Partnership

PAUL is here arguing for the safety, the perseverance, and the ultimate perfection, of the saints to whom he is writing. He thanks God for what He has done for them, and is assured that He will do yet more—that He will certainly confirm them unto the end, that they may be blameless in the day of Jesus Christ, and the apostle bases his argument upon this truth, “God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” And brethren, this is good argument—to reason as to the future from the present and the past. What God has done is a prophecy of what He will do, for God is unchangeable. He never takes up a purpose for a while, and then drops it, but He carries it out to the end. He never speaks a word, and then reverses it. “Hath he said, and shall he not do it?” He never performs an action which is intended to produce a certain result without following it up until the result aimed at is fully accomplished. If you and I were dealing with a changeable God, it would be indeed ill for us, but He has said, “I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” Thus, from the immutability of God, we argue that, if He has begun to bless us, He will continue to bless us, and if He has commenced a work of grace in our souls, He will certainly carry it on till it is absolutely complete. We argue thus, partly from our own experience, because everything that is gracious within us has been God’s work hitherto. What have you and I done towards our own salvation? Put together all that we may even think we have done, and what does it come to? “Without me,” said Christ to His disciples, “ye can do nothing,” and truly, without Him we have done nothing, therefore, all that has been done in us is to be ascribed to His working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. When the Lord has begun any work of grace in us, do we not find that He has carried it on? Has He forsaken us yet? Has He turned from His purpose hitherto? In the day of trouble, has He deserted us? When He has sent us upon a warfare, has He left us to fall through our own weakness? It has not been so hitherto, and we may sing, “His mercy endured for ever.” He has been a faithful God until now,
and it is therefore right for us to conclude that He will still be the same. “Determined to save, He watched to ever my path When, Satan’s blind slave, I sported with death: And

can He have taught me to trust in His name, And thus far have brought me to put me to shame? If He had meant to put us to shame, He has had ten thousand opportunities of doing so, but until now we have found the promise good, “Whosoever believeth in him shall not be ashamed.” And dear friends, if you will think this matter over, the argument will seem to be still more clear. The Lord called us when we were quite undeserving of His grace. I am sure that I can remember nothing before my conversion, that could be used as a reason why I should have been called by the grace of God any more than other lads of my own age.

True, I did not go into any gross sin, but then I had so much light, and so much tenderness of conscience, and I lived in such a godly atmosphere in my home, that every sin I did commit was worse than the sins of those who never had such advantages, and I have often looked upon myself as having been, under certain aspects, the very chief of sinners, and every child of God, when he is in his right mind, will look upon himself in the same way.

“What was there in you that could merit esteem, Or give the Creator delight? ‘’Twas even so, Father,’ you must ever sing, ‘Because it seem’d good in Thy sight.”

Let us think of His great love wherewith He loved us even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, and say, “If His love freely flowed to us when we were in that sad state, what is to hinder its continuing to flow to us? If the Lord loved us from no cause within ourselves, why should He not continue to love us?” And if it be said that we are now in an altered condition and blessed be God it is so!—that very alteration is an argument that He will still love us, “for 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.” He that brought us out of our horrible state and condition by nature, without any reason in us for doing it, but simply because of His own sweet love, how could He cast us away? We are, at our worst, but what we were then, even if it were possible for us to be still dead, and should not He that began the work still carry it on, since He began with us on the footing and ground of grace alone? And think yet further, dear friends, at that time we were not simply undeserving, but we were also unwilling. There is in the natural heart of man an unwillingness to yield unconditionally to God and Christ, the ways of free grace are not palatable to human pride. Even when we were religiously inclined, our religion consisted of our own prayers, our own repentance, or our own faith. You know how long we ran from one way to another, but it was always the same kind of way, we were to do something by which we were to get right with God, or to feel something, or to know something, everything was of self and for self. But the grace of God at last weaned us from this folly, and took us off the breasts of self-righteousness, which had always been empty. Then we were prepared to go to God, and as one whom his mother comforts, so did He comfort us. We found in our Father God and in His well- beloved Son all that we wanted, even wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Well, my brothers, if God brought us to Himself when we were stray sheep without any willingness to return, how much more will He continue to keep us now that, at any rate, the will is present with us, though often how to perform that which is good we find not! He that loved the undeserving, He that loved the unwilling, will not forsake us now. “God is faithful, by whom ye were called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Imagine for a moment—it is only another form of the same argument—imagine what could be the motive of God for bringing us where we are, if He meant after all to leave us. What shameful cruelty it would be for some prince or millionaire to take a poor man from his poverty, and change his dress, and alter his mode of living, and put him among the princes, and make him have luxurious tastes and elevated desires, and then afterwards send him back to the slum whence he came to the palace, and bid him live just as he formerly did in all his dirt and misery! Would not that be cruelty of the most refined kind? Surely, such treatment would cause the iron to enter into the man’s soul, for he would say, “Why was I not left where I was? Why was I taught wants that I never had before? Why was I instructed in the use of luxuries which had never fallen to my lot before, and which therefore I never missed? It would have been better for me never to have seen this pretended benefactor than that he should bring me here again, and after lifting me up so high, leave me to fall back to where I was before.” It cannot be that my Lord has made me sick of this world, and yet will not give me another. It cannot be that He has torn away the righteousness which was some sort of comfort to me, rent it off like filthy rags, and made me stand naked to my own shame, if He does not intend to clothe me with the righteousness of Christ. He cannot have taught me to trust in His name, and made me to rejoice in Him, and given me sips of sweetness that have made me understand something of what heaven must be, if He does not intend to bring me, at the end, to see His face. I cannot—I will not—believe that He has done all that He has done, and yet that He will not complete the work. No, “God is faithful, by whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Because He has done that, He means to keep us there, He will preserve us even unto the end. I fancy I hear someone say, “I do not quite see how that can be, to some extent, our salvation must depend upon ourselves.” Well, my brother, if you think so, I will not quarrel with you, if you can get any sweetness out of that thought, it is such a dry old bone that I will willingly leave you to it. As for me, I should never be happy again if I thought that my eternal salvation hung upon myself, for that poor nail would soon come out of the wall, but I can hang my soul for time and for eternity on this truth, “I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.” I will not quarrel with you about this matter, for that which pleases you does not please me, so you may have your bone all to yourself, and much good may it do you! I am prepared to hang all my hopes upon the finished work of Jesus Christ my Lord. “But,” asks one, “May you then do as you like?” Brother, I wish I might do as I like, for if I could live as I liked, I would live entirely free from sin, I would live like Christ Himself. “Well,” says one, “I do not understand it.” The Lord teach you, then! I cannot, but if He ever brings you right away from all the bondage of the law, and the slavery of dependence upon yourself, to rest entirely upon His fixed, unchanging grace, it will be a new era in your life. You will rise from being a slave to be a son, and from being under the lash of the bond slave, you will come to look up into your Father’s face with joy unutterable, blessing and praising and magnifying His name as long as you live. But that is not the subject upon which I specially wish to speak at this time, I want to talk about the great blessing which is the basis of our argument. What is it that God has done for His people? “By whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Why did not the apostle simply say, “Called unto the fellowship of his Son,” or at most, “of his Son Jesus”? We should have known who was meant, should we not? Ah! but this enhances the glory of it, to make us see how great He is unto whose fellowship we have come, and consequently how grand an exaltation it is which God has given to us, even us, the apostle says that we have been called by God “unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Among many things which the text teaches us—and I do not pretend to exhaust its meaning, but merely to give a hint or two concerning it—it means first, that believers are called by
God into the society of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and secondly, called into partnership with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. I. First then, beloved, all who truly believe are CALLED INTO THE SOCIETY OF JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD. We enjoy that society when we draw near to God in prayer, and indeed, whenever we draw near to God at all. We dare not come to God without Jesus Christ, that dear name should begin and end all our prayers. He is the one Mediator between God and men, He is our Great High Priest and Intercessor. “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” “I am the door”—the way of access to God. He is the mercy seat, the propitiatory where God meets with us, and hears our prayers, so that we always pray in the society of Christ.
There is no true praying without it. And next, we always praise God in the society of Jesus Christ. There is no hymn, or psalm, or spiritual song that could be accepted of God unless our Lord Jesus Christ was with us when it was sung. Prayers and praises like must ascend to God through the merit of His atoning sacrifice. More than this, we have been called into the society of Christ in this high sense, that we are always regarded by God as being with Christ and in Christ. We stand before God in Christ. I—I, alone, dare not stand before God. Nay, my brother, a sinner cannot stand there, he would be swept away, but Christ stands before God, and we stand there in Christ, and so we are “accepted in the Beloved.” That is a beautiful picture which the poet puts into words when he prays that God will look through Christ’s wounds, as through a window— “Him, and then the sinner see: Look through Jesus wounds on me.” We are accepted before God, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Christ, in Christ’s life made to live—in Christ’s righteousness beautified—in Christ’s blood cleansed—in Christ’s perfection made perfect, for “ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.” Is it not beautiful that we should thus be so associated with Christ that God thinks of us always in connection with His Son? God does not simply look at you and me, but at Christ covering you, and me, and all His people, and so His chosen ones are thought of as being in Him, their covenant and federal Head. They are so completely in Him that He, as it were, robes them before God. This is being brought into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, standing before God in Christ. But there is more than that in this expression. We are brought, beloved, not only to have Christ with us in our approaches to God, and to stand before God in Christ, but also to be in Christ by virtue of a living union with Him. The Spirit of God quickens our spirit, and gives us life, but more than that, Christ says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The life of the believer is not in himself, but in his Lord, “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” “I live,” says the apostle Paul, “yet not I, but Christ lives in me,” and writing to the Colossians he says, “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Just as this finger of mine lives because of its union with the head, and with the heart, and with the rest of my being where life is to be found, so do you and I live because we have been joined unto Christ. If there were no life in the stem, there would be no life in the branch. If the branch be severed from the vine, it has no life in itself, and you and I, dear friends, are living branches because Christ lives, and we live in Him, and His life flows into us. Is not this a very wonderful thing? Do you see that man, who once was in the habit of going in and out of the tavern? His speech in those evil days was foul, filthy, abominable, his poor wife was bruised and battered by his cruelty, his children were starved and shoeless, he is now with us in this house of prayer, and he is a member of Christ’s mystical body. If I were to ask him to stand up, and tell us about the great change that has been wrought in him, we should all rejoice to hear him testify that the Lord has forgiven him, washed him, cleansed him, and renewed his heart. Did that man, in his unregenerate state, ever think that the life of Christ would be in him quickening his mortal body, and changing his whole nature? Such a thought never occurred to him. Is he not a wonder of grace? Why, I do verily believe that if the devil were to be converted, and become a holy angel again, it would not be more full of wonder than the conversion of some who are now present. The Lord has done strange things, marvelous things for them, whereof our hearts are glad as we think of what He has done. With His mighty arm, He reaches even to the ends of the earth those who have gone far in sin, and He brings them to His heart, and to His house, and to His
throne, and into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Oh, the wonders of God’s grace! Let us bless and praise Him now and forever.