romans 8 commentary spurgeon

Live with Christ and you will soon grow like Christ. I. I hear a ribald song; that music of hell shall jar in my ear when gray hairs shall be upon my head. I pray you consider yourself as being in Christ. Let God call a man may resist, but he cannot resist effectually. To report dead links, typos, or html errors or suggestions about making these resources more useful use the convenient. You were saying of such-and-such an ungodly person, "Everything seems to go well with him, but as for me, all the day long am I plagued, and chastened every morning." Too much joy would intoxicate us, too much misery would drive us to despair: but the joy and the misery, the battle and the victory, the storm and the calm, all these compounded make that sacred elixir whereby God maketh all his people perfect through suffering, and leadeth them to ultimate happiness. says another; "a mere poetic sentimentalism." The ills of life are many, the trials of life are many, the temptations of life are more; O life, life, life here below, thou art, after all, little better than a lingering death! He must come out from his very dearest friends, from all his old acquaintances, from those friends with whom he used to drink, and swear, and take pleasure; he must go straight away from them all, to follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. The alternative of this bond, if not paid, was, that we should be sold for ever under sin, and should endure the penalty of our transgressions in unquenchable fire. "All things work together for good:" that is to say, none of them work separately. The first ears of corn were offered to the Most High, and surely our new nature, with all its powers, must be regarded by us as a consecrated thing. This was in accord with God's plan. Some go to Rome, and some to Oxford; some go I know not where. Yet more, I fancy that. His first public appearance, when he came to the waters of baptism, was signalled by a voice out of the excellent glory, which said, "this is my beloved Son," and the descending Spirit, like a dove, rested upon him. You had a share in his death. Oh! Would you forge the iron and strike the dagger into the heart of your best friend? There in the midst of the arena stands the hero. We cannot break the bread and multiply it, we can, however, generously distribute what we have, and thus in feeding the hungry we shall prove ourselves children of our Father who is in heaven; we cannot heal the diseased with our touch, still we can care for the sick, and so in love towards the suffering we can prove ourselves to be children of the tender and ever-pitiful God. I remember an old divine using a very pithy and homely metaphor, which I shall borrow to-day. It is a wonderful thing. LONDON: PASSMORE AND ALABASTER, Paternoster Buildings; and of all Booksellers. do I converse with him, commune with him? I may illustrate it in the case of Saul of Tarsus: this proud Pharisee abhors the Lord Jesus Christ; he has seized upon every follower of Jesus who comes within his grasp; he has haled men and women to prison; with the avidity of a miser who hunts after gold, he has hunted after the precious life of Christ's disciple, and having exhausted his prey in Jerusalem, he seeks letters and goes off to Damascus upon the same bloody errand. If I could so read them the passage would certainly he very easy, and would very greatly alter my doctrinal views; but, as I do not find those words there, begging your pardon, I do not believe in them. The Saviour walks along preaching and talking with the people until he comes under the sycamore tree, then lifting up his eyes, he cries "Zaccheus, make haste and come down, for today I must abide in thy house." We know not how to mingle these sacred spices in the incense of prayer. He who said, "all things work together," will soon prove to you that there is a harmony in the most discordant parts of your life. May God the Holy Spirit lead you to trust in "Christ that died"! If in your Bible you turn to 2 Timothy 1:9 , you will read these words "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling." When you sinned, you were not like the common people of the street, who know no better. It is a question often asked, "What part of man was injured by the fall?" III. Oh! What they are to us they are to our co-heir. Are you prepared now to be despised and rejected of men that you may at last ascend up on high, leading captivity captive? The Spirit of God has come unto us so that our "bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost." If that is not the meaning of the text I do not understand the English language. "What an intellectual treat his prayer was! And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. I. 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. There is a third thing in which we are deficient, namely, liberty, the glorious liberty of the children of God. I have thought it over, I have fully considered it, I have-thoroughly weighed it, and I have come to this persuasion, that the love of God is shed abroad in my heart.". Our old ministers have all represented God as being to his people a father, to the rest of the world a judge. We go to our lowly homes; we meet with our brethren and sisters here in their earth-built temples; and we are content, so far as these things go, still, how can kings be content till they mount their thrones? We groan within ourselves. Oh, where there is real cause for fighting, there cannot be victory without striving! May we have this faith on our dying bed, when the pulse is faint and feeble, and heart and flesh begin to fail! Rowland Hill. "The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup." I do not think it always for my good to increase in treasure, but I know it is good to grow in grace. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." But I think must go a little further than this. III. The apostle tells us that "they without us cannot be made perfect;" that is, until our bodies are raised, theirs cannot be raised, until we get our adoption day, neither can they get theirs. First, he flings down the gauntlet, and challenges a battle, crying, "Who is he that condemneth?" When Satan stood forth to accuse Joshua, the high priest, he did in effect accuse Christ as well as that chosen disciple, and the Lord was not slow to put in his rejoinder to the objection: "The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan, even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? A few years ago a star was seen blazing out with considerable brilliance, but soon disappeared; it has since been affirmed that it was a world on fire, thousands of millions of miles from us, and yet the rays of the conflagration reached us; the noiseless messenger of light gave to the distant dwellers on this globe the alarm of "A world on fire!" Who will garnish my back with purple and make my table groan with plenty?" and a voice calls, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest." It behoveth each of us, then, to comfort and establish our hearts upon this word "work." He may know it as surely as if he read it with his own eyes; nay, he may know it more surely than that, for if I read a thing with my eyes, even my eyes may deceive me, the testimony of sense may be false, but the testimony of the Spirit must be true. Ye would, I am sure, at once confess, did ye know what the race is, that the indictment is proven, and that the world must unreservedly and truthfully exclaim, "guilty. There stands the believer, and looking round on the assembled universe of men and angels, he cries, "Who shall lay anything to my charge?" Brethren, we are debtors to our covenant God; that is the point which swallows up all. When Adam was in the garden the world had its Sabbath: and it shall never have another Sabbath till the Millennium shall dawn, and then when all things have ceased to work, and the kingdoms shall be given up to God, even the Father, then shall the world have her Sabbath, and shall rest; but at present all things do work. If you were half as happy as a groaning saint is, you might be content to groan on for ever. Young man, didst thou do more than thou oughtest to have done? Tell even them that Christ died. Say, "I count it to be my joy to be permitted to be a partaker of the sufferings of Christ. Germany belongs not to the cloudy philosopher, but to Christ. In these words I see first, a challenge to all comers: "Who is he that condemneth?" Let us go forward into the future, however dark it is, with this confidence, that, one thing at least we know, the love of Christ will hold us rest, and by his grace we will hold fast to him. The apostle says that those who love God are "the called according to his purpose" by which he means to say two things first, that all who love God love him because he called them to love him. Christ had to be persecuted and so must you. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Who can condemn when Christ hath died, hath risen from the dead, is enthroned on high, and intercedes? "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." ", Then again, how zealous we should be for our Master! You know how thrice he assailed him with those temptations which are most likely to be attractive to poor humanity, but Jesus overcame them all. My brother with great experience, my sister with enlarged acquaintance with Christ, ye have not yet known the harvest, you have only reaped the first handful of corn. Jesus Christ is coming in to call some one, for it is written he must abide in some man's house. There have been many who have been won from drunkenness by hearing the preaching of God's Word even under myself, and those persons have been ready to carry me on their shoulders, from very gratitude, for joy; but I would be bound to say they make a far more feeble display of their thankfulness to my Master. ", Paul was fully persuaded of this great truth. No priest sat down; he must always stand; for there was always work to be accomplished, always something to be done. Here are two very wonderful challenges thrown out by the apostle Paul. Here is the 9th article, upon Original or Birth Sin: "Original Sin standeth not in the following of Adam; (as the Pelagians do vainly talk); but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and, therefore, in every person born into this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation. It is more than some men think to have been rocked in the same cradle and dandled on the same knee. "We have borne," says the Apostle, in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, "the image of the earthy." I have wished I might indulge in folly; I have wished there were no laws to restrain me; I have wished, as the fool, that there were no God." But, remember, the text tells us that all God is, is ours. In this volume we give you Charles H. Spurgeon commentary on Paul's Epistle to the Romans. 12-15. Speak we of his omniscience? Who quarrels with this sacred regulation? The rod has been upon our back and we have smarted very sore, but in the darkest hour we have been able to say, "The time is in my Father's hands; I cannot murmur; I would not repine; I feel it is but right that I should suffer, otherwise my Father would never have made me suffer." He gave to us the fulness of his joy, for "my joy shall be in you, that your joy may be full." In what way could the Father put greater honor on his Son than by forming a race like to himself, who shall be the many brethren among whom he is the well-beloved firstborn? "THE SWORD AND THE TROWEL." Is it prudent to despise the riches of his grace? Yet there is the church, and how can she in the slightest degree incur condemnation, when she is already at the right hand of the Father with her covenant head. Behold from heaven's mint golden pieces of inestimable value are sent forth, and each one bears the image and superscription of the Son of God. Christ, to the uttermost, has satisfied divine justice; the debt is paid, the hand-writing is nailed to the cross, the receipt is given, and we are debtors to God's justice no longer. 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. The statement of this verse succinctly expresses the core of Christian victory. The 6,000 years of continual labor, and toil, and travail, have happened not to us alone, but to the whole of God's great universe; the whole world is groaning, and travailing. In illustrating the effectual call of grace, which is given to the predestinated ones, I must first use the picture of Lazarus. It is said that every strand of them would bear the entire onnage, and consequently, if every strand bears the full weight that will ever be put upon the whole, there is an absolute certainty of safety given to the whole when twisted together. Ah, it was the groan of death! You perceive at once, by his deeds, that his nature was godlike. It is not with us a matter of doubt; we have tried it, we have proved it. Yet one more remark before we leave this point. I served the world, he would not, in mine age. How necessary then it is that our nature should be changed! The desires which the Spirit prompts may be too spiritual for such babes in grace as we are actually to describe or to express, and yet the Spirit writes the desire on the renewed mind, and the Father sees it. How could they have been the sons of God before, for "to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, who were born not of blood," then they were not make the sons of God by mere creation "nor of the will of the flesh," that is to say, not by any efforts of their own "but of God." Is it not a noble thing for a Christian to be able to go where he may, and feel that he cannot meet his accuser; that wherever he may be, whether he walketh within himself in the chambers of conscience, or out of himself amongst his fellow men, or above himself into heaven, or beneath himself into hell, yet is he a justified one, and nothing can be laid to his charge. My soul would even now take her seat upon the throne; where my treasure is, there shall my heart be also. Has not thine heart ever desired, since there is a God, that he were a little less holy, a little less pure, so that those things which are now great crimes might be regarded as venial offences, as peccadillos? Naturally we never will towards good without God, but God works in us to will and to do. The slave is not called. Have the manacles of justice been snapped, and am I delivered set free by him who is the great ransomer of spirits? We teach every Sabbath day, that the whole shower of devine wrath was poured upon Christ's head, that the black cloud of vengeance emptied out itself upon the cross, and that there is not left in the book of God a single sin against a believer, nor can there possibly be even a particle of punishment ever exacted at the hand of the man that believeth in Jesus, for this reason, that Jesus has been punished to the full. They do not groan, so far as any pain can be, but they long with greater intensity than you and I long, for the "adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." Coming to our aid in our bewilderment he instructs us. I used this argument; I thought it might be a new one; I am sure it is a forcible one. Here am I, a creature of a day, a mortal born to die, but yet an immortal! Now, first, brethren, as co-heirs with Christ, we are heirs of God so the text tells us. I beseech you, members of churches, deacons, or whatever you may be, lay this to heart. He ever liveth to secure effectually the eternal salvation of every soul for whom he died, even for every one who puts his trust in him. Such a scene did not occur, but had there been any remonstrance given by men you may easily conceive that such would have been Saul's answer. Yet our heavenly Father, who looks immediately upon the heart, reads what the Spirit of God has indited there, and does not need even our groans to explain the meaning. Angels know not evil; have never had to battle with evil known and felt within; they have not tried the paths of sinful pleasure, and through grace been turned from them, so as with full purpose of heart to cleave to holiness for ever. God has given us full assurance, and infallible testimony, and in all this we rejoice. Let me attempt a second simile: he is as an advocate to one in peril at law. Would you take Job's jewels, but not his dung-hill? who is fully assured of his interest in the covenant of grace, in the blood of atonement, and in the glories of heaven! There is great sin; that we know only too well: but we also rejoice in the knowledge that there is a great atonement to cover all our sin, "For it is Christ that died. and what is election, but God's purpose to do what he does do? I showed you, just now, the difference between a groan and a groan. "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." Ask him whether he is happy and content. Now, as there is nothing like Scripture, let me read you a few texts, Romans viii. We have this. Very dexterously, with infernal malice, he endeavours to condemn the child of God. why needeth the Christian to have such firm, such massive foundations? He says in the tenth verse of that chapter, "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more" that's the word I wanted "much more we shall be saved by his life." The Spirit saith Come, and the bride saith Come not the bride on earth only, but the bride in heaven saith the same, bidding the happy day speed on when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Will he execute justice as a judge, or will he prefer his family to his country? But what I do not like is when they look down from those awful heights upon us poor Christians and say that they cannot believe in us because we are anxious, because we practice self-examination, because we have to struggle against sin. The next clause of the sentence reads thus: "WHO IS EVEN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD." And he went and lay down." He was born into this world in a very humble place, amidst the oxen, and in the manger; but yet he lacked not the songs of angels, and the adoration of the heavenly hosts. To put Christ's resurrection yet in another aspect. Wherefore, be of good courage, and press forward in the divine life, for your work of faith and labor of love are not in vain in the Lord; so let us "lay hold upon the hope set before us:". He says, "I fear not that assize, for who can condemn?" The apostle Paul puts this "first of all", and every true preacher of the good tidings of salvation will follow his example. Why will you inflict more sorrow on yourself than God indicts? He is evermore transforming the chosen, removing that defilement of sin, and moulding them after the perfect model of his Son, Jesus Christ, the second Adam, who is the firstborn amongst the "many brethren.". Oh what riches! Though we cannot pay all, we can at least acknowledge the debt. I do fear, my brethren, that very often when we consider our state, we think not so much of the guilt as of the misery. But he is much more than this. 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