of the law : of all these things Christ's kingdom is another manner of kingdom than the kingdom of the world. They are poor kingdoms ; their monarch's head must lie as low as the basest subject they have. They know not how soon, and perhaps have a more terrible account to give than any other under them. It is not so in Christ's kingdom.
Therefore those Christians that are afraid of death, they forget their dignity ; they forget him on whom they depend, for Christ is Lord ' both of the quick and of the dead.' If so be Christ be their Lord when they die, what need they fear to die ? And therefore let us comfort ourselves when God calls for us. He is our Lord as well when we die as while we live, and more too ; for then our souls have more immediate communion with him. Can there be more comfort than this, that we have a Lord ever that died for us, that rose for us, and lives for ever, and doth immortalise his subjects too ? Join these together, an ever-living Lord and ever-living subjects, co-existent, I mean, for the time to come. We indeed have a beginning — Christ hath none as God — but we have an eternal state to be for ever, and an eternal Lord to rule us for ever, and to make us happy for ever. What comfort is more than this, that howsoever there be variety of conditions in this world, we live, we die, we are in prosperity, we are in misery ; yet here is no variety in the state of salvation. Christ is not a Lord to-day and none to-morrow; but 'yesterday, to-day, and the same for ever,' Heb. xiii. 8.
2. Again, As it is a point of comfort, so it is also of duty. If Christ be our Lord in life and death, our duty is to look to him in life and death, to live and die to him. For our aim must answer his aim, if we ever intend to come to heaven ; for we are understanding creatures, and have a communion with him in a poor measure. Therefore what he will make his end must be our end. His end was that whether we live or die he might rule over us. Our end should be, in life and death to be ruled by him.
How shall we live to Christ ?
We live to Christ — this is a gi-ound of all other duties that follow — when we know and acknowledge Christ hath a full interest in us, by being our head, by being our husband, by being our king, our elder brother. He hath all the sweet interest to us that any relation can inright- [g) him to ; for all other relations among men are but shadows of that grand relation. There only is the reality of things. He is a true head, a true king, a true elder brother, a true husband to his church. All ours are but poor repre- sentations of those glorious things. Then know and acknowledge so much. That is the ground of all living to him.
Upon knowing and acknowledging issues all other obedience in our Ufe to Christ. Those that thus acknowledge Christ, they must be directed by
* That J3, = entitle by riglit. Leighton uses ' inrighted.' Cf. Note g. — G.
PURCHASED BY HIS HUSIILIATION. 339
his will, and not their own. As a servant as far as he is a servant, and a wife so far as she is a wife, they have no will of their own, so he that lives to Christ and acknowledgeth him to he a Lord, he must have no will of his own, but he must live according to the will of Christ, as 3'ou have it excellently set down, 1 Peter iv. 1,2,' Christ suffered for us in the flesh. Let us arm ourselves therefore with the same mind ; for he that suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin, that he should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh, to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.' It is a comment upon this place, ' Christ died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord of the quick and of the dead ;' that is, that we might live according to his will, and not after our own. Do you think our Saviour Christ would so far deny himself to leave heaven, to take upon himself our base nature, and be so far abased in it, to let us live as we list ? Oh no ; we must live the rest of our days, not according to the lusts of men, or our own lusts, but according to the will of God ; and therefore as the apostle admouisheth, Rom. xii. 2, we must search ' what is the acceptable will of God in all things.' What is the end of our hearing sermons, of our reading, and all the pains we take in the means of salvation ? Not only to know what God will do to us, but what he will have of us. He will have the directing of our lives ; and therefore if we live to Christ, we must labour to know his good pleasure to us ; what he means to do for us and so his good pleasure with us ; what he will have us do again by way of thankfulness. Christ squared his life immediately according to his Father's will. ' It is written in the volume of thy book, that I should do thy will, 0 God,' Ps. xl. 7. So aU that are Christ's must have the same spirit, to direct all their lives according to his will. Now the most grand things of his will — for his will is in the Scriptures — are that we repent. He commands all to repent. His will is that we believe in him. His will is our sanctification, as it is 1 Thes. iv. 23. His will is that we suffer, and in suffering submit our- selves to him ; and the Scriptures is express in many other particulars, but these especially are named, to shew something wherein we must direct our- selves according to his will. But, not to insist upon particulars, in aU things we must labour to direct our lives according to his icill.