We are joint heirs. This is an instructive emblem of a great fact. The fool does not say in his heart there is no God, for he knows there is a God; but he says, "No God I don't want any; I wish there were none." He guides us in prayer, and thus he helps our infirmity. If you like to call it so, you may; but I would rather that you made the mistake of the good old Christian woman who did not know much about these things, and who said that she herself was "a high Calvarist." He to whom all these things are but as nothing, gives himself up to the inheritance of his people. He decrees that Christ Jesus, the Well-Beloved, even his own other self, who is one with him, should come into the world and bear the sin of man, make amends to the injured honour of God, and magnify the law before the eyes of the whole universe. Joint heirs with Christ Jesus! But oh! As a shepherd loves his sheep, as a king loves his subjects, so Jesus loves to have his people around him; but deeper yet is the mystery, as it is not good for a man to be alone, and as for this cause doth a man leave his father and mother and is joined unto his wife, and they twain are one flesh, even so is it with Christ and his church. We need only the gospel thoroughly preached to bring about "liberty, equality, and fraternity," in the highest and best sense of these words. Ye are young princes, and ye have not been crowned yet. If you have proved by your works that the grace of God is within you, God will not forget you; he will not leave you, he will not cast you away. I have left out the very essence, if I have not shown that it is a crime. You groaned for it, not with the unhappy groan that marks one who is to perish, but with the groan of one who, having tasted of the sweets of home, is not content until again he shall be indulged with the fulness of them. I believe that the apostle was persuaded that these two blessed links existed between him and the great God, and he was persuaded that neither of those two links would ever be broken. I know it is good for me that my faith, my love, my every grace should grow and increase, and that I should be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ my blessed Lord and Master." Thus much upon the sacred end of predestination. He is our legislator, our law-maker; and then, to make our crime still worse and worse, he is the ruler of providence; for it is he who keeps up from day to day. you also shall bear a palm. A fine title indeed if it belongs to every man! We shall have joy too, for we shall have his joy. Now if you had a debtor who owed you more than he could pay, and you saw him going off on pleasure in a horse and gig to-morrow, you would say, "It is all very well his having that fine horse and gig, and going down to Greenwich; but I would rather that he should pay me the ten pound note I lent him the other day. Romans 8:28-30 I. Regulus returns to Rome; he stands up in the senate and conjures them never to make peace in Carthage, but ot his wife and children, and tells them that he is going back to Carthage, and of course the tell him that he need not keep faith with an enemy. So strange and startling a doctrine as this asserted with such dogmatic impudence? If you were a free man, and had married a wife, a slave, you could not feel perfectly content, but the more you enjoyed the sweets of freedom yourself, the more would you pine that she should still he in slavery. It Jesus is thine all-prevailing king, and hath trodden thine enemies beneath his feet, if sin, death, and hell, are now only parts of his empire, for he is Lord of all, and if thou art represented in him, and he is thy guarantee, thy sworn surety, it cannot be by any possibility that thou canst be condemned. Yet it is not the natural innocence of his heart, but the perfect mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ, which gives him this amazing confidence. The apostle ends the list by saying, "nor any othe creature." Consider thou art as deep in debt as thou canst be to every attribute of God. If this be not yours, neither are the rest, for they are in the same indenture, and they are beg seethed to you in the same will. Now, brethren, in the very proportion in which we are conformed to the image of Christ we shall have to "go forth unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach:" for the disciple, if he be a true disciple, is not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord. Some go to Rome, and some to Oxford; some go I know not where. Now each of these four articles of our faith is sufficient to bear the weight of the sins of the whole world. 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.". The promises are yea and amen to thee, but only in Christ Jesus, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh at things after the counsel of his own will. As I have already said, if in time of trouble a man can pray, his burden loses its weight. 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. 14. We must understand the word "together," also in another sense. "Yea rather," said the apostle; as if he would have it, that this is a still more powerful argument. We have received a divine life, by which we are made partakers of the divine nature, having "escaped the corruption which is in the world through lust." We love Jesus now, and esteem him our head and chief. Consider, then, how much thou owest to his Sovereignty! Can it be supposed that those who are the children of the devil are nevertheless the children of God? Everything that is and is done, worketh out some great end and purpose. Now, who is he that condemns the people that have such a head as this? And may the love of Jesus be with you. That leads me to pass on to the second thing of which Paul was persuaded. Amen. How can we do that, say you? II. Yea, echo O ye skies; reverberate, ye caverns of the deep. Conceive the beauties of the risen Redeemer. And yet it is within reach of every truly penitent sinner. Thus, in relationship, as well as in nature, we are conformed to the image of Christ. In prayer we might grow weary, but the Comforter encourages and refreshes us with cheering thoughts. 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. The glory of the Person who died, the anguish and the suffering he endured, the love that moved him to give himself up to death for us, all make us see how great the atonement is. He died for thee, if now thou dost confess thy guilt. Romans 8:3-4. They feel that they must act, under the circumstances in which they are placed, as they would suppose Jesus would have acted, who is the Son of the ever blessed Father. He just repeated his master's name and office as many times as the other gentleman had titles. Why the Lord may use any words. God hath not forsaken us; the tokens of his goodness are with us, and we may rejoice in full many a gracious boon which is ours this very day. That will be the subject of this blog. It speaks of the regenerate, of a special class me as having a claim to be God's children. 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. Look! He first of all stirred up their pure minds by way of remembrance as to their sonship, for saith he "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." Said he, "All things work together for good; but perhaps, any one of those 'all things' might destroy us if taken alone. There is no difficulty in our believing that as one human mind operates upon another mind, so does the Holy Spirit influence our spirits. And now at Gods right hand there is not left a record of thy sin; for when our Lord Jesus Christ quitted the tomb, he left thy sin buried in it once for all cast away never to be recovered. "But thou hast long resisted grace, and long stood out against the warnings of God." Who is he that condemneth." Do you shrink from being tempted? If you be pardoned, it is through his blood; if you be justified, it is through his righteousness; if you be sanctified, it is because he is made of God unto you sanctification; if you be taught in the ways of God, it is because he becomes your wisdom; if you shall be kept from falling it will be because you are preserved in Christ Jesus; and if you are perfected, it is because you are complete in him, and if you be glorified at the last, it will be because God the Father hath glorified his Son Jesus. Now, the first groan which you heard was deep and dreadful, as though it were fetched from the abyss of hell; that is the groan of the ungodly man as he perishes, and leaves all his dear delights; but the second groan is so softened and sweetened, that it is rather the note of desire than of distress. 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. The natural desires of the human frame are not in themselves sinful, but through the degeneracy of our nature, they very readily lead us into sin, and through the corruption which is in us, even the natural desires of the body become a very great source of temptation. And I doubt not that each of you, in looking back upon your past experience as Christians, could say very much the same. Suppose that a poor man had a great law-suit, touching his whole estate, and he was forced personally to go into court and plead his own cause, and speak up for his rights. He who hung on high Calvary was such a lover of the souls of men that from that glorious fact I am brought to this blessed persuasion, "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So it is a grand thing, whenever Satan comes and begins to accuse you, just to say, "Christ has died, Christ has died." Will it ever be set free? I think I may say to those who are the beginners in the divine life, so long as your call is real, rest assured it is divine. Ah! In the previous chapter, Paul was writing to some who ought to have been teachers, but who needed still to be taught the first principles of the gospel; they were such babes in grace that they needed the milk of the Word, the very simplest elements of gospel truth, and not the strong meat of solid doctrine. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a preacher, theologian, and missionary to Native Americans. Oh! The great machine of this world is not only in motion, but there is something weaving in it, which as yet mortal eye hath not fully seen, which our text hinteth at when it says, It is working out good for God's people. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. "If children then heirs," says the apostle; therefore, whatever Christ has we have, and though we may be very poor and unknown, yet whatever belongs to Christ to us. 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