in its own nature, but it will never cease to give happiness to the possessor. How often do worldly possessions wither, cease to give the happiness they once gave to those who continue to hold rather than to enjoy them! It has been beautifully remarked, that "the sweetest earthly music, if heard but for one day, would weary those who are most delighted with it. But the song of Heaven, though forever the same, will be forever new." 1 Here we are often sated but never satisfied-there, there is constant satisfaction, but there never will be satiety. Such is the excellence of the celestial inheritance. 'But,' may the Christian say, 'the inheritance is indeed inestimably precious; but will it ever be mine?' It is as secure as it is precious, says the apostle. It is "reserved in heaven for you," and you are "kept for it by the power of God through faith." This inheritance is "reserved in heaven" for Christians-that is, it is secured beyond the reach of violence or fraud. Many a person, born to a rich inheritance, has never obtained possession of it, but has lived and died in poverty; but this inheritance is liable to none of the accidents of earth and time. It is "in heaven," under the immediate guardianship of DIVINE power, wisdom, and love. 'But the inheritance may itself be secure, but not secure for me. There may be perfect happiness in heaven, but I may never reach it there.' To meet this suggestion the apostle adds, "Ye are kept by the mighty power of God through faith." 2 The apostle's doctrine is, and it is quite accordant with the doctrine of his Master and the other apostles, that all who are begotten again by God shall be preserved to the enjoyment of the inheritance. None of them shall fall in the wilderness. "I give unto my sheep eternal life," says Jesus Christ; "and they shall never perish, neither shall any one pluck them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them me, is greater than all; and none can pluck them out of my Father's hand." Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” ♦ They are "kept"-preserved safe-amid the many dangers to which they are exposed, "by the power of God." The expression, "power of God," may here refer to the divine power both as exercised in reference to the enemies of the Christian, controlling their malignant purposes, and as exercised in the form of spiritual influence on the mind of the Christian himself, keeping him in the faith of the truth, "in the love of God, and in the patient waiting for our Lord Jesus Christ." It is probably to the last that the apostle principally alludes, for he adds "by faith." It is through the persevering faith of the truth that the Christian is by divine influence preserved from 1 Leighton. 'Hereditas servata est: heredes custodiuntur. Neque illa his, neque hi deerunt illi.— BENGEL. 4 Rom. viii. 35-89. John x. 28. falling, and kept in possession both of that state and character which are absolutely necessary to the enjoyment of the heavenly inheritance.1 The perseverance thus secured to the true Christian is perseverance in faith and holiness, and nothing can be more grossly absurd than for a person living in unbelief and sin, to suppose that he can be in the way of obtaining celestial blessedness. So much for the illustration of the second blessing for which the apostle gives thanks-the future inheritance which God has provided for his children. §3.-The living hope of the inheritance. Let us now proceed to consider the third of these blessings: The living or lively hope of the inheritance, through the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead. God hath "begotten us again to a lively hope"-that is, in making us his children, he has excited in us an influential and enduring hope of final and complete happiness. Mankind in their natural state are said to "have no hope"-that is, they are without any well-grounded rational hope of final happiness. This is true of all men without exception, of the elect of God as well as of others. They have broken the divine law; they have incurred the divine displeasure. They are guilty, and depraved, and miserable. They deserve everlasting destruction; if mercy interpose not, they must meet with their desert. It is then an inquiry of very deep moment, how is the well-grounded hope of final happiness excited and maintained in the human mind? Now there are two questions which must be resolved, in order to our distinctly apprehending the truth on this subject; the first, what is the ground of the hope referred to in our text? and the second, how is an individual brought to cherish the hope of final happiness on this ground With reference to the former of these questions, it is obvious that the ground of hope is not anything in the sinner himself. It is not that he is innocent; it is not that he is less guilty than others. It is not that a great change has been produced, or is to be produced, on him. When he looks at himself in the light of the divine law, a sinner may well perceive abundant reason for fear, abundant reason for despair; but he can never perceive any sufficient reason for hope. The ground of hope is not in us, but in God. The ground of the sinner's hope-(and the ground of the saint's hope is just the ground of the sinner's hope; for what is a saint but a saved sinner?)-is sometimes represented as the sovereign benignity of God; sometimes as the obedience to death, the finished work, the perfect atonement, of Christ; and sometimes as the free untrammelled revelation of mercy in the word of the truth of the gospel. These are all but different as When ev and dià are connected in one sentence, dà refers to external means, whilst ev relates to that which is effected in or on a person, as if adhering to him. Eph. i. 7,-¿v ᾧ (χρ) ἔχομεν τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ. Even when impersonal things are spoken of, the distinction between iv (of an internal psychological state or power), and dia, of means, is apparent: as 1 Pet. i. 5.—roùs ¿v dvvápci Osvû ppovpovpérove dià níorews; and v. 22.—ἐν τῇ ὑπακοῇ τῆς ἀληθειας, διὰ πνέυματος.—WINER, Part iii. sec. 52, p. 312. Eph. ii. 12. pects of the same thing, and the truth on this subject may be thus stated: The ground-the sole ground-of a sinner's hope is the sovereign mercy of God, manifested in consistency with, in glorious illustration of, his righteousness, in the obedience to death of his Son Jesus Christ, the just one in the room of the unjust, of which we have a plain and well-accredited account "in the word of the truth of the gospel." The ground of hope is exhibited in such passages of Scripture as the following:-"God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life." "The righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God, which is by the faith of Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by God's grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God hath set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood." "It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." "God is in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them; for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." "The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them." The second question is, how is the sinner brought to cherish the hope of eternal life on this ground? Now, if the preceding remarks have been understood, there can be no difficulty in answering this question. The free sovereign mercy of God, manifested in a consistency with his righteousness, is revealed in the gospel; and it can only be by that gospel being understood and believed, that the individual sinner can obtain the hope of eternal life. If I believe this revelation, I hope for eternal life, and I hope for eternal life on this ground. If I do not believe this revelation, I either have no hope of eternal life, or, if I have, it is a hope built on another and a false foundation. It is in the faith of the truth that the sinner finds hope. Not that the sinner's faith is the ground of his hope, but that it is through believing alone that he can discover the ground on which his hope must rest. When Elisha's servant was overwhelmed with fears lest his master should fall into the hands of the Syrians, these fears were turned into assured hope, when, with enlightened eyes, he beheld the heavenly host with which they were surrounded. His hope rested, not on his seeing that host, but on their being there; but still his seeing them there was in the nature of things necessary to his hope. In like manner the sinner's hope rests entirely on God's free sovereign kindness, manifested in harmony with his righteousness; but it is only in the belief of the truth that this sovereign kindness can be apprehended as a ground of hope. 2 The ground of hope never varies. The ground of the hope of eternal life to an aged and accomplished saint, just about to enter 1 John iii. 16. Rom. iii. 21-25. 1 Tim. i. 15. 2 Cor. v. 19, 21. Heb. vii. 25. Paradise, is the very same as to the most guilty and depraved of men who has just been brought to the knowledge and faith of the truth. "The beginning of our confidence" is the end of our confidence. Our first hope is our last hope. It follows of course that the great means of maintaining and strengthening hope, is just the continued and the increasing faith of the truth. At the same time it is plain from Scripture, that as the faith of the truth uniformly produces holiness as well as hope, unholy tempers are in their own nature calculated to cloud our hope; and holy tempers and conduct to strengthen it, not by adding to its foundation, but by affording evidence that we have built on that foundation. There are two other questions respecting this hope, which, though not of such vital importance as those which I have now endeavored briefly and plainly to answer, are yet of very considerable interest at all times, and particularly at present, when much darkening of counsel by words without knowledge, on this subject, seems to me to prevail. Is the hope of eternal life connected with the faith of the gospel? And does every believer enjoy an unclouded hope of eternal life? With regard to the first question, I unhesitatingly reply in the affirmative. The gospel cannot be believed without, in the degree in which it is believed, producing the hope of eternal life. It is not only not necessary that a sinner should wait till the faith of the gospel has proved its efficacy in a moral transformation of his nature, before he begin to cherish the hope of salvation, but he cannot believe the gospel without cherishing that hope; and it is through means of this hope that the gospel believed, in a great measure, works that moral change. To believe the gospel, and to despair of salvation, are two utterly incompatible states of mind. We hold, then, that every believer, according to the measure of his faith, has the hope of eternal life. And in this principle we also find the true answer to the second question; 'Does every believer enjoy the unclouded hope of eternal life?' He does enjoy that hope according to the measure of his faith. If he is strong in faith, he abounds in hope. But as every believer in the present state has but an imperfect apprehension both of the truth and of its evidence, and is still to a certain extent under the influence of false views, every believer, while in the present state, is imperfect both in holiness and in hope. At the same time, his imperfection in both is not more his misfortune than his fault. A perfect faith of a completely understood gospel would produce unshaken, unclouded hope, and enable the Christian at all times, in all circumstances, to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." 66 This hope of eternal life, grounded on the sovereign mercy of God manifested, in harmony with his holiness and righteousness, through the mediation of Christ, revealed in the gospel; and excited, maintained and strengthened by the faith of the gospel, is described here as "a lively," or rather " a living hope." The hope of the Christian 1 The reference here is to the speculations about Universal Pardon, which, at the time this discourse was delivered, December 1830, were very prevalent in this country. Ἡ ἐλπίδα ζῶσαν is a "living" hope, in opposition both to a dead and a dying hope-in opposition to the dead hope of the hypocrite, and the dying hope of the self-deceiver. The apostle James speaks of "a dead faith," which, on examination, turns out to be no faith at all, but merely a man's saying he has faith.' There is also a dead hope, which is in reality no hope at all, but merely a profession of it. A mere professed hope, founded on a mere professed faith, is a dead thing-it can make a man neither holy nor happy-it cannot animate to duty-it cannot support under suffering. But the hope of the Christian is "a living hope." It fills him with joy and peace in the degree in which it prevails; and it leads him to purify himself, even as he in whom he places his confidence is pure. The hope of eternal life is the well-grounded expectation of perfect holy happiness. Now is it not perfectly plain, so plain as to need no illustration, that this must be a living operative hope, and that, just in the degree in which it exists, it must make him in whom it dwells both holy and happy? It will induce a man to submit to the greatest evils rather than renounce the faith of Christ; and it will keep him cheerful and happy amidst all the sacrifices which he may be called on to make in the cause of his Saviour. This hope is termed "a living hope," not only in opposition to a dead hope, but also in opposition to dying hopes. There are many hopes which are not merely professed, but really entertained, that will never be realized. This is true both as to worldly hopes and as to religious hopes. With regard to worldly hopes, have we not all from experience discovered the truth of the remark,-" They are not living, but lying, dying hopes. They often die before us, and we live to bury them, and see our own folly and simplicity in trusting to them, and at the utmost they die with us when we die, and can accompany us no farther." 2 With regard to religious hopes, it is a happy thing when all of them, not founded on the faith of the truth, die before we die; for till these dying hopes expire, the living hope cannot exist. All hopes of eternal life, excepting that which we have been endeav oring to describe, will most assuredly expire when we expire, and make those who relied on them ashamed and confounded world without end. But this hope lives in death. This hope remains unshaken by all the calamities which can befal the believer here; for he knows nothing can separate him from the love of God. Death and judgment and eternity do not destroy, they fulfil this hope; and as the object of the hope is ever-enduring holy happiness, it is plain that hope as well as enjoyment must continue forever. This "hope makes not ashamed," that is, it never disappoints; and, if you would know the reason, you will find the apostle Paul assigning it, from the 5th to the 10th verse of the 5th chapter of the epistle to the Romans: "Hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, 1 James ii. 17. • Leighton. |