Simply because it is depraved; and until he had entered a foul element until the body had begun to quiver with a kind of intoxication the fancy would not hold its carnival. "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God; and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." All things at this present moment are working together for the believer's good. Are your arms about the neck of the great Father? There is another point under the first head which I must not omit. I have no doubt that Paul also argued with himself from the nature of the work of grace, which is the implantation of a living and incorruptible seed which liveth and abideth for ever. We are forced to use words if we would influence our fellow-men, but the Spirit of God can operate upon the human mind more directly, and communicate with it in silence. Glory be unto thee, O God, glory be unto thee; my soul is in heaven, I with the cherubim and seraphim would bow, and sing, and rejoice with them I veil my face in this most joyful moment wiping every tear from my poor eyes, I bid them look upon thy glory in Christ. Oh, it is no hard task to plead, when you are pleading with a Father for a brother, and when the advocate can say, "I go to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God." Consider what you owe to his power; how he has raised you from your death in sin, and how he has preserved your spiritual life, how he has kept you from falling, and how, though a thousand enemies have beset your path, you have been able to hold on your way! "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people," so runs our commission, Isa 40 1. Little did they know that they had already what they asked for for all the church is now at the right hand of the Father; all the church is now raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. A groan then is a part of prayer which we owe to the Holy Ghost, and the same is true of all the prayer which wells up from the deep fountains of our inner life. So that wish and I do not think there has been a man in this world who has not had it proves that "the carnal mind is enmity against God. Look! 4. It cannot be that Christ should transform himself at last; but till he can do so, none can condemn. When Christ Jesus took away our guilt, and "his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree," justice was more terribly displayed than when guilty sinners sink to hell. It does not always follow in human reasoning "if children, then heirs," because in our families but one is the heir. He cannot bring us in debt to divine justice; for in his own hands and feet are the nail-prints, which are the receipts of justice in full settlement of all claims against us. Look at the imagination, too. We come and spend our time and our money upon our pleasures before we pay our just and fair debts. You come into court with your case, and the counsel on the other side condemns you. He said to himself, "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." Now, why did you come here till you had paid your debt? You go out to your pleasures, but your conscience goes with you, and spoils your mirth. Did an earthly benefactor feed you, would you hate him? I might review all our powers, and write upon the brow of each one, "Traitor against heaven! God the ever blessed is one, and there can be no division between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Behold, O trembling penitent, the means of thy deliverance. Saints with little glory, then Christ with little glory; believers with a narrow heaven, then Christ with a narrow heaven. As an old countryman once said to me, from whom I gained many a pithy saying "Ah! It does not charge manhood with an aversion merely to the dominion, laws, or doctrines of Jehovah; but it strikes a deeper and surer blow. London: Passmore & Alabaster, 18, Paternoster Row, and all Booksellers. Romans 8:1 is widely misunderstood for two reasons: first, katakrima, the word typically translated as condemnation, does not mean that. Look! We are like Jacob looking at the wagons, and the more we look at the wagons, the more we long to see Joseph's face; but our groaning after Jesus is a blessed groan, for. That is in opposition to their apparent confliction. Here stands the case. Remember thou art now a debtor to God in a legal sense, as thou art in Adam, thou art no longer a debtor to God's justice as thou once wast. Dost thou abide in his commandments, and desire to be conformed unto his Image? It is not left to my pleasure whether I will do it or no; but I am a debtor, and I must serve him. Everywhere the earth works; mountains work: nature in its inmost bowels is at work; even the center of the great heart of the world is ever beating; sometimes we discover its working in the volcano and the earthquake, but even when most still all things are ever working. At any rate, meet the attack of the world as you met the attack of Satan, with this weapon only: "It is Christ that died," and you will be "more than conquerors through him that loved us.". He shall joy in their joy, and be glad in their gladness. Do you shrink from being tempted? Now, first, brethren, as co-heirs with Christ, we are heirs of God so the text tells us. Satan desires to have us and to sift us as wheat. Even this first point of what the saint has attained will help us to understand why it is that he groans. Wherefore, brethren, you and I also are patiently to endure, to hold on even to the end, and God's sure promise will never fail us. We expect to see this world that is now so full of sin as to be an Aceldama, a field of blood, turned into a paradise, a garden of God. So it must be, "If so be that we suffer with him that we also may be glorified together." Is it not my duty, as well as my happiness, to ask whether there be a way to be reconciled to God? Listen at that door on the left, there is a deep, hollow, awful groan. And somehow or other you have an equal faith for the future. "Oh, I want to get home to my dear wife and children. Words fail, and even the sighs which try to embody them cannot be uttered. We are not at liberty to give or to refuse. But our God doeth more than this, he doth not send merely bread from his table, as in the day when man did eat angel's food; he doth not give us merely to drink the wines on the lees well refined the rich wines of heaven but he gives himself himself to us. Will you be scoffed at for his sake? But we sit down very contented. Will he be ruler over many things? We are saved by hope. He looked at me, and picked me out as if I was the only man there, and described me exactly." But yonder is the Saviour,, and he is called Jesus, "For he shall save his people from their sins." There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. but thou wilt not leave one of the "many brethren" for whom he died: the Spirit shall be with them, and when they cannot so much as groan he will make intercession for them with groanings that cannot be uttered. What contrasts we have in the seventh verse! Then secondly, there is the secret mind of God, the will of his eternal predestination and decree, of which we know nothing; but we do know this, that the Spirit of God never prompts us to ask anything which is contrary to the eternal purpose of God. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in the Greek, phronema sarkos, which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh, is not subject to the Law of God. All the sheep of the Great Shepherd are marked with the cross, and this not only in the fleece, but in the flesh. Beloved, are ye brothers of Christ, and do ye think that ye owe him no love? Christ coined, so to speak, the gold which should be the redemption of his children, but the resurrection was the minting of that gold; it stamped it with the Father's impress, as the current coin of the realm of heaven. Christ has died, and there is more than enough virtue in his death to atone for the blackest or most crimson sins ever committed by men. But our liberty is incomplete. "Oh," say some, "it may be true that we are at times opposed to God, but surely we are not always so." You will bear in mind that I discussed the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ's atonement by his death, in the sermon of last Sunday morning. "So he bringeth them to their desired haven," said the Psalmist by storm and tempest, flood and hurricane. Perhaps some of God's professed people will leave you; you will have to go without a solitary friend, maybe you will even be deserted by Sarah herself, and you may be a stranger in a strange land, a solitary wanderer, as all your fathers were. It is as when two dear friends lovingly embrace with their arms around each other's neck, there is a double link binding them together. I would invite you, my brethren in Christ Jesus, this morning, to do three things; first, let us consider the terms of the will "joint heirs with Christ;" secondly, let us go forth and view the estates what it is of which we are joint heirs; and when we have done so, let us proceed at once to administer, for God hath made his children administrators as web as heirs. He was gentle and kind and tender; as he was, so are we to be in this world. Knowing that my sin deserved death, he willingly died, the Just for the unjust, that he might bring me to God. If the black thought then comes up, "Ah! I have (continues the objector), stood upon the mountain-top, until my whole soul has kindled with the scene below, and my lips have uttered the song of praise. but it is possible to pay too dear, especially when you could get on as well without them as with them.) Then the apostle says, "nor things to come." No cross no crown. III. what angelic tongue shall hymn his glory? You may come on, battalions of the adversary, with all your terrible might sweeping hypocrites and deceivers before you, like chaff before the wind, but as many as are linked to Christ by his eternal love shall stand firm against you, like the solid rocks against the billows of the sea." If he adds anything at all, it is still something about that same Christ "yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. It is because the mind is so depraved that it loves something which puts the body into an abnormal condition; and here we have a proof that the imagination itself has gone astray. The tail feathers of pride should be pulled out of our prayers, for they need only the wing feathers of faith; the peacock feathers of poetical expression are out of place before the throne of God. It is not the hypocrite's groan, when he goes mourning everywhere, wanting to make people believe that he is a saint because he is wretched. By God's grace, the man who trusts in Christ's eternal love, and believes in the immutability of the divine purpose, and therefore is persuaded that he can never be separated from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, he is the man to win a glorious victory by his faith in his great God. There is a chain on this side of the river fixed into a staple, and the same chain is fixed into a staple at the other side, but the greater part of the chain is for the most part under water, and you cannot see it: you only see it as the boat moves on, and as the chain is drawn out of the water by the force that propels the boat. But this cannot be; the time has not yet come when the book shall be opened, and even then the seals shall not be broken by mortal hand, but it shall be said, "The lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed to open the book and break the seven seals thereof.". THE APOSTLE PAUL was writing to a tried and afflicted people, and one of his objects was to remind them of the rivers of comfort which were flowing near at hand. It is a question often asked, "What part of man was injured by the fall?" These are they who can now say, "Draw us, and we will run after thee.". We have that work of the Spirit within our souls which always comes before admittance into glory. Remember again, we are Christ's brethren, and there is a debt in brotherhood. "Yet," says Paul, "I am persuaded that life cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus." As long as you go with evil companions, they will applaud you. And, did not that suffice, I would point you to the delusions of the heathen; I would tell you of their priestcraft, by which their souls have been enthralled in superstition; I would drag their gods before you; I would let you witness the horrid obscenities, the diabolical rites which are to these besotted men most sacred things. Thou movest about this world as a prince among the crowd. You may have seen very beautiful prayers in print, and you may have heard very charming compositions from the pulpit, but I trust you have not fallen in love with them. Will you descend to the tricks of trade to win money. In all your answers to the accusations of the world, take care that you base your hopes concerning forgiven sin upon the death of Christ. If there should be no thrones for us, there would be no throne for him; if the promise should utterly fail of fulfillment to the least of the joint heritors, it must also fail of accomplishment to our Lord Jesus Christ himself. If you are joint heir and would claim one part of the estate, you must take the rest. Would you take Job's jewels, but not his dung-hill? We take our burden to our heavenly Father and tell it out in the accents of childlike confidence, and we come away quite content to bear whatever his holy will may lay upon us. and a voice calls, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." It is a sad, sad world. If one says, "I was christened, and confirmed," answer him by saying, "Christ has died." what can destroy thee if omnipotence is thy helper? It is just as subject to sickness as before, pain thrills quite as sharply through the heart of the saint as the sinner, and he who lives near to God, is no more likely to enjoy bodily health than he who lives at a distance from him. But let the man that worketh, though it be with the sweat of his brow and with aching hands, remember that he, if he is seeking to bless the Lord's people, is in sympathy with all things not only in sympathy with their work, but in sympathy with their aim. Some of you have a trouble perhaps, in her who is dearest to you. It is often so on earth: we take rank at times according to the greatness of our talents. I am a debtor to God's love, I am a debtor to God's grace, I am a debtor to God's power, I am a debtor to God's forgiving mercy; but I am no debtor to his justice for he, himself, will never accuse me of a debt once paid. Nay, he himself is ours. Consider how many mercies you have received at his hands all your life long! Brethren, we are free! They are waiting till their Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the trump of the archangel, and the voice of God; then shall their bodies rise, then shall the world be judged; then shall the righteous be divided from the wicked; and then, upstreaming in marvellous procession, leading captivity captive for the last time, the Prince at their head, the whole of the blood-washed host, wearing their white robes, and bearing their palms of victory, shall march up to their crowns and to their thrones, to reign for ever and ever! I know not how to open my lips in thy majestic presence: I am so troubled that I cannot speak. It is astonishing where men will go to seek salvation. Oh! The work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian's behalf is described in the first 27 verses of this chapter. But this know, O man, whatever thou sayest of this doctrine, it is a stone upon which, if any man fall, he shall suffer loss, but if it fall upon him it shall grind him to powder. What! They are, as Paul puts it in his letter to the Ephesians, "predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will. We all confess that if we are brought to the marriage-banquet, "'Twas the same love that spread the feast. "There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life," that there is so much longer time for temptation and trial. He is in an enemy's house; for he is at enmity with God. Now, suppose I should put the following question to any converted man in this hall. We are panting, longing after something greater, better, nobler, and it is coming. Our old ministers have all represented God as being to his people a father, to the rest of the world a judge. It is not a single carnal mind, or a certain class of characters, but "the carnal mind." I am the king of that inheritance, and without me doth not a dog move his tongue." Now let me ask my congregation, do any of you know that you are God's children? Romans 8 concludes the second main section of the body of the letter, ' Living under grace '. In us the living and incorruptible seed abode and grew. We find that the word "know" is frequently used in Scripture, not only for knowledge, but also for favor, love, and complacency. You may have heard also the story of that eminent martyr who was wont always to say, "All things work together for good." 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