Christian Life

Thankful for His Ownership

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation Leave a comment

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? – 1 Corinthians 6:19

A vessel is drifting on the Atlantic hither and thither, and its end no man knoweth. It is derelict, deserted by all its crew; it is the property of no man; it is the prey of every storm, and the sport of every wind: rocks, quicksands, and shoals wait to destroy it: the ocean yearns to engulf it. It drifts onward to no man’s land, and no man will mourn its shipwreck. But mark well yonder barque in the Thames which its owner surveys with pleasure. In its attempt to reach the sea, it may run ashore, or come into collision with other vessels; or in a thousand ways suffer damage; but there is no fear, it will pass through the floating forest of “the Pool;” it will thread the winding channel, and reach the Nore because its owner will secure it pilotage, skillful and apt. How thankful you and I should be that we are not derelict today! We are not our own, not left on the wild waste of chance to be tossed to and fro by fortuitous circumstances; but there is a hand upon our helm; we have on board a pilot who owns us and will surely steer us into the Fair Havens of eternal rest…He that is his own master, has a fool and a tyrant to be his lord. No man ever yet governed himself after the will of the flesh but what he by degrees found the yoke heavy and the burden crushing…Today, when the Christian confesses that he is not his own, he does not wish that he were. He is married to the Savior; he has given himself up, body, soul, and spirit, to the blessed Bridegroom of his heart; it was the marriage-day of his true life when he became a Christian, and he looks back to it with joy and transport. Oh, it is a blissful thing not to be our own, so I shall not want arguments to prove that to which every gracious spirit gives a blissful consent. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1004.cfm

The Passion of Our Lord

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. – 1Corinthians 6:19-20

There in the midnight hour, amidst the olives of Gethsemane, kneels Immanuel the Son of God; He groans, He pleads in prayer, He wrestles; see the beady drops stand on His brow, drops of sweat, but not of such sweat as pours from men when they earn the bread of life, but the sweat of Him who is procuring life itself for us. It is blood, it is crimson blood; great gouts of it are falling to the ground. O soul, thy Savior speaks to thee from out Gethsemane at this hour, and He says: “Here and thus I bought thee with a price.” Come, stand and view Him in the agony of the olive garden, and understand at what a cost He procured thy deliverance. Track Him in all His path of shame and sorrow till you see Him on the Pavement; mark how they bind His hands and fasten Him to the whipping-post; see, they bring the scourges and the cruel Roman whips; they tear His flesh; the ploughers make deep furrows on His blessed body, and the blood gushes forth in streams, while rivulets from His temples, where the crown of thorns has pierced them, join to swell the purple stream. From beneath the scourges, He speaks to you with accents soft and low, and He says, “My child, it is here and thus I bought thee with a price.” But see Him on the cross itself when the consummation of all has come; His hands and feet are fountains of blood, His soul is full of anguish even to heartbreak; and there, ere the soldier pierces with a spear His side, bowing down He whispers to thee and to me, “It was here and thus, I bought thee with a price.” O by Gethsemane, by Gabbatha, by Golgotha, by every sacred name collected with the passion of our Lord, by sponge and vinegar, and nail and spear, and everything that helped the pang and increased the anguish of His death, I conjure you, my beloved brethren, to remember that ye were “bought with a price,” and “are not your own.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1004.cfm

The Theme of Heaven

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father Leave a comment

For ye are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. – 1Corinthians 6:20

And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation… – Revelation 5:9

What say they in heaven when they sing? They would naturally select the noblest topic and that which most engrosses their minds, and yet in the whole range of their memory they find no theme so absorbing as this: “Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood.” Redeeming love is the theme of heaven. When you reach the upper realms your most important memory will not be that you were wealthy or poor in this life, nor the fact that you sickened and died, but that you were “bought with a price.” We do not know all that may occur in this world before the close of its history, but certainly it will be burnt up with fire, and you in yonder clouds with Christ may witness the awful conflagration. You will never forget it. There will be new heavens and new earth, and you with Christ may see the new-born heavens, and earth, laughing in the bright sunlight of God’s good pleasure; you will never forget that joyous day. And you will be caught up to dwell with Jesus for ever and ever; and there will come a time when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father and God shall be all in all. You will never forget the time of which the poet sings—

Then the end, beneath His rod
Man’s last enemy shall fall.
Hallelujah, Christ in God,
God in Christ is all in all.

What then, beloved? Shall it not have the chief place with you now? It has been the fact of your life hitherto, it will be the fact of your entire eternal existence: let it saturate your soul, let it penetrate your spirit, let it subdue your faculties, let it take the reins of all your powers and guide you whither it will. Let the Redeemer, He whose hands were pierced for you, sway the scepter of your spirit and rule over you this day, and world without end. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1004.cfm

Saints Redeemed by Blood

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation Leave a comment

For ye are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. – 1 Corinthians 6:20

It is inevitable that if you be “bought with a price,” you have ceased to be your own property, and belong to Him who bought you. Holiness, therefore, is necessary to all the redeemed. If you cast off your responsibility to be holy, you at the same time cast away the benefit of redemption. Will you do this? As I am sure you could not renounce your salvation, and cast away your only hope, so I charge you by the living God be not so inconsistent as to say: “I am redeemed, and yet I will live as I list.” As redeemed men, let the inevitable consequences follow from the fact, and be ye evidently the servants of the Lord Jesus…That you were redeemed “with a price” is the greatest event in your biography. Even your birth, what was it unless a second birth had been yours! Might you not say: “Let the day perish wherein I was born and the night in which it was said, there is a man child conceived”? Would it not have been to you the direst calamity to be born into the world if you had not been rescued from the wrath of which you were the heir? You left your father’s house, and it was an important step in life; perhaps you crossed the great and wide sea; it may be you aspired to high office in the state and you obtained it; it is possible you have been sore sick, or it may be you have sunk from affluence to poverty. Such events leave their impress upon the memory; men cannot forget these great changes in their lives; but they all shrivel into less than nothing compared with this fact that you were “bought with a price.” Your connection with Calvary is the most important thing about you. Oh, I do beseech you then, if it be so, prove it; and remember the just and righteous proof is by your not being your own, but consecrated unto God. If it be the most important thing in the world to you, that you were “bought with a price,” let it exercise the most prominent influence over your entire career. Be a man, be an Englishman, but be most of all Christ’s man… a saint redeemed by blood. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1004.cfm

The Holiness of Christians

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, repentance, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. – 1Corinthians 6:19-20

Paul, who above all others, speaks most positively of salvation by grace, and is most clear upon the fact that salvation is not by the works of the law, is at the same time most intensely earnest for the holiness of Christians, and most zealously denounces those who would say, “Let us do evil, that good may come.” In this particular instance he sets the sin of fornication in the light of the Holy Spirit; he holds up, as it were, the seven-branched candlestick before it, and lets us see what a filthy thing it is. He tells us that the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and therefore ought not to be profaned; he declares that bodily unchastity is a sacrilegious desecration of our manhood, a violation of the sacred shrine wherein the Spirit takes up its dwelling-place; and then, as if this were not enough, he seizes the sin and drags it to the foot of the cross, and there nails it hand and foot, that it may die as a criminal; for these are his words: “Ye are not your own: for ye are bought with a price:” the price being the blood of Jesus. He finds no sharper weapon, no keener instrument of destruction than this. The redemption wrought on Calvary by the death of Jesus must be the death of this sin, and of all other sins, wherever the Spirit of God uses it as His sword of execution. Brethren and sisters, it is no slight thing to be holy. A man must not say, “I have faith,” and then fall into the sins of an unbeliever; for, after all, our outer life is the test of our inner life; and if the outer life be not purified, rest assured the heart is not changed. That faith which does not bring forth the fruit of holiness is the faith of devils. The devils believe and tremble. Let us never be content with a faith which can live in hell, but rise to that which will save us—the faith of God’s elect, which purifies the soul, casting down the power of evil, and setting up the throne of Jesus Christ, the throne of holiness within the spirit. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1004.cfm

Purchased with His Redeeming Blood

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation Leave a comment

For ye are bought with a price. – 1 Corinthians 16:20

That the blood of Christ was shed to buy our souls from death and hell is a wonder of compassion which fills angels with amazement, and it ought to overwhelm us with adoring love whenever we think of it, glance our eye over the recording pages, or even utter the word “redemption.” What meant this purchasing us with blood? It signified pain. Have any of you lately been racked with pain? Have you suffered acutely? Ah! then at such times you know to some degree what the price was which the Savior paid. His bodily pains were great, hands and feet nailed to the wood, and the iron breaking through the tenderest nerves. His soul-pains were greater still, His heart was melted like wax, He was very heavy, His heart was broken with reproach, He was deserted of God and left beneath the black thunder-clouds of divine wrath, His soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. It was pain that bought you. We speak of the drops of blood, but we must not confine our thoughts to the crimson life-floods which distilled from the Savior’s veins; we must think of the pangs which He endured, which were the equivalent for what we ought to have suffered, what we must have suffered had we endured the punishment of our guilt for ever in the flames of hell. But pain alone could not have redeemed us; it was by death that the Savior paid the ransom. Death is a word of horror to the ungodly. The righteous hath hope in his death; but as Christ’s death was the substitute for the death of the ungodly, He was made a curse for us, and the presence of God was denied Him. His death was attended with unusual darkness; He cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” O think ye earnestly on this. The Ever-living died to redeem us; the Only Begotten bowed His head in agony and was laid in the grave that we might be saved. Ye are bought then “with a price”—a price incalculable, stupendous, infinite, and this is the plea which the apostle uses to urge upon us that we should “be holiness to the Lord.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1004.cfm

Ye Are Bought with a Price

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises Leave a comment

“Ye are not your own: for ye are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”- 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

 “Ye are bought with a price.” Paul might, if his object were to prove that we are not our own, have said: “Ye did not make yourselves.” Creation may well furnish motives for obedience to the great Lawgiver. He might also have said, “Ye do not preserve yourselves: it is God who keeps you in life; you would die if He withdrew His power.” The preservation of divine providence might furnish abundant arguments for holiness. Surely, He who feeds, nourishes, and upholds our life should have our service. But He prefers, for reasons known to Himself, which it would not be hard to guess, to plead the tenderer theme, redemption. The most potent plea for sanctity is not “Ye were made,” or, “Ye are nourished,” but “Ye are bought.” This the apostle selects as a convincing proof of our duty, and as a means to make that duty our delight. And truly, beloved, it is so. If we have indeed experienced the power of redemption we fully admit that it is so. Look ye back to the day when ye were bought, when ye were bondslaves to your sins, when ye were under the just sentence of divine justice, when it was inevitable that God should punish your transgressions; remember how the Son of God became your substitute, how He bared His back to the lash that should have fallen upon you, and laid His soul beneath the sword which should have quenched its fury in your blood. You were redeemed then, redeemed from the punishment that was due to you, redeemed from the wrath of God, redeemed unto Christ to be His for ever. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1004.cfm