Before we point out the particular bearing of this part of our text, we will notice the latter part, wherein is stated,
II. God's interest in us —
Here it will be necessary to mark distinctly the drift of the Aposle's argument. He is shewing, that we ought " not to glory in men," that is, not to indulge such partiality for some as would lead us to undervalue others. To evince this, he observes, that *' all things are ours ;" and that it is absurd to be so over-valuing a minute and comparatively insignificant ;jr/r^ of our
f Phil. i. 21. « Rom. viii. 28.
possessions, when we ought rather to be rejoicing in the zvhole : and that it is moreover highly criminal to be arransjino: ourselves under the standard of some favourite preacher, when we should be wholly and entirely given up to God as his exclusive property.
The former of these points we have already con- sidered : the latter now calls for our attention.
We are not to give up ourselves to any man what- ever, as though we had an exclusive property in him, or he in us : for,
1. We are Christ's —
[In speaking upon this, we shall not enter into it at large, but shall confine ourselves to the precise view in which we conceive it to have been spoken by the Apostle.
We are Christ's^ and not mans. The minister, who may be the honoured instrument of bringing us to Christ, has no property in us : he is only the servant whom Christ has sent to bring his bride to him. Christ is the Bridegroom ; the preacher is onl}- the person who *' presents the Bride as a chaste virgin to Him*^:" and this is the precise view in which every convert ought to regard the person to whom the honour of bringing him to Christ is delegated. The bride may feel obligations to the friend who conveys her to the bridegroom ; but she does not once think of shewing to him any such par- tiality as would interfere with the sacred and inalienable rights of her husband. Thus it should be with all who are converted through the instrumentality o^ men : they should regard those men as mere instruments, or, as St. Paul expresses it, " as ministers by whom they have believed," and by whom they have received the gifts which the Lord himself, their heavenly Bridegroom, sent to them'.
Let this then be borne in mind: " Ye are Christ's," wholly, and altogether Christ's. He formed you originally : he re- deemed you with his own most precious blood : he called you by his grace: all that you are, and all that you have, is his. You must therefore consider yourselves as his: his exclusive property, in all the powers of your body, and in all the faculties of your soul. Yea, so entirely must your aifections be set on him, as to make all creatures dwindle into insignificance before him, eclipsed as stars before the meridian sun.]
2. '' Christ is God's"—
[Our affections are not to be so set even on Christ himself, as to forget that he, os our Mediator, is only God's servant,
1' 2 Cor, xi. 2. ' ver. 5.