THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST.

Having in the former pages noticed the manner in which the institutions of previous revelation have pointed to and been completed by the Gospel of Christ, let us now set forth some of the leading characteristics of that religion which Jesus, so long foretold and typified, came to introduce amongst men.

We must bear in mind that it was a New Covenant with men, which He came to establish. The former Covenant had grown old, and was about to decay; and it had been declared in prophecy, “This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. xxxi. 33 and 34).

He who came to establish this new Covenant, and teach it to men, was none other than the Word who was in the beginning with God and was God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made (John i. 1–3); who was the brightness of the Father’s glory, and “the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power” (Heb. i. 3).

It is no marvel therefore that the New Testament should teach us that the first and cardinal point of this new faith was that we should believe on the “Messenger of the Covenant”—the Lord Jesus Christ bearing glad tidings of salvation to all men.

This is done in the clearest and most precise manner.

“God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

“For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved” (John iii. 16, 17).

“This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent” (John vi. 29).

“This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent” (John xvii. 3).

“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John iii. 36).

“He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life” (John v. 24).

“He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John iii. 18).

“But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name” (John i. 12).

“I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John xi. 25).

“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts xvi. 31).

In the two verses quoted above, John iii. 16, 17, God is declared to send His Son not to condemn, but to save the world.Verse 18 divides mankind into two classes—those who believe in Christ, and those who do not believe. The former are not condemned, and if they abide in Him will go on to everlasting life. The latter “are condemned already” for their not believing. This condemnation is not necessarily a final state, for if they “abide not in unbelief,” but turn to Christ in repentance and faith, they will be brought into His covenant of grace and salvation. But if otherwise, when God’s longsuffering patience has exhausted the pleadings, warnings, and wooings of the Spirit without response, a time must come when the word will go forth, “My Spirit shall not always strive with man;” and that state of condemnation become an abiding one, agreeably to Rom. ii. 4–10.

“Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest up unto thyself wrath, against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his deeds:—To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil . . . but glory, honour, and peace to every man that worketh good” (Rom. ii. 4–10).

It becomes, therefore, an all-important point to endeavour to draw from Scripture some of the chief conditions which are implied in these simple words, “Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Our Lord has Himself given us an example of what He meant by it when He said, “I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me” (John v. 30). Jesus believed in the Father, and he that in like manner believes in the Son must seek, not his own will, but the will of Christ.

Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world;” “he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John viii. 12). “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me” (John xiv. 6). He is the way to the Father, and the only way:—the very Truth of God expressed in word and action,—in precept and example,—who “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth” (1 Pet. ii. 22; and Isa. liii. 9),—and the life, the means through which alone spiritual life is given to a world dead in trespasses and sins.

Our Lord further defines the characteristics of the two classes as follows:—“For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God” (John iii. 20, 21).

It is, therefore, a characteristic of believing in Jesus that we bring our “deeds to His light that it may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.”

Jesus was “the Light” but His precepts and example—all, in fact, that He did and taught—are so many lights derived from Him; as well as the light of the Holy Ghost or Comforter, who shines in our hearts to give “us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. iv. 6); and this bringing our deeds to the light includes trying them by His words and example;—the precepts taught by His Apostles, as well as by the Holy Spirit itself,—that by any or all of these accordant tests it may be made clear whether they are according to the mind of Christ. “He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me. . . . He that loveth Me not, keepeth not My sayings” (John xiv. 21, 24).

We have a lively illustration of practical belief in the patriarchs of old, who, believing in God’s promises, and having seen them afar off, embraced them, and shaped their lives in conformity to them:—viz., “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims in the earth. For they which say such things declare plainly that they seek . . . a better country—that is, a heavenly” (Heb. xi. 13, 14, 16).

Believing in Christ, therefore, implies a belief that He is the Son of God, the Messiah, and Saviour of the world, the centre and spring of all our spiritual existence;—a belief in His teaching expressed by shaping our lives and conversation in the world by it; accepting Him as our King, whose right it is to reign and rule in our hearts. He tells us that we must be “born again”—“born of the Spirit” (John iii. 3 and 6)—and the power to truly believe in Christ is coincident with this new birth, and indicative of it, when “the Holy Ghost or Comforter,” convincing us of sin, and of our alienation from God by it, enables us to look to Jesus as our Saviour and Redeemer. When, by the power of the same Spirit, we are enabled to lay aside our old works, thoughts, and propensities to evil, and walk by the rule of faith in the light of the Spirit of Christ. As we abide and walk therein, we shall “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ;” bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit, which are set forth in Gal. v. 22, as “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; against such there is no law.” Again (2 Pet. i. 5–7), as—“Faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity.”

If we examine the nature of some of these fruits of the Spirit, we shall see that though they are produced in us individually by the working of the Spirit, they are not confined to ourselves, but will communicate to others around us. Thus we all know how communicative is the feeling of joy—it burns to tell others the good news, or glad tidings. The love of God shed abroad in our hearts makes us long that others should participate in this great blessing.—The peace of God yearns that all should be brought into its heavenly atmosphere: while the other qualities or rather graces described,—as longsuffering, meekness, charity, &c,—mark to others that we have been with Jesus: and the Apostle Peter winds up his catalogue with the descriptive words equally applicable to both, “If these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. i. 8).

Thus the Gospel “is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth” (Rom. i. 16), and as its fruits spring up and abound in any heart they will in some or other form overflow to those around, and make it a minister of righteousness, a testimony-bearer to the truth as it is in Jesus: it may be in word and doctrine, in the private circle of association, or even in the quiet testimony of a peaceful spirit, and a faithful discharge of duties, recommending by its example the Gospel of Christ.

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. . . . That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit” (Rom. viii. 2–5).

Allusion has been made at a former page (40) to the precepts of the law, having been superseded by the higher principles of the Gospel of Christ. The New Testament, instead of prescribing precise instructions for conduct between man and man, sums up our duties in the general principle, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; love worketh no ill to his neighbour; love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. xiii. 9, 10); at the same time illustrations are given, both of the fruits of the Spirit, and of the fruits of sin in the heart (See Eph. iv. 22 to end, and ch. v.; Rom. i. 28–32; Rev. xxi. 8).

The law written in the heart is the effect of the Holy Spirit’s work there. He works in us to will and to do of God’s good pleasure;—“to do those things which are well pleasing in His sight;”—which should “be known and read of all men,” by its effects on the conduct, &c. (2 Cor. iii. 2). It was the distinguishing feature of Christ’s coming—“Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God” (Heb. x. 9). And though we cannot attain to His perfection, the work of the Spirit is always to beget within us more of the love of God, and to incline our hearts to serve Him more faithfully. As we sit, as it were, at the feet of Jesus, looking unto Him, the Spirit or Comforter will take of the things of Christ, and show them to us, and there will be a growth in grace, and in conformity to the will and law of God;—a subordination of the flesh to the Spirit, which has no necessary, or perhaps no natural, limit, but in the summons to quit the militant, and join the triumphant, Church above.It is sometimes said that Christianity is an educational system in which the mind is trained, by the restoring grace of the Holy Spirit, to abandon sin, and work righteousness; and that the offer of this restoring grace implies, as a necessary prelude, the pardon of past sin.

Enough has been already said to show that this is not consistent with the general tenor of Holy Scripture. We know that the minds of susceptible children, nurtured under Christian mothers, do sometimes drink in the truths of the Gospel from their lips, at a very early age, in a way that makes it difficult to mark the period of decided change in them. They seem to grow up with the Gospel infused into their characters and life.

This is not, however, the common case; neither is it the happy lot of all to be so instructed from their cradles to maturity. And when sin has taken possession of the mind—whether in the milder development of what is called innocent gaiety;—the love of pleasure, without vice;—indisposition for serious things and persons;—or whether evil takes a larger development, and vice in its grosser form exists; in either case they cannot be said to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—nor, as a consequence, to seek to do His will; but are living under the condemnation of those who do not believe. And these states, admitted and protracted, necessarily tend to harden in sin, and the longer they continue, to render it more difficult to return, repent, and live. So that in general it is when the fear of death is brought nearer by sickness:—when aroused by the powerful ministry of the Word, or by the direct pleadings of the Holy Spirit, convincing us of sin and of judgment to come:—then, if at all, they are arrested in their downward course, and, through God’s longsuffering mercy, are brought to see their need of a Saviour, a Redeemer, a sacrifice for sin. Under such circumstances no necessary implication of pardon will give peace; they must feel that Jesus has borne their sins in His own body on the tree, and that by His stripes they are healed.

How many instances do we read of persons, for long years refusing to yield themselves to God, being at length brought into such depths of misery or danger (in that longsuffering mercy which has followed them all through), and then are they enabled to repent and put away their sins, and, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, to be saved from the wrath to come.

But some, perhaps, will say: Why cannot I believe in the Lord Jesus as “the restorer of breaches,” and “of paths to dwell in,” without going back to past ages? The answer is very obvious—that if He be not the Sacrifice, He cannot be the Restorer. He is one Christ, and His work one. If He atones for the sin of mankind, He can be then the restorer;—the one is as much part of His character as the other. And if we would divide His perfect work in two parts, and reject Him when suffering on the cross for our sins:—that “we might live”:—“to give His life a ransom for us,”—can we be sure that He will acknowledge us when seated on the right hand of God? Can we be truly said to believe in Him with our whole heart? If we do not accept what He has said of Himself; by His own rule we are not seeking to do His will.

It is after “having made peace through the blood of His cross;” . . . that He is able “to reconcile all things unto Himself” (Col. i. 19, 20), so that they who “were sometimes alienated by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable, and unreproveable in His sight.” (Col. i. 22).In the previous chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, Paul, having taken a review of the mercies of God in human redemption by Christ, and of the calling of the Jews and Gentiles;—in the twelfth chapter he beseeches the brethren “to present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is their reasonable service” (ver. 1); and at the end of the thirteenth chapter he exhorts them to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lust thereof” (ver. 14); while the intermediate verses contain a remarkably concise epitome of the character and duties of the members of the Christian Church.

I have endeavoured to draw the character of Christianity as I find it in the New Testament. No place is made for lukewarmness, indifference, or formality. Every one receiving the inestimable blessing of faith in Christ is naturally expected to embrace it; to prize it as the “pearl of great price”; the greatest of all treasures; and to be wrapped up in its excellence, counting all other things as valueless and unworthy of attention in comparison with it. And the new creature is to grow up out of the new faith, stripped of all that is old and sinful, and clothed with all that is just and true and godly.

To flee from the “wrath to come,” and take refuge in the ark or fold of Christ, is a work of the deepest seriousness, and the joy of feeling that you have attained that shelter and security is depicted in the New and Old Testaments as of the liveliest kind.

“Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say rejoice” (Phil. iv. 4). “Whom having not seen ye love; in whom though now ye see Him not, yet, believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet. i. 8), and this in the midst of grievous persecutions.“And thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel” (Isa. xli. 16).

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isa. lxi. 10).

“I will rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab. iii. 18).

“Rejoice evermore” (1 Thess. v. 16).

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit” (Rom. viii. 1): born again of the Spirit: believing in Christ: our sins borne by Him on the tree: “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus making us free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. viii. 2), should we not rejoice with grateful hearts, and through Jesus offer “the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name”? (Heb. xiii. 15.)

But are there not many minds who are more given to dwell in a low state, and in somewhat of that sombreness which is cast over nature when the sun is more or less eclipsed, to whom it is more congenial to look at the doubtful or dark side of things, than to indulge in joyful anticipations? If such be our condition of mind, should we not strive against it, and examine whether there be not cause for joy?

If through the mercy of God in Christ Jesus our sins are forgiven; if we have passed from death unto life; if Christ, who is the appointed “Judge of quick and dead,” be our Intercessor and Redeemer, who is he that can harm us? If by means of His redemption we are made joint heirs with Him of the heavenly Kingdom and glory, ought we not to rejoice and be glad? To have passed from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God is surely matter for joy and rejoicing, and the feeling is one that it is the duty of all such to encourage, and seek by prayer and meditation on the promises of God in Christ Jesus—promises which are not yea and nay, but all yea in Him—all unconditional—absolutely certain to all who believe in, love, and obey Him, and persevere to the end.