S. God's Faithful Calling

GOD’S FAITHFUL CALLING

“God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” - 1 Corinthians 1:9 THE faithfulness of God is to be viewed in connection with his calling you, as giving you the fullest possible assurance that he will perform and make good on your behalf whatever purpose or promise your being called by him may be fairly held to comprehend. He will do all that in calling you he has become expressly or virtually pledged to do. The question then is, To what are you called? what is the end of your calling? For, whatever is needed for the accomplishment of that end, the faithfulness of God makes it certain that he will do it. Now it is unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ that you have been and are called; that fellowship implying these two things; first, union with Christ; and secondly, as flowing from the union and implied in it, communion with Christ, or joint participation with him in what is his. Let us consider these two parts or elements of the fellowship; and let us dwell on the faithfulness of God in both of them.

Part First - Union with Christ The fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, unto which you are called by God, implies union; and the union is by faith. That indeed is the indispensable condition of all fellowship when intelligent beings are the parties concerned; union by faith; by assent and consent. And the faith in this instance, that effects the union, is and must be itself wrought in you by him who calls you. Thus only can it be certain that the calling will be effectual, which the faithfulness of God requires that it shall be. How faithfully, accordingly, does God deal with you all throughout in his so calling you as to make you one with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

I. He is faithful in discovering to you your case. He tells you that you need his Son - that without him you perish. Your sin he brings before you, your guilt, your ruin. He does so in very faithfulness. His word is no prophet of smooth things; his Spirit is no giver of false peace. His faithfulness you may at first dislike. It may seem to you like harshness and severity. You question the truth and fairness of the representations he gives, and the convictions he would force upon you, as to your state and character before him. You cannot feel your condition to be absolutely hopeless, your hearts to be altogether wrong towards God. You think it hard to be told that you can do nothing to right or reform yourselves. But you try. Moved by his Spirit you try in earnest to become altogether such as, being taught by the Spirit, you now own that you ought to be, and ought always to have been; pure and holy, unselfish and loving, loving God supremely, loving your brethren and all men. It will not do. You cannot rid yourself of a growing apprehension of failure and defeat, of bondage and wrath. The hurt is not to be healed as you hoped. The plague is deep. The past cannot be undone. You cannot answer for the future. And alas for the evil that is ever present with you! The testimony of God, you find, is true. The discovery which he makes to you of your criminality and corruption, your sin and death, may not be welcome. But in calling you to the knowledge of it, God is faithful.

II. God is faithful in commending to you his Son, Jesus Christ. He commends him as the object of his own confidence and esteem, and therefore worthy to be the object of yours. “Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth.” “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” “Look,” he cries, “ye lost ones! behold the ransom I have found for you - the Redeemer, the Saviour - possessed of all the qualifications, perfect in all the conditions needful for meeting your sad case; near to me as my fellow, near to you also as yours; having all the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in him bodily; grace poured into his lips, glory crowning his head, love burning in his heart.” In this testimony concerning his Son, God is faithful. You did not always feel this. Once you gave no heed, no credit, to his testimony. Christ and his gospel were indifferent to you. Or they presented to you a repulsive, gloomy aspect. You saw no beauty in him why you should desire him. Or you formed a notion of him all your own. You made him out to be a mere indulgent pleader for pardon, an apologist of your errors; and, as such, you thought that you could love him. But now God discovers to you yourselves and his Son. God shows you what you are, and what he is, whose mediation you have been abusing. You see his Son in a new light, his excellency and beauty, his suitableness and sufficiency, the transcendent worth of his righteousness, the exhaustless efficacy of his blood; all that is attractive in his person, as Immanuel, God with us; all that is satisfying to the divine law and the human conscience in his vicarious obedience and atoning death; all that is of power to save in his resurrection, his ascension, his receiving of the Father the promise of the Spirit, his being Head over all things to the church, his coming again to receive his people to himself - all that is gracious, all that is glorious, in him, the Spirit of God enables you spiritually to discern. And you feel that in calling you to the knowledge of his Son Jesus Christ, and commending him to you as the very Saviour you need, God is faithful.

III. In presenting to you his Son Jesus Christ, God presents him to you, in free gift, as yours - yours if you will but have him to be yours. And in this also, in this pre-eminently, God is faithful.

Alas for your prolonged hesitation here! Beforehand, it is, as it were, a leap in the dark that you are required to make. You are trembling on the highest pinnacle of a tottering tower. You hear a voice bidding you cast yourself into unseen arms ready to receive you at its base. No doubt have you as to your own perilous position; the last stone on which you can for a moment plant your precarious foot is crumbling and giving way. No doubt have you as to the love that thrills the voice to which you listen, or the strength that nerves the stretched-out arms to embrace you. But the plunge! To let go your last hold of what you stand on, and cast yourself, as it were, on the viewless air - this gives you pause.

Call after call is addressed to you, assuring you that you have nothing to fear, that all is ready for you, that now is the time. Will you not take heart of grace at last? You will assuredly find that he who has been calling you is faithful.

Something of this sort of adventurous self-abandonment there often is - always indeed more or less - in the experience of those whom the Holy Spirit is shutting up into Christ. It is the critical hour, the time of decision, the last agony of the death of the old life, the birth-throe of the new life. It is eye meeting eye in a quick glance of mutual intelligence; it is heart meeting heart in a throb of mutual sympathy; and Christ and you are for ever one!

You have been standing face to face; you, a perishing sinner, face to face with Christ, a loving Saviour; you, alive to your need of him; he, yearning over you, as needing you. You have been fairly driven from all the strongholds of your natural confidence. All refuge fails you. Naked and alone you are sinking self-condemned into the pit. Beside you, very near to you, is that Holy One whose blood cleanseth from all sin. “Come unto me, and I will give you rest!” is his own earnest cry. “This is my beloved Son; hear him,” is his Father’s gracious call. Oh! wherefore should your heart fail you? “Taste and see that he is good.” Prove him. Venture your soul, yourself, your all, once for all, on Christ. God is faithful, by whom ye are called to do so.

IV. And this calling of God is without repentance. There is no change of mind, no change of heart with him in regard to it. He who hath called you is faithful.

Here also -

Try his faithfulness - put it to the proof. Be ever trying it; be ever putting it to the proof. And how? Not surely by raising the old doubts and questions again; but by continually repeated exercises, continually renewed acts, of the very faith by which you embraced Christ, or suffered him to embrace you at the first. And, as at the first, so still to the very last, this faith will partake of the nature of a venture, the venturing of yourselves upon Christ. It is a continued, prolonged casting of yourselves into his open arms, into his open bosom.

There may, alas! be interruptions, seasons of dark unbelief, of grievous backsliding, of shameful sin. But, “Return, backsliding Israel” is the call; and he is faithful who calleth. Repent of your love waxing cold, repent, and do the first works. So God is even now calling you to be one with his Son Jesus Christ. Consent, comply now; not because you have consented and complied before, but because God is faithful by whom ye are called now. It is a new venture every moment; the same always, yet ever new. Or if former instances, in past experience, come in at all, it is but to nerve the soul for the new, shall I say, the last venture of all. “I know in whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him against that day.” Such is the faithfulness of God in his calling you unto a fellowship of union with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

1. He calls you to the knowledge of yourselves - your alienation from him, your guilt in his sight. And however the testimony may offend your natural self-complacency, yet, the Spirit convincing you, you own its truth, and confess that God is faithful.

2. He calls you to the knowledge of his Son, the Son of his own love, whom he commends to your love as a brother. And however the humiliation of his cross may mortify your natural self-righteousness, yet the Spirit enlightening you, you see how, hanging on that very cross, he is the very brother you need, a brother born for your adversity; and you feel that in commending him to you in that character, God is faithful.

3. He calls you to close with this Christ, to receive him, to embrace him - to let his Son deal with you as a loving elder brother - to let him clasp you to his heart, and take you home. And however you may hang back long - from whatever cause - suspicion, distrust, disaffection, - yet, the Spirit making you willing in the day of his power, you venture yourself in the arms of the beloved One, and find, and are blessed in finding, that when he calls you to believe and live, God is faithful.

4. He calls you to abide in his Son, to prolong, to perpetuate your union with him, by continually renewed acts and exercises of the same faith by which you appropriate him at the first. And however through your manifold infirmities and falls you may too often lose your hold of him, or your sense of the hold he has of you, yet, the Spirit reviving you, you make trial again, and ever again and again, of the old “faithful saying, worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom,” you cry, “I am chief.” And as you feel that that saying will bear the weight of your soul’s heaviest burden of guilt and woe in your darkest hour, you venture once more to hope and to rejoice with trembling. For faithful is he that calls you to be one for ever with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Part Second - Communion or Joint Participation In your being called by God, you are united to his Son. And the union infers communion or joint-participation with him in what is his. You are one with him in such a sense, and to such an effect, as to have all things in common: - I. Common interests; II. A common character; III. A common history.

I. Your interests are in common, Christ’s and yours; your joint interests in the righteous government, the high and holy moral administration of God.

Now, his interests here are two-fold: the interests which he has originally, as the Son of God, and the interests which he has in his mediatorial character, as his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

1. As to the first, the interests which he has originally, as the Son, in the vast scheme of God’s universal empire, - these are and must be essentially identical with those of the Father. He is the Son whom God hath appointed heir of all things. Hence all things were created by him and for him, and he upholdeth all things by the word of his power. The design of the whole work of creation, and of the works of providence, is to carry into effect the eternal purpose and decree of God, appointing his Son to be heir of all things.

Looked at in this light, the interests which he has in the unfolding of the great volume of the universe may be summed up in this one petition, which once he offered on earth, which he may be regarded as offering from the beginning in heaven, “Father glorify thy Son, that thy Son may also glorify thee.” In this petition of his, in that appointment to be heir of all things on which it proceeds, you are to be partakers with him. You are sons and therefore heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with him. “He that overcometh shall inherit all things.”

2. But you reach this participation with Christ in the interests which he has, as the Son, in the plan of God’s universal government, through your participation with him in the interests which he has in it in his mediatorial character, not as Son and Lord, and heir merely: but first as a subject. In his case, however, the two cannot be separated. The concern which he has in the moral administration of God, now that, being made of a woman, made under the law, he becomes himself amenable to it, cannot supersede the concern which he has in it originally, as the Son, appointed to be heir of all things. He is still interested as much as ever in the stability of that throne which he is himself to occupy; in the upholding of that authority which he is himself to wield; in the magnifying and making honourable of that law according to whose holy standard of loyalty and love he is himself to rule among his holy ones for ever. But this is not all. Not only does he become a subject; he becomes also a criminal. He takes the place of subjects who have offended, and their guilt is imputed to him. He is made sin. Sin, in its exceeding sinfulness, its righteous condemnation, its inevitable doom of death, is laid upon him to bear. Are there not conflicting interests now? Is the loud cry, “Father, save me from this hour,” - is the prayer of agony, “Father, if it be possible, let the cup pass from me,” an indication that there are? Is he distracted between the interests which, as not only a subject, but in the eye of law a criminal, he has in God’s administration, and the interests which he has in it as the Son appointed to be heir of all things?

No, but the reconciling of them is to cost him much, not less than the fulfilment of all that the subject owes, and the endurance of all that the criminal deserves. He is one in interest and concern with God, as the Son, the heir. He is one in interest and concern with you, whose nature he shares, whose place he assumes, whose debt he undertakes, whose sin he bears. And the glory of his cross is this: - that in it, the seemingly opposite interests are identified; and the criminal, the subject, the criminal expiating crime, the subject fulfilling all righteousness, is identically the same in person, mind, and purpose, with the Son, the heir of all things.

Now in all this you are called by God unto a fellowship of communion with his Son Jesus Christ. You are called to be partakers with him in his sufferings, as a criminal, to expiate his crime - in his obedience, as a subject, to fulfil all righteousness - and in his title, as the Son, to be heir of all things. The removal of guilt, acceptance, adoption, are thus yours - yours, in an order the reverse of that in which he in whom they are yours is presented to you. The Son, the subject, the criminal; the Son appointed heir of all things, the subject bound to obey, the criminal laden with the guilt of disobedience - these are the successive aspects in which he appears. You are called to joint participation with him in these three positions - as the criminal, the subject, the Son; the criminal taking your condemnation on himself. There is therefore now no condemnation to you who are in Christ, the subject rendering all obedience in your stead; in whose righteousness you are righteous, the Son appointed on your behalf to be heir of all things, with whom, as sons in him, you are joint-heirs.

All throughout God is faithful to recognise and own your community of interests with his Son Jesus Christ. He treats you as one with him unto whose fellowship you are called. He cleanses you as Jesus was cleansed, when sin, being atoned for, was imputed to him no more. He accepts you, as Jesus was accepted when, having brought in an everlasting righteousness, he was raised from the dead. He makes you his sons as Jesus is his Son; - whose freedom in the house you now receive, whose Spirit is now in you crying, “Abba, Father;” - loving you as he loveth him; glorifying you as he glorifies him. Your pardon, your peace, your inheritance of all things, are all secure to you. “For God is faithful by whom ye are called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord.” And that fellowship is a fellowship of interests. “All things are yours; whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.”

II. The fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ, unto which you are called by God, is a fellowship of character. It implies that you are partakers of the same moral nature. If you are to have common interests with Christ, you must have a common character, a common mind, a common nature with him also. His interests never can be yours, unless his character, his mind, his nature, is also yours. For what are his interests? The same as yours in one view; for he takes your place as subjects under the law, as criminals under the curse. He has a common interest with you, to have the claims of law relaxed, that obedience may be the easier, to have the penalty of sin remitted, that atonement may be the lighter. But no. Subject as he is, criminal as he must be reckoned to be for you, his interests are still the interests of the Son appointed to be heir of all things. And your sympathies must be with him. You must have a fellow-feeling with him. An eye to see, a heart to feel, what the interests you have in common with him really are, must be yours. And what eye can that be but the very eye which he fixed so steadfastly on his Father’s glory? What heart but the very heart which in him beat so high, and strong, and true, in unison with his Father’s will? This community of nature and character with him is indispensable, if you are to have community of interests. Unto that, accordingly, you are called. And he by whom you are called is faithful; faithful to make you partakers, in his Son Jesus Christ, of the divine nature. For this end he has given you exceeding great and precious promises; promises of a new heart and a right spirit; promises of complete renewal to accompany complete acceptance; the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of his Son, to go along with and bring out your adoption as sons; and he is faithful to fulfil them all. On his faithfulness you may confidently rely, both for the first beginning, and for the subsequent progress, of this great work of your sanctification. For both, he calls you unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ, making you and keeping you one with him. Be ye then shut up into Christ. Be ye always abiding in Christ. Be ye shut up into Christ, in whom you are new creatures, seeing all things in a new light - in the light of God, who hath reconciled you to himself by him. Be ye always abiding in Christ, drinking into his Spirit, drawing your life from him, and learning more and more to think and feel as he did, in all that touches the glory of his Father, in all that concerns the doing of his Father’s will. Be ye thus faithful on your part, for God is faithful, and will more and more bring you into the fellowship of a common character with his Son, as you more and more grow up into him. Wherefore “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

III. Having common interests and a common character, you may expect to be called by God unto the fellowship of a common history with his Son Jesus Christ. His history may be drawn out at length; but it may be compressed also under these five leading heads - a birth, a baptism, a work, a cross, a crown.

1. God calls you unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ, in his birth. Your new birth is your fellowship, your participation with Christ in his birth. Both are by the Spirit; both are new entrances into the kingdom of God. And in both his faithfulness appears. In the birth of Christ God is seen to be faithful - faithful to his word of promise, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” - faithful to the song which, by anticipation, he puts into the church’s mouth, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” Nor is God less faithful in calling you unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ in this birth of his. For it is by the same Spirit by whom he was born that you are born again. Born of the Spirit, you enter into the kingdom of God as he, the Son, did, when, being in the form of God, he became man. You are ushered into a new state; you receive a new life; you are before God as he was when he lay a new-born babe in the manger of Bethlehem; accounted blameless, righteous, acceptable to God and well-pleasing in his sight, as that holy child was, when he, for you, born of the Spirit, entered, as a subject, into the kingdom, of which he is the Lord, Thus faithfully does God deal with you when he makes you one with his Son Jesus Christ in his wondrous birth.

2. In his baptism also, you are called by God unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ, He was baptized with the Holy Ghost. God gave not the Spirit by measure unto him. The Holy Spirit, descending upon him like a dove, marked him out as the beloved Son, in whom the Father is well pleased; and strengthened him for the work which, as the Son and servant of the Father, he had to do. In this, the faithfulness of God appeared; for it had been written, “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him; ““I have put my Spirit upon him.” And the faithfulness of God equally appears in his baptizing you, as he baptized him, with the Holy Ghost. The Spirit is promised to seal your acceptance as he sealed Christ’s; to attest your sonship as he attested Christ’s; to fit you, as he fitted Christ, for all your warfare and service as the children of God in the world.

3. In Christ’s history, his being born of the Spirit and his being baptized with the Spirit, were preparatory to his work; a lifelong work; the work to which he referred when at the age of twelve he put the question to Mary and Joseph, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” the work which he had in his mind when he appealed to his Father at the last; “I have glorified thee upon the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” You are called by God unto fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ in this work of his. A fellowship of worth or merit in it, you cannot and you would not challenge otherwise than through representation, substitution, imputation and appropriation; but a fellowship of consent and sympathy it is your privilege to claim. Born of the Spirit, baptized with the Spirit, you would fain be partakers with Christ in what constituted the real excellency and essential virtue of his whole work, his entire surrender and dedication of himself to do the will of God. And so you are, and so you ought to be. For “God is faithful, by whom you are called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord,” in this very grace of willing and unreserved submission expressed in his words - “I came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.”

4. The history of Christ, besides a birth, a baptism, a work, has a cross; and his own emphatic words are, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” You suffer with him. You fill up in your persons the measure of the sufferings of Christ. You are partakers of his sufferings.

“Count it not strange, brethren, that ye fall into divers temptations.” “There hath no temptation befallen you but such as is common to man. And God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” “There hath no temptation befallen you but such as is common to man.” Nay, we may say, there is no temptation, no trial, no suffering, or shame, or sorrow that can befall you, which is not common to Christ and you together. You suffer with Christ. You go forth unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. And he is with you in your suffering. The reproaches of them that reproach you fall on him. In all your affliction he is afflicted. This fellowship of suffering with his Son Jesus Christ, unto which you are called by God, may be very painful often; but it is very precious, very blessed. A common misery makes men wondrous kind. Any two of you, thrown together in heavy grief, or in a fiery trial, find your hearts marvellously knit together. The little flock, persecuted on every side, forced to leave fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, become all fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers to one another. So in the fellowship of his sufferings, in the fellowship of his cross, Christ and you are like two metals in the furnace, more and more thoroughly welded into one. Then doubt not that it is in very faithfulness that God afflicts you. Doubt not that God is faithful when in much tribulation he calls you unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ.

5. As the history of Christ, in respect of which you are called by God unto his fellowship, has a birth, a baptism, a work, a cross - so also it has a crown. It issues and ends in glory. And in the glory, as in the toil, and suffering, and shame, you have fellowship with him. For God is faithful; and having called you to be partakers of the sufferings of his Son, he will not fail to make you partakers of his glory also.

What that glory is we may partly learn from the Lord’s own prayer: “Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” It is the manifestation of the Father’s love to him, that love which from everlasting prompted the decree by which the Son is appointed heir of all things. In the full blaze of that glory of the Father’s manifested love, he would have you to be with him. And he shall. “For God is faithful, by whom your are called unto his fellowship.” He will leave nothing in it or about it incomplete. If you suffer with his Son, God will see to it, in very faithfulness, that you are also glorified together. This is the hope set before you. This is your recompense of reward. This is the prize of your high calling in Christ Jesus your Lord.

Mark its most distinctive characteristic.

It is not glory given to you by Christ; it is not glory given to you through Christ, it is participation with him in his glory. The husbandmen to whom, when they had stoned and beaten messenger after messenger, the owner of the vineyard at last resolves to send his son, saying, “It may be they will reverence him,” cry with one voice as he draws near to them, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.” No such inheritance, got in such a way, could ever satisfy you. “What foretaste you have of the inheritance here is welcome only because in it you have fellowship with the Son. It is the Spirit of the Son that is sent forth, crying in you, Abba, Father. “My peace I give unto you:” “My joy is to remain in you;” are the Lord’s own precious words. And so it is as to the glory of the inheritance itself To be joint heirs with Christ is your desire; to be with him as he is; to be at home with him among the many mansions of his Father’s house; to be at home with him in the deep affections of his Father’s heart; to behold how the Father loveth him; and to have fellowship with him in the love wherewith the Father loveth him, and in its full manifestation; that is your glory!

Ah! when that glory comes, will you not cast your crowns at the feet of him whose crown you share, and testify that he who has called you unto such a fellowship With his Son in his glory is indeed faithful?

Yes! In that day his faithfulness will fully appear; then, and not till then.

Ah! how in that day will you look back on all the way by which God has led you, from his first commending of his Son to you and shutting you up to embrace him, forward through the whole course of your fellowship with Christ here below. “Often, often I was tempted,” you will say, “to doubt, to distrust his faithfulness. Many a misgiving, many a questioning, many a fear had I. But all is clear now. I see it all. He has been leading me forth by the right way, that I might go to a city of habitation. Yes; God is faithful, by whom I was called unto the fellowship of his Son. Jesus Christ.”