Character of Jesus

All Glory Be unto God

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God 1 Comment

But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. – 1 Corinthians 1:30,31

My soul is free from slavery, but my poor trembling and much suffering body feels the chains of death. Weakened by pain, my body shall in all probability bow before the stroke of death’s sword. Unless the Lord soon come, it must be the portion of this frame to feed the worm and mingle with the dust: but, O my body, thou art redeemed, and thou shalt rise in power and incorruption; thou shalt yet adore the Lord without weariness, and without pain shalt thou serve Him day and night in His temple. Even thou, O my weary body; even thou shalt be made glorious like unto the Lord Himself: Thou shalt rise and live in the brightness of His presence.

You see then, brethren, our very existence as Christians, and all that we possess as Christians, we get from God by Jesus Christ; let all our glory then be unto Him. What insanity it is to boast in any but in our Lord Jesus! How foolish are they that are proud of the beauty of their flesh-worms’ meat at the best! How foolish are they who are proud of their wisdom! The wisdom of which a man is proud, is but folly in a thin disguise. How foolish are they that are vain of their wealth! He must be a poor man who can think much of gold. He must be a beggar indeed who counts a piece of dirt a treasure. They that know Christ, always value these things at their right estimate, and that is low indeed. If any glory-and I suppose it is natural to us to glory, there is a boasting bump on all our heads-let us glory in the Lord; and here is a wide field and ample sea-room. Now, put out every stitch of canvas, run up the topgallants, seek as stiff a breeze as you will, there is no fear of running on a lee shore here, or striking a rock, or drifting on a quicksand! O men, O angels, O cherubim, O seraphim, boast in Jesus Christ! Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption is He, therefore ye may boast and boast, and boast again! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm

The Alpha and Omega Blessing

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But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us…redemption… – 1 Corinthians 1:30

The last item of our boundless wealth catalogued in the text is “redemption.” Somebody says: “That ought to have come first; because redemption, surely, is the first blessing that we enjoy.” Ay, but it is the last as well. It is the alpha blessing, I grant you that-but it is the omega blessing too. You are not yet redeemed altogether. By price you are-for He that redeemed you on the tree did not leave unpaid a penny of your ransom; but you are not yet altogether redeemed by power. In a measure, you are set free by divine power; for you have been brought up out of the Egypt of your sin, you have been delivered from the galling bondage of your corruption, and led through the Red Sea, to be fed upon the heavenly manna; but you are not altogether redeemed by power as yet. There are links of the old chains yet to be snapped from off you, and there is a bondage still about you from which you are ere long to be delivered. You are “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body.” You will fall asleep, rejoicing that you were redeemed; but you will not, even when you die, have received the full redemption. When will that come-the full redemption? Only at the second advent of the Lord Jesus; for when the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, then the bodies of His saints, which have long been lying in the prison-house of the sepulcher, shall be redeemed by a glorious redemption from the power of death. “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” The bodies of the saints shall come again from the land of the enemy. Then their body, soul, and spirit-their entire manhood, which Christ hath bought, shall be altogether free from the reign of the enemy. Then will redemption be completed. Remember the saints in heaven without us cannot be made perfect, that is to say, they wait till we arrive among them, and when all the rest of the chosen ones shall be gathered in, and the fullness of time has come, then shall the bodies of the dead arise; and then, in body and soul made perfect, the year of the redeemed shall have fully come. “Lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” Here, then, is my joy, that Christ is my redemption. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm

Sanctified in Christ Jesus

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But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us righteousness, and sanctification… – 1 Corinthians 1:30

Our sanctification is all in Christ; that is to say, it is because we are in Christ that we have the basis of sanctification, which consists in being set apart. A thing was sanctified of old, under the law, when it was set apart for God’s service. We were sanctified in Christ Jesus when we were set apart by the divine Spirit to be the Lord’s own peculiar people for ever. Election is the basis of sanctification. Moreover, the power by which we are sanctified comes to us entirely by virtue of our union with Christ. The Holy Spirit who sanctifies us through the truth, works in us by virtue of our union with Jesus. That which becomes holy in us is the new life. The old nature never changes into a holy thing; the carnal mind is not reconciled to God, neither, indeed, can be. The old man is not sent to the hospital to be healed, but to the cross to be crucified. It is not transformed and improved but doomed to die and to be buried. The ordinance of baptism…is meant to show, by our immersion in the liquid tomb, that it is by death and burial that we pass into life by the power of resurrection. If any man be in Christ, he is not an old creature mended up: he is a new creature. “Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.” Now, it is because this new life is the great, the true matter of sanctification, and because it comes to us by virtue of our oneness with Christ, that Jesus Christ is made to us the power and the life by which we are sanctified. 

“Thou art God’s child: walk worthy of Him who is thy Father.” His love to thee will never cease. He cannot cast thee away: He is faithful and never changes, therefore love Him in return. This is a motive fit for the child of the free woman, and it moves His heart. The child of the bond woman is driven by the whip, but the child of the free woman is drawn by cords of love. “The love of Christ constraineth us;” not fear of hell but love of Christ; not fear that God will cast us away, for that He cannot do, but the joy that we are saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation constrains us to cling to Him with all our heart and soul, for ever and ever. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm

Imputed Righteousness

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But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us…righteousness… – 1 Corinthians 1:30

He is made of God unto us righteousness. This was a great want of ours, for naturally we were unrighteous, and to this hour in ourselves we are the same. Righteous we must be to be acceptable with God, but righteous we certainly are not personally, and by merit. All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we are unable to stand before the great King; but there is One who says: “Take away his filthy garments from him,” and that same Deliverer, even the Lord Jesus Christ, is made of God unto us righteousness. You know how we usually speak of this as a double work. His blood cleanseth us from all guilt; by it pardon is bestowed upon the believer. He that looks to Christ is absolved from all sin completely so. Then, in addition to that cleansing, which we call pardon, there is the clothing, the arraying in the righteousness of Christ-in a word, there is justification by faith. The doctrine of imputed righteousness seems to me to be firmly established in the Word of God…Not only is Christ’s righteousness imputed to me, but it is mine actually, for Christ is mine. He who believes in Jesus, has Jesus Christ to be his own Christ, and the righteousness of Christ belongs to that believer, and is his. We are not merely imputably righteous, but the righteousness of our substitute is legally, actually, truly our righteousness. I am not now speaking of nature-that would have to do with sanctification-but I am speaking of repute before God. He reckons us to be righteous in Christ, and He does not reckon wrongly; the imputation is not a legal fiction or a charitable error. We are righteous. Depend upon it, God’s imputation is not like human imputation, which makes a thing to be what it is not: we are in Christ made actually righteous, because we are one with Him…As He is, so are we also in this respect. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm 

Be of Holy Courage

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, the unbelieving life 1 Comment

But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom… – 1 Corinthians 1:30

Let none of us ever be so foolish as to suppose that when we have received Jesus and His gospel, we have occasion to blush when we are in the company of the very wisest of the present day. Carry a bold face when you confront the brazen faced philosophy which insults your Lord. The man who does not believe the Bible does not know so much as thou dost. Blush not, though with mimic wisdom the unbeliever tries to laugh or argue thee down. He who knows not Christ, though he propounds wonderful theories as to the creation of mankind and the formation of the world, and though he has a glib tongue, is only an educated fool, a learned idiot, who thinks his own rushlight brighter than God’s own sun. “Ah! but he has been to college, and he has a degree, and he is esteemed by men; for he has written books that nobody can comprehend.” “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God;” and I do not care even if he be a Solon, if he has said that there is no God, he is a fool. Do not blush, then, if you find yourself in his company, do not make yourself the blushing one because the fool is there. Self-conceit were to be avoided and loathed; but this is not self-conceit, but a holy courage in a case which demands of you to be courageous. To know Christ is the best of all philosophy, the highest of all sciences. Angels desire to look into this; but I do not know that they care a fig for half the sciences so valued among men. If you know Christ you never need be afraid of being ashamed and confounded whatever company you may be in. If you stood in a senate of emperors, or amidst a parliament of philosophers, and only told them of the God that came in human flesh, and loved, and lived, and died to redeem mankind, you would have told them a greater mystery and a profounder secret than reason could discover. Be not ashamed, then, amid the intellectual pride of this boastful age. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm

Scholars at the Cross-foot Let Us Always Be

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Holy Spirit 2 Comments

But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom… – 1 Corinthians 1:30

Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom... we do not expect wisdom to come to us through the culture that is of man, but we expect to be made wise through sitting at our Master’s feet and accepting Him as wisdom from God Himself… “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” It seemeth to me to be greater wisdom to believe what Christ hath said than to believe what my deepest thoughts have discovered; and though I have thought long upon a subject, and turned it over and over, and think I know more of it than another man, yet, in one simple word of Christ there is more wisdom than in all my thoughts and ruminatings. I am never to look to myself for wisdom, and to fancy that I am the creator of truth or the revealer of it; but ever to go to Him, my Lord, my Teacher, my All, and to believe that the highest culture, the best results of the highest education are to be found by sitting at His feet, and the best results of the deepest meditation, too, are to be gained in lying down in the green pastures, beside the still waters, where He, as the good Shepherd, leads me.

To know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom. Now, that man is wise in three respects who has Christ for his wisdom. Christ’s teaching will make him wise of thought, and wise of heart. All you want to know of God, of sin, of life, of death, of eternity, of predestination, of man’s responsibility, Christ has either personally, or by His Spirit in the word of God, taught you. Anything that you find out for yourself, anything over and above revelation, is folly, but whatever He has taught is wisdom; and He has so taught it that if you learn it in the spirit in which He would have you learn it, it will not be dry, dead doctrine to you, but spirit and life; and His teaching will endow you with wisdom as well as knowledge. Scholars at the cross-foot let us always be. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm

God’s Beloved Ones

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But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus… – 1 Corinthians 1:30

Being in Christ you are of God. Not of the earth, not of Satan, not of the bondage of the law, not of the powers of evil, but of God are you; God’s husbandry, God’s people, God’s children, God’s beloved ones. “Ye are of God,” little children, “and the whole world lieth in wickedness.” On you hath God’s light shone, to you hath God’s life come, in you God’s love is made manifest, and in you shall God’s glory be fully revealed. What a dignity is this to be “of God!” Some have thought it a great thing to have it said, “These are they which are of the prince’s household,” and others have been yet more boastful when they have been pointed at as parts of an imperial court; but you are of the divine family, descended from Him who only hath immortality. “they shall be Mine, saith the Lord, in the day when I make up My jewels.” “For the Lord’s portion is His people, Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.” Of God, are you, every one of you who are in Christ Jesus: ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. The Creator, the Upholder, the Sublime, the Invisible, the Infinite, the Eternal claims you. You have a part and lot with Him, and you are herein uplifted to the highest degree of exaltation because you are in Christ. Here, then, you have the dignity of the Christ life-it is of God, as its source is through God. Our life hinges upon union to our Lord. “Because I live, ye shall live also.” Out of Christ we abide in death, but in Christ we live, and we are of God. Our spiritual being, and the fact that our spiritual being is an exalted one, both hang upon this-that we are in Christ. Beloved hearer, there is no joy in this world like union with Christ. The more we can feel it, the happier we are, whatever our circumstances may be. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0991.cfm