This sin is not often preached upon, yet no question political and civil idolatry, making men as gods to us, hath done a great deal of hurt, as well as religious idolatry. Now these ways we glory in men.
1. When we join them with Christ as mediators, and make them co-partners, as it were, in spiritual effects as well as temporal. This is to glory in men, even blasphemously.
2. We glory in men when we make our own, or other good works meritorious, and our sufferings satisfactory unto God. This Pharisee is a greater enemy to Christ, and further off from the kingdom of heaven than many publicans.
3. We glory in men when we rejoice in their favour, and are more glad of that than we are of God’s favour.
4. We glory in men when we desire to please them, and to accommodate ourselves to their humours more than to please God, and to walk according to His will. This sinful pleasing of men is not consistent with a servant of Christ’s (Gal_1:10; 1Co_7:13).
5. We, then, glory in men when we put our trust and confidence in them, resting and hoping in them, and not depending on God only. As the ground of Divine faith must be some Divine testimony and authority, so the motive of a Divine hope must be only the promise and power of God. It is a sin that all are very prone unto, to trust in earthly power and greatness, and not to eye God above all. Lastly, we glory in men when we boast in anything that is human or earthly, anything that belongs to man. Thus to boast of beauty, apparel, riches, nobility, parts, and learning; all this is a vain and sinful boasting (1Ti_6:15; Jer_9:23-24).
In the next place, we are not to glory in the doctors and teachers we have, which we do--
1. When we are affected more with their parts, and gifts, and earning, than with the powerful demonstration of God’s Spirit in them, and by them.
2. Then we glory in men when we rest on the ministry and their labours, thinking it enough to enjoy them, but never look up to God for success and a blessing. What is Paul or Apollos but ministers by whom ye believe? at the fifth verse. Therefore the principal work is from God.
3. Then we glory in men when we have the persons of some teachers in such admiration, that whatsoever they say or maintain, without any search or dispute, we believe. The disciples of Berea are commended for their noble disposition, that they would search the Scriptures, whether the things were so or not (Act_17:11).
4. Then we glory in men when we prefer one before the other, so as to make differences and schisms in the Church. He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord. Yea, saith Paul, “God forbid I should glory in anything save in the Cross of Christ” (Gal_6:14). (A. Burgess.)
For all things are yours.--
All things are yours
The one theme of the beginning of this Epistle is man’s glorying, lost through sin and recovered in Christ. In chap. 1. Paul brings the human race with its wisdom, righteousness, and strength into the presence of the Cross, and shows that its boasting was vain, and bids them take salvation as the free gift of God, and give to Him alone the glory. But he is careful to add that man’s ground of boasting is restored to himself: “Let him glory.” Whereas before he had denied everything to human nature, now he cries, “All things are yours.” Retrieved in Christ, the Church has an unlimited prerogative.
I. The prerogatives of Christ’s people are based upon their relation to Him. “All things are yours” because “ye are of Christ.”
1. The union between Christ and His people gives the highest illustration of our text. Whatever belongs to the Redeemer belongs to the redeemed. But this requires to be carefully guarded.
(1) These words apply only to the mystical company of the faithful, who are united to Christ by faith and have become one Spirit with Him. The spiritual body of Christ is distinguished both from the race and from the individuals of whom it is composed. And it is of the whole company that Paul speaks, not any separate member. It was for that mystical fellowship that our Lord prayed in words that give Paul his argument. “Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those,” &c.
(2) Now to this body united to Himself Christ gives an unlimited interest in all His prerogatives. “All Mine are Thine and Thine are Mine,” and for these He prays that “the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them,” &c. (Joh_17:1-26.). The answer to this is our text. As the husband and wife are one flesh and have all things common, so Christ and His Church have one Spirit, &c.
2. Our possession of all things in Christ may be referred to the mediatorial supremacy of the Head of the Church, making all things contribute to our welfare.
(1) When the apostle dilates upon the lordship of Christ he brings all the powers of the universe under His sway; sometimes to magnify Christ’s glory, but oftener to set forth the absoluteness of His supremacy over all things for the Church. He governs the principalities and powers of the other world for the accomplishment of His designs in this, and they become ministering spirits to the heirs of salvation. The hosts of evil with their prince are governed for our advantage. The world, with all things present, is under His sway for the well-being of His Church. This is the key to all history, and Christ’s mysterious but most certain sway is bringing politics, science, civilisation, into subordination to the spread of His kingdom.
(2) He is also the Head of a visible community which is governed for the salvation of its spiritual members. “Paul, Apollos, and Cephas”--the organised ministry of the visible Church is the servant of the Church invisible. The order has been inverted. The saints have been brought into bondage to the Church instead of the Church being the servant of the saints; and this error has produced a sad reaction--the visible Church has been sundered from its close connection with the Church invisible. But let both grow together. Believers are of Christ, not of the Church; but calling Him Lord they rejoice in the order and service of His Church as a rich inheritance.
3. All who are Christ’s have such a place in His heart, and such an interest in His resources, that in virtue of His special favour they possess all things.
(1) “All things are yours” is the charter of personal prerogative. Christ is the personal Friend of those who love Him, and gives the treasures of His grace to every individual believer. “Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name I will do it.”
(2) But here is a necessary limitation which only seems to restrict the privilege--the Redeemer reserves to Himself the decision how much of the all things shall be imparted, when the gift shall be bestowed and when desired. The spiritual position He is more willing to give than we are to ask: our other portion may be more slowly bestowed; reserved from us though our own, for reasons the wisdom of which we cannot always understand.
II. The apostle blends the high statement of Christian privileges with the practical exhortation to rejoice in them.
1. The starting-point of this exhibition is the warning to glory is nothing but our inheritance in Christ. Once before he had uttered it to claim for the crucified Redeemer His sole honour; now he repeats it to claim for the Christian inheritance its rights. The Son receives us into His Father’s house; and to each one He says, “All that I have is thine.” Henceforth we are servants to none but Himself in God. This leaves no room for self-complacency, for all is of Christ.
2. Paul literally brings the whole compass of things into the believer’s inheritance.
(1) Life is ours. In its deepest meaning none live but those who are in Christ. We know, indeed, that our life in the flesh will cease; but it is our own while it lasts, to be spent in the care of our souls and in the discharge of our duties; and then we shall pass into more abundant life.
(2) Things present.
(a) The creaturely world. So long as we are of the world, the world is our master; but when we become Christ’s free men, the whole economy of the creature pays us tribute. But possessing all things we must show that we are really masters of the creature, by our temperate, thankful, and spiritual use of all things.
(b) All the events that make up the course of this world. Not that Christ gives us control of passing affairs. He keeps the direction of our lives in His own hands, and does not always admit us into the reasons of His dealings. But He sanctions our freedom of action, allows large latitude to our prayers, gives us the discretion to make all events contribute to our welfare, and causes all things to work together for our good.
(3) Death and things to come. Christ has the keys of the other world, and our eternal destiny is in His ever faithful hands.
(a) Death, the last enemy, is translated into a ministering angel.
(b) Things to come--the disembodied waiting for the great day, the day itself, the resurrection, &c.
3. Let us hear the apostle’s exhortation, not expressed, but pervading the whole passage--“He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”(W. B. Pope, D. D.)
All things are ours
It expresses richness--this “All things are yours”; a broad and confident hold on life: a large liberty of mind. To have “all things ours”; to have, as it were, the freedom of the universe; to feel nowhere hemmed in, excluded, limited, whether in the sphere of truth or of sympathy, is a magnificent prospect, a splendid promise. To a great extent, we are compelled to acknowledge, our primary needs are needs of limitation and restraint, and Christianity presents itself as limiting and restraining. We come out to make our way in the world with good intentions, and around us there are ringing in our ears numberless voices--theories of life--denunciations--schemes--hopes--fears--doctrines--denials--doubts, and we feel anything but the consciousness that “all things are ours.” We feel no sense of mastery, only of bewilderment. To be free--to give our sympathies on all sides--to trust all voices alike, is to leave our moorings, to be free to wander on a shoreless sea. Or again, careless indiscriminate sympathy, fellowship with human life in all its forms, may present itself to us as an ideal of conduct, “Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto.” But there is that at once must give us pause. For humanity as it is is a strangely mixed thing. To say that my pulses beat in sympathy with all that is human is to state a fact of my being, but it is a fact suggestive as much of horror as of self-congratulation. For it means that there is no disordered passion, however vile, of which I cannot trace at least in some horrible moment the capacity in my own blood; no craft, no guile to which I can claim to be by nature utterly a stranger. Thus out of the surging sea of conflicting theories--out of the seething of this common manhood which I cannot trust--out of this indiscriminate life which might indeed master me, but which certainly I do not master--in which certainly “all things are not mine,” I look up for some Hand from above to lift, some Voice to guide, some standard and criterion of life. And lo! there is One who knows life’s secret, One who loves my humanity, who believes in its capacities as none else ever did, and yet distrusts its impulses. One who in our flesh, “in the likeness of flesh, of sin,” yet restores life; sums it into Himself, and claims to purge it and to reconstruct it. I come to Him--I will be taught by Him. I would have the key to life--I would feel myself under His instruction. He turns upon me, He speaks to me. But it is not first of freedom. A secure life--a strong life, that is the first thing. It must be strong before it can be free--strong at the centre ere it can be free at the circumference, and to make it strong there must be concentration, and that means for the moment mutilation--the cutting off of occasions of sin, of whatever hinders the progress of the true self. If there is a theory which puzzles me, which I cannot refute, which perhaps has some attraction for me, yet seems to militate against my spiritual growth, which is to go--the spiritual growth or the intellectual?” “Thy intellectual interest,” the answer of Christ seems to come, “is not thy primary self. Behind thine intellect is thy will--thy spirit. The centre of thy being where conscience speaks, where will acts, where prayer rises and God is known--that is thyself. It conditions all else. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness--at all costs, limit thyself as you mayest to do so.” Thus the first claim of Christ is a claim upon us for concentration of faculties upon the pursuit of holiness. All things are yours; but not till ye are Christ’s, then, as Christ is God’s. But so, if in blind surrender the sacrifice has been made and remade and made for ever,--is the reward sure. What is this vaunt of the Christian life? In what sense does the “slave of Jesus Christ” find that “all things are his”?
1. He finds it first in the moral sphere. Self has been cut at the roots, and it is selfishness which is the source of narrowness, the impoverishment of life. Party spirit (that is St. Paul’s point) narrows your privileges. To make one great teacher of the Church your patron in such sense as that you exult exclusively in what he taught, exalt his special adherents and depreciate the work of others, is to narrow your Christian heritage. Yours is not what one teacher only was given to teach, but what all were given. All are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas. Argument, it has been said, is often most effective when it is most one-sided. The Christian Church in like manner may gain a certain sort of effectiveness by ignoring half her mission, and dealing with half human nature, but “all things are ours.” The heritage is not meant to be impoverished and narrowed into ever closer channels as it comes down the ages. Meant for Catholic humanity, it remains in its Catholicity. We believe in one holy Catholic Church, one in its Divine authority, one in the truth it teaches in common, one in the grace which flows in its channels and makes its inner life the same, one in its common organisation, one in its sacred books, and to no part of that one whole do I limit my faith. By no corporate self-assertion would I have a part of that society strive to be the whole. “All things are ours.”
2. But it is not only within the area of the Christian Church that the Spirit of Christ, by cutting the roots of self-assertion, realises in us the richness of our heritage. “Not only Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas,” but the world, the
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, is ours. The Christian realises his freedom in all truth, his kinship with all nature. It is not only that the good man is at peace with nature, that he is in league with the slaves of the field and the beasts of the land are at peace with him; there is a deep ground for such kinship. He has learned to recognise in Christ (in the latter days Incarnate) the eternal Word of God, the expression and counterpart of his being. His mediation in grace is based upon an unceasing mediation in nature. “Through Him all things were made.” “Without Him was not anything made.” “Whatever has been made, in Him was life.” And as the Christian must lay his claim to be utterly at home in the modern scientific conception of nature, so must he also be in the world of universal humanity. The great Greek theologians of the epoch of the great general councils never let their students forget the largeness of the Christian claim. God’s special dealings with the Jews (St. Athanasius reminds us) are given only to prevent us forgetting His universal providence in all history and nature. For He who came into our territory (he tells us) in the Incarnation, came not as a stranger nor as having been far off before. For no part of creation had ever been left void of Him. He had filled all things through all. He was through all the ages “coming into the world.” He was the light which lighteneth every man--the same Jesus Christ. “Dream not,” says St. Justin (meeting a difficulty by anticipation), in his apology to the heathen, “that persons who lived more than a century and a half ago, before Christ was born in the flesh, escape His judgment. For we have been taught” (it is not a private opinion of his own) “and have explained before that He is the Logos,in which the whole race of man shared. And those who lived with reason up to their lights, are Christians even though they are reckoned Atheists among men, as among the Greeks were Socrates and Heracleitus, and among the Barbarians Abraham and Elijah, and many others, and those who lived of old without reason, were ever the enemies of Christ and the murderers of those who lived with reason. But they who lived or live with reason (i.e.,up to their lights)
are Christians and can live without fear.” It ought to have been the instinct of Christianity always to recognise this. Christianity supersedes all other religions not by excluding but by including. In part indeed they represent merely man’s bewilderment and ugly perversions of the truth. But in part they also represent that natural revelation of God which is involved in the light shining in darkness, so that the darkness could not suppress it. Everywhere there was something of a witness to God. And Christian faith stands to all other teachings, as that which supersedes them, by containing and elevating the truth they taught, and illuminating and satisfying the human need that they expressed. They become foes only when they become rivals, as even the good may ever be the enemy of the best, as the twilight is darkness by comparison with the sunlight. “There are many noble things,” says Origen, “in the Oracles by those not of Christ’s part, but with us only are their Oracles complete and pure.”
3. All things are yours--“Life and death,” the world of human nature. It is the privilege of Christian faith to give us the freest access to human hearts. For the wants that Christ came to evoke and to satisfy belong to man, as man, to men equally in every age and in every class. The capacity for prayer, the sense of sin, the need of pardon, the reality and force of temptation, the vicissitudes of spiritual feeling, the moral discouragements and encouragements of life, the moral perplexities from conflicting duties--these things belong to people of utterly different positions in life and with scarcely any reference to degrees of education.
4. “All things are ours, whether things present or things to come.” The great poet of human nature in our time constantly gives expression to the conviction that the problems of human character demand an immortality for their solution. Human characters he feels, in proportion to their worth, need an environment to develop them larger than this world; need a vaster field to work out their issues. “On the earth the broken arcs: in the heaven the perfect round.” “God’s task to make the heavenly period--perfect the earthen.” Now this conviction of immortality in which the Christian lives gives him a leverage for action, and makes him the minister of hope. He can believe in the small beginnings who believes in immortal growth. He can believe in the perfect victory for all who do not finally and obstinately cling by choice to evil. He again has a rational doctrine to hold out to man of human perfection--a doctrine rational because it takes account of experience. Make this world the only sphere of progress, obliterate from men’s eyes what we heard of last week as “the world as little like Whitechapel as possible,” in which, “after death men shall wake up,” and you certainly have no rational doctrine of hope to present to mankind. Where is the experience that justifies us in expecting that the progress of knowledge and civilisation really means for “the sacrificed classes” the progress of happiness. Does not experience rather give us a doctrine that nations have their periods of climax, and then their periods of decay? and is there any real ground for believing the later period for a particular race, happier than the earlier? Or have great social convulsions (though they have taught great lessons to humanity at large) been (except under certain conditions not now existing in England) productive of happiness to the nations who were the subjects of them? Does civilisation or knowledge any way tend to minimise the selfishness which is the root of all social evils? Behind the veil, under the feet of the great Head of a redeeming humanity, the Christian knows that the race of man who will consent to have God when He is offered them in His love, is being gathered into an ever developing perfection. (C. Gore, M. A.)
Christ’s servants lords of all
I. How Christ’s servants are men’s lords. “Paul, Apollos, Cephas” were all lights kindled at the central Light, and therefore shining. Each was but a part of the mighty whole, a little segment of the circle--
“They are but broken lights of Thee.
And Thou, O Lord! art more than they.”
And in the measure, therefore, in which men adhere to Christ, and have taken Him for theirs; in that measure are they delivered from all undue dependence on, still more, all slavish submission, to any single individual teacher or aspect of truth. If Christ be our Master, if we take our creed from Him, if we accept His words and His revelation of the Father as our faith and our objective religion, then all the slavery to favourite names, all the taking of truth second-hand from lips that we honour, all the partisanship for one against another which has been the shame and the ruin of the Christian Church, and is working untold mischiefs in it to-day, are ended at once. “One is your Master, even Christ.” “Call no man Rabbi! upon earth”; but bow before Him, the incarnate and the personal Truth. And in like manner they who are Christ’s are delivered from all temptations to make men’s maxims and practices and approbation the law of their conduct. “They say. What say they? Let them say.” The envoy of some foreign power cares very little what the inhabitants of the land to which he is ambassador may think of him and his doings; it is his sovereign’s good opinion that he seeks tosecure. The soldier’s reward is his commander’s praise, the slave’s joy is the master’s smile, and for us it ought to be the law of our lives, and in the measure in which we belong to Christ really it will be the law of our lives, that “we labour that whether present or absent we may be pleasing to Him.”
II. Christ’s servants are the lords of the world. That phrase is used here, no doubt, as meaning the external material universe. He owns the world who turns it to the highest use of growing his soul by it. If I look out upon a fair landscape, and the man that draws therents of it is standing by my side, and I suck more sweetness and deeper impulses and larger and loftier thoughts out of it than he does, it belongs to me far more than it does to him. The world is his who from it has learned to despise it, to know himself and to know God. He owns the world who uses it as the arena, or wrestling ground, on which, by labour, he may gain strength, and in which he may do service. Antagonism helps to develop muscle, and the best use of the outward frame of things is that we shall take it as the field upon which we can serve God.
III. Christian men who belong to Jesus Christ are the lords and masters of “life and death.”
1. The true ownership of life depends upon self-control, and self-control depends upon letting Jesus Christ govern us wholly. So the measurein which it is true of me that “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” is the measure in which our lower life of sense really belongs to us, and ministers to our highest good.
2. Animals expire; a Christian man may yield his soul to his Saviour, who is the Lord both of the dead and of the living. If thus we feel our dependence upon Him, and yield up our wills to Him, and can say, “Living or dying we are the Lord’s,” then we may be quite sure that Death, too, will be our servant, and that our wills will be concerned even in passing out of life. Still more, if you and I belong to Jesus Christ, then Death is our fellow-servant who comes to call us out of this ill-lighted workshop into the presence of the King.
IV. Christ’s servants are the lords of time and eternity, “things present or things to come.”
1. The whole mass of “things present,” including all the events and circumstances of our lives, over these we may exercise supreme control. If we are bowing in humble submission to Jesus Christ, they will all subserve our highest good. The howling tempests of winter and its white snows, the sharp winds of spring and its bursting sunshine; the calm, steady heat of June and the mellowing days of August, all serve to ripen the grain. And so all “things present,” the light and the dark, the hopes fulfilled and the hopes disappointed, the gains and thelosses, the prayers answered and the prayers unanswered, they will all be recognised if we have the wisdom that comes from submission to Jesus Christ’s will as being ours, and ministering to our highest blessing. We shall be their lords, too, inasmuch as we shall be able to control them. We need not be like the mosses in the stream, that lie whichever way the current sets, nor like some poor little sailing boat that is at the mercy of the winds and the waves, but may carry an inward impulse like some great ocean-going steamer, the throb of whose power shall drive usstraight forward on our course, what ever beats against us. That we may have this inward power and mastery over things present and not to be shaped and moulded and made by them, let us yield ourselves to Christ, and He will help us to rule them.
2. And then, all “things to come”; the dim, vague future shall be for each of us like some sunlit ocean stretching shoreless to the horizon; every little ripple flashing with its own bright sunshine, and all bearing us onwards to the great throne that stands on the sea of glass mingled with fire. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
That all things are for the spiritual good and advantage of the godly man
I. In how many respects all things may be said to be the godly man’s, both in the Church and the world. And first, thus, in that there is nothing which would be for their good that God denieth them. Whatsoever is in all the world, if it be good for the godly man, he shall have it (Psa_84:11). There is no man that feareth God, though he may say, I want riches, I want health, I am without this or that, that can say he is without Christ, and justification, and the covenant of grace.
2. There is a limited good, that which in itself is good, but doth notmake good those that have it, yea, it may be turned to evil. As wine is good, but give it to the feverish man you hurt him. And thus it is with all the temporal good things of the world; they do not make the possessors good, yea, they may be turned to sin, and increase thy corruption. And then it is no wonder if God, out of His love to thee, withhold these things from thee. If they were as necessary and as good as Christ is, and heaven is, thou wert sure to have them (Rom_8:32). Now this very particular should rebuke all the winds and waves of fears and discontent within thee. Art thou repining thou hast not this, thou hast not that ? Oh, look! Hast thou godliness? Hast thou the fear of God in thy heart, then thou hast all things, because there is nothing that is good for thee that God keeps from thee? Secondly, a godly man may be said to have all things, because he hath a right and a claim to the covenant of grace, wherein is a deed of gift of all things both spiritual and temporal. Therefore godliness is said to have the promise of this life and the life to come (1Ti_4:8). All heavenly and earthly things are by promise made to the godly, only heavenly things absolutely, earthly things conditionally and with subordination. So, then, it is with thee, as some man, who hath all his estate lying in bonds and covenants, though for the present he cannot command such a sum of money, yet he is rich in bonds. Thirdly, all things are the godly man’s because he hath God for his God, who hath all things. He that hath the sun hath the light of all the stars; he that hath the ocean hath all the streams. Hence our happiness is said to be in this if we have the Lord for our God. David, in all his exigencies, supported himself with this, that God was his portion and his inheritance. Though a child hath not money and raiment at his command, yet because he hath a rich father, who can procure all these things, therefore he may be well said to have them all. Fourthly, a godly man may be said to have all things because godliness worketh such an holy contentation and satisfaction of spirit, that in what estate he is, he is as well pleased as if he had all things, as if he had the whole world (1Ti_6:6). Thus all things are theirs, because through contentation they have all things. Fifthly, all things are the godly man’s because they were made finaliter for him. They are all for his spiritual use. Every gift is given to profit withal (1Co_12:7).
II. Let usnow consider why God should make all heavenly and earthly things for the godly. First, we need not wonder at it, if we consider that Christ Himself took our nature upon Him, and did undergo that shameful death, and those terrible conflicts with God’s wrath for His Church, He gave Himself for His Church. So that Christ being theirs, no wonder if all things else be theirs. If ever God would have denied anything, would have withheld anything, it would have been His only Son, in whom He was so well pleased. Secondly, because all things in the world are ordered by His providence only; but the whole work of God about His children is the effect of His predestination.
III. Having asserted a comfortable doctrine out of these words for the godly, we proceed to make some objections or doubts about it. First, the doubt may be, How are all things the godly man’s for his use and spiritual edification, when many times we see the godly man gets no good by these? To answer this, first, we must distinguish between God’s intention in giving these, and the godly man’s actual improvement of them to that end. When the apostle saith, “All things are yours,” his meaning is, on God’s part. His love is so great that for the godly only all things in heaven and earth were created. If so be, therefore, at any time these things turn to thy hurt, blame thyself. The physician will tell the patient sometimes, all these potions and all these cordials, they are yours; you are to take them; you may expect much good and ease by them. But if the patient be wilful, and disorder himself, it is his fault, not the physician’s, that they do hurt. Therefore, secondly, the godly man, through his weakness and sinfulness, not walking up to God’s order, may make that a hindrance which God intended a furtherance. Thirdly, though the godly may for a while make these things against their end, and not for it, yet this will not be always. Fourthly, when we sayall things are the godly man’s, you must take them in their collective cooperation, as Rom_8:1-39., “All things work together.” The next doubt is, If all things be the godly’s, why, then, are they so uncomfortable, so dejected, complaining of wants, as if nothing were theirs? Answer: It is true it should be so, but we are weak in faith, we do not live upon Scripture principles and privileges. It is by faith only. A quiet resting and reposing of the soul upon God’s promise puts us into the possession of all these things. Secondly, as they want faith, so a heavenly prudence and skill how to improve them spiritually. Though all things be for their good, yet they must have wisdom to know how to use all things. What is a fountain sealed up, or a book that cannot be read, though it hath never such admirable matter? Thus are all things, though never so useful, if thou hast not Christian wisdom. There is no condition, affliction, or event, but thou mayest say, if I had heavenly wisdom I might make excellent use of it. The last doubt is, How are all things the godly man’s, seeing for the most part they are most wanting, they are in the greatest necessities? Answer--
1. This place doth not so much speak of the possession of all things as the spiritual serviceableness of them. Those things which they have no possession of may yet serve for their soul’s good.
2. If the godly have not all things they would, that want is good for them. The want of any outward mercies may sometimes be better than the having of them.
3. Thou hast what is best for thee, and that according to the wise God’s ordering. Let this silence thee always. (A. Burgess.)
All things are yours
You remember the fable of the beautiful fairy who always appeared to turn evil into good, and you have sometimes wished it true. Paul believed that Jesus had power to make everything that happened turn out for the best welfare of His people. The apostle seems to say, “If you serve God, everything in the world shall minister to you as much as if it were really your own.” God did not make you for the earth; He made the earth for you. As a father values his children more than the house he has built for them, so the Lord values you more than the world in which you live. Do not think you are of secondary importance, created only as an offshoot of the earth, to grind away at your labour and care and pain for a number of years, and then die. No; the apostle believed that God made everything for us, and that as workmen are employed to construct a beautiful palace, so God employs the earth and life and death, and all things as workers and materials to build us. What more comforting doctrine can you imagine? Every tribulation, and all our worries, crosses, and losses are as workmen governed by the Lord for the good of His people. (W. Birch.)
Owned, but not explored
“A dear uncle of mine, an Indian chaplain, made the acquaintance, at Singapore, in 1852, of a Christian widow lady, who told him her story. In 1848 her husband’s death had left her, at Manilla, in much reduced circumstances. She owned a little land in Australia, and she now asked an Australian friend to sell it. He did his best; but one barren little field he could not sell, and the widow seemed the poorer for such a possession. Then, in 1851, gold was discovered in Australia; a mine was found in that rough field; and the widow was secured for life from poverty. What was, and had been, her position? In respect of provision, she had owned every nugget, “all the fulness” of the field, all along. In respect of fruition, she had it all to discover; it was all new wealth. So with you, so with me, in Jesus Christ. We have the fulness of the Spirit--in Him. Have we come to have it--in us? If not, let us be animated by the fact that the gold is in the field, is on the property.” (H. C. G. Moule.)
All things are yours when you are Christ’s
Agreat gulf is fixed between God and man by sin. The Bible reveals a chain depending from the throne of God stretching across the void and holding up the dislocated world.
I. Christ is god’s: that is the highest link. The Creator rejoices in all His works, but He has a special and peculiar interest in man.
1. When the work of creation, as to its bulk, was nearly done, the Creator was not yet satisfied. He found no point of sympathetic contact between Himself, a spirit, and the material world which He had made. Then was held that council in which humanity was planned. “Let us make man in our own image.” Allied to God by an intelligent mind and an immortal spirit, yet wedded to matter by his body, man was added to the upper edge of creation, a link of communion between the Maker and His work.
2. The mystery of the fall came on and the connecting link was broken. But Satan was not permitted to triumph. When the creature called into being as a son has become an alien, where shall God now find a man, holy as Himself, to be His companion and reciprocate His love?
3. Here is the mystery revealed: Christ is God’s. “Behold the man”! He dwells in the bosom of the Father, and yet is bound in brotherhood to the human family. This is the plan of redemption. The Father cometh to no man; no man cometh to the Father but by Him. The Father’s delight in the Son incarnate (Psa_42:1-11.; Mat_3:17) is the uppermost link of the chain whereon all our hope for eternity hangs. How strong and sure it is! Satan tried in the wilderness to separate between this Man and God, as in the garden he had separated between the first man and God. The Tempted triumphed and the tempter fled.
II. Ye are Christ’s: the next link. It is not that He is your portion, but that ye are His. In actual experience, however, the union is mutual. The vine holds the branch, and the branch holds the vine. “My beloved is mine”--there lies my present happiness; but “I am His”--there lies my everlasting safety. A very slight temptation may break asunder your love to Christ; but all the powers of darkness cannot overcome His love to you. Who shall separate? A British subject may be safe although surrounded by enemies in a distant land, and his confidencein his queen may rebuke the feeble faith of a Christian. Note--
1. How He obtains His property.
(1) By the sovereign gift of God. “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me” (Joh_17:1-26.).
(2) By the price of His own blood. Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price.
(3) By the renewing of the Holy Spirit. God the Father gives you to Christ, and you give yourselves. This latter is the effect of the Spirit working repentance and faith in a human heart.
2. How He will use His property.
(1) As objects to exercise His kindness on. The good delight in doing good. Christ in giving grace to His people is getting delight for Himself.
(2) As servants to do His work. He desires your service and deserves it. To work willingly is a mark of a true disciple.
(3) As living epistles in which the world may read the riches of His grace.
(4) For company at His coming, and for portion evermore,
III. All things are yours: the lowest link. All the fulness of the Godhead bodily has been treasured up in Christ expressly that it may be within the reach of His people.
1. The ministry. The full-bodied doctrinal teaching of Paul, the melting and arousing eloquence of Apollos, and the abrupt, fiery energy of Peter--all are gladly recognised as a wisely mingled provision from the hand of that Father who paints the rose and the violet of different hues but equal loveliness. But, besides the bounty of the Giver, the liberty of the receivers also is signalised in this text. Paul and Apollos and Cephas are yours--not ye theirs. In Rome the ministers have the people; here the people have the ministers. The ministry is an article in the inventory of a Christian’s goods. They are the Lord’s gifts to the heirs, not lords over the heritage.
2. “The world.” The world, under direction of its god, wars against the soul. But our Father in heaven holds that enemy and compels it, in His own time and way, to serve His sons.
3. “Life.” The natural life is indeed corrupt, but over its corrupt root the new nature is engrafted, and so this lower earthly life becomes the root of a spiritual life in heaven.
4. “Death.” Through Christ it is only the dark, narrow door in the partition wall between time and eternity, through which the children are led from the place of exile into the mansions of the Father’s house.
5. “Things present or things to come.” All things are yours in virtue of your union to Christ, whether they lie within the horizon of time or beyond it in the unseen eternity. We have reached now those things that no ear hath heard, and no tongue can tell. I once heard a father tell that when he removed his family to a new and ampler residence his youngest son, yet a lisping infant, ran round every room and scanned every article with ecstacy, calling out in childish wonder at every new sight, “Is this ours, father? and is this ours?” The child did not say “yours”; and the father was not offended with the freedom. The infant’s confidence in appropriating as his own all that his father had was an important element in his satisfaction. Such, I suppose, will be the surprise and joy and appropriating confidence with which the child of our Father’s family will count all his own when he enters the infinite of things to come. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
All things ours
“All things mine? Oh, how delightful that would be if only it were true!” But it is true. “All things mine that I may make them Christ’s? But that is hardly so delightful as having all things for my own.” It is more delightful. Nay, to give all to Christ is the only way to make all things yours. So we might talk on this wonderful passage, finding much that seems incredible, but nothing so incredible as the assurance that all things are ours. Even this incredible assertion, however, may grow credible to you if only you approach it from the apostle’s point of view.
I. All things are yours.
1. All ministers are yours. “Oh, yes,” you say, “that is true enough; but what are we the richer for that?” But I am by no means sure that all ministers are yours. I am quite sure that, if they are, you are much the richer for it.
1. St. Paul’s general principle is that the teachers are for the Church, not the Church for the teachers. But the intention of God is one thing and the intention of the Church, as shown by its conduct, is often another.
(1) God intended eloquent Apollos, learned Paul, and sagacious and enthusiastic Peter for the Church at Corinth; but some said, “We are of Apollos.” They were charmed with the eloquence of the mighty expositor of Scripture, but they did not care for the learned Paul or the plain Peter. Others attached themselves to Paul, but thought Apollos too rhetorical and Peter too rustic, &c. Thus this ancient Church flung away two-thirds of its treasure.
(2) All the ministers of the Church universal are yours in the design and intention of God; but do you permit them all to be yours? What, all the ministers of the Apostolic, Patristic, Mediaeval, Roman, Episcopal, Presbyterian, &c., branches of the one Catholic Church? All are yours, and yet how few of them are yours!
2. But here you may object: “We have neither the means nor the opportunity of learning from many of Christ’s ministers.” But do you learn as much, and from as many of them, as you might? Do you study the apostolic preachers with the devotion they deserve? When wise and holy men of other communions than your own publish a volume of choice discourses, do you take as much pains to get it as you take for the last new novel, and read it with even as much interest as you bestow on your daily newspaper? There are those in our Churches who so attach themselves to one minister that, like the Corinthians, they care to hear no one but him. Now I do not say that if you find a minister who can most effectually touch the springs of spiritual thought and emotion within you you are not to love and to addict yourselves to his ministry; but I do say that if you so addict yourselves to one that you can hear no other you are flinging away the greater part of your spiritual heritage. But not only all ministers, “all things” are yours, in precisely the same sense, viz., to use and to profit by.
2. The world. If a deed of gift were placed in your hand which made over a whole country, or even a whole cosmos to you as your private estate, you might be the worse and poorer for it. So vast an estate would entail responsibilities under which the strongest and wisest must faint. If you cared only to make a personal and selfish use of it, and if your possession of it robbed you of all stimulus to labour, to mental and moral culture, you would simply sink into the most astounding sot and sinner under heaven. Property is what we can appropriate. And what in the world is there of which, with due pains and trouble, you cannot get the best it has to give? The splendour of sunrise and sunset, the glory of the seasons, the beauty of flower and herb and spreading tree, the starry canopy of heaven, do they not become yours in proportion as you have power to appropriate their teaching, their value? Any house or piece of land that you have bought you may lose by a thousand accidents, and at the best you will soon have to leave it behind you; but the culture wrought into your very spirit by your love and admiration of the natural world, this will never leave you.
3. What is there in all the forms and varieties of human life which you may not so observe as to learn its highest lessons, as to work the very essence of it into the very substance of your mind? What have men ever done, what great and noble thoughts have they uttered, of which you may not so read as to make all that is so permanently valuable in them your own? Christ has thrown open to you the whole domain of history and of human life; and it rests with you to determine how far you will go up into it and possess yourselves of it.
4. And He has made “death” your friend and servant; for if you believe in Him what is death to you, or to those whom you love, but a transition to more life and fuller?
5. So with “things present,” with which we are so seldom content, and “things to come” which we are so apt to fear. All are yours in proportion as you make them yours.
II. All are yours because you are Christ’s, and that you may make them Christ’s and God’s. Nay, we can only make all things ours as we give them all to Christ and God.
1. All ministers are yours; but when do you make them all yours in fact? Only when you make the best use of the best that is in them, and suffer it to minister to your highest and most enduring welfare. And when you do that, do you not both take them as God’s gift to you and give them back to Him?
2. And in the same way you make “life” yours, viz., as you yield to its nobler influences and suffer them to mould and reform you. That is to say, all life becomes yours as you give your personal life to God.
3. So, again, with death. Only those who believe that Christ has overcome the sharpness and taken away the sting of death, only those know that death is a minister of God for their good. And who are these but those for whom to live is Christ and to die gain? Who but those for whom to depart is to be with the Lord? Death is ours only as we are Christ’s and God’s.
4. And only on the same terms are things present ours and things to come. (S. Cox, D. D.)
The Christian’s possessions
I. The general scope of the declaration. Of course all things are not the Christian’s in the sense of actual right or control. A man possesses that which he turns to his own account. A miser, though abounding in wealth, is a very poor man; although he has all things he possesses nothing. So all things in creation and providence shall as certainly minister to the Christian’s present and eternal welfare as if they were absolutely his own. “All things work together for good to them that love God.”
II. The several particulars.
1. All ministers are yours. Whatever their talents, zeal, piety, fruit, you have an interest in them all. Christ thought of you when He gave some apostles, &c. Feel that you have a personal property in your ministers, not only in their time, talents, prayers, but also in their spiritual prosperity and their growth in grace.
2. The world is yours. The world is created for the saints, and for their sakes is it preserved. It is a mere stage of action for them, and when of these the last has obtained his crown it shall be burned up, having fulfilled its mission in preparing man for a higher condition of existence. The earth hath God given to the children of men, but in an especial sense to the redeemed. It belongs not to men of the world to whom providential gifts are often a ruin.
3. Life is yours, i.e.,as it is a blessing, as it serves us for doing the work of God. He lives twice who lives for life’s great end. Only use it rightly, and life is yours.
4. Death is yours; because to the Christian to die is gain.
III. The solid ground upon which these assurances rest: because “ye are Christ’s.” Ministers, &c., are not yours by any right of your own, not yours for your obedience, your prayers. And therefore remember that if you are not Christ’s, then none of these things are yours. Ministers are not yours, for they shall rise as a testimony against you; nor the world, for it is a master by whom you are held in bondage; nor life, for its things are not blessed to you; nor death, for he comes as God’s executioner, to drag you from your tenacious hold on things present, and to make you view your forfeited interest in all the joys of things to come. Oh, see to it, then, that ye are Christ’s by a good confession, by a choice of service, by faith, by love. (D. Moore, M. A.)
The Christian’s riches
I. Wherein do these riches consist?
1. It was not without intention that the apostle placed at the head the great apostolic personalities. For the highest of man’s possessions is man. What would this whole creation be but for man, the image of God?
(1) But it is man who appears to be least of all ours. How many a man would have given thousands to rescue the life of a beloved child, or have cheerfully laid aside his dignities to lengthen a beloved partner’s life, or have sacrificed a portion of our own life to redeem that of a friend? How then can we say that men are ours, if we cannot hinder their being snatched away from us?
(2) It is true that what is earthly and perishable in man does not belong to us; of that we must be deprived. But all that is imperishable and holy in human nature is ours, and cannot be snatched from us. Centuries have passed since the great apostles passed away; but have they ceased to be ours? The word of repentance which they preached, has it not awakened us? The testimony they bore to the grace in Christ, has it not converted us? The example of love which they have set forth, has it not enlightened us? This Paul, this Peter, &c., are ours. And not only they, but all who walk in their footsteps. Yes, they too are ours who seem to be far removed from us. Paul had been a persecutor of the Church, and became its protector. Peter was a shaken reed, and became like a rock. Apollos was a disciple of the false Greek wisdom (Act_18:24), and became a scholar of Christ. We will not despair, then, of those whom we cannot call ours in reality.
2. All other created things.
(1) On few things do we seem so dependent. There is the lightning, the hailstorm, the flood, the pestilence, war. These forces, which neither the mind nor the will of man can tame or control--are they ours? That wonderful power that carries men across the country, as on the wings of the wind, that still more wonderful power which multiplies thought with lightning speed; that gold which rules the hearts of men; the spirit of inquiry--do these powers belong to us, Christians? Even the gentle gifts which summer scatters over the trees and fields, will not misuse desecrate them, will not sin poison them?
(2) But we must not be misled by appearances. The apostle’s statement is true. For can misfortune touch us when we know that all things work together for our good? When we know that we are not the sport of chance, but that an almighty and all-loving hand sends these trials to us; when we have the experience, too, that we are purified by them as gold by the fire? It is true that the commercial activity of the day may serve the purposes of sin; but does it fail to serve the purposes of the kingdom of God? It is true that a prolific press forges weapons of falsehood and ungodliness; but does it fail to forge the weapons of truth? It is true that gold enters many a house with a message of hatred and hostility; but does it cease to be an angel of love and comfort when we carry it into the dwellings of the poor and wretched? It is true that the spirit of inquiry kindles a fire-brand and casts it into the very sanctuary of God; but does it not also kindle the flame of wisdom and throw light into the sanctuary of Divine truth?
3. But, says the doubter, there is one thing you cannot make your own. It is all-embracing time with life and death, the past, the present, and the future.
(1) We will not dispute that there is nothing on which men seem so dependent as time.
(a) What are we tosay of life--is this ours? We devise a plan of life to-day, to-morrow it lies in ruins at our feet. We build to-day on our health, to-morrow we are stretched on our bed.
(b) And how about death? When we shall die we do not know; that we shall die is certain. There are some who during life never cease to be in bondage to the fear of death (Heb_2:15).
(c) And is the past ours? What we have done, we have done and cannot recall.
(d) And how can the present or the future belong to us? At the present moment is not the future dark before us? What will happen in the next hour or day we cannot tell.
(2) Amid these apparent contradictions we hold immovably to the apostle’s word when he calls time ours.
(a) Of course the empty, perishing, earthly life is not ours. But what does this signify? On the other hand, eternal life, whose pledge for us is the resurrection of Christ, will after this life first attain its full perfection. This eternal life is ours, and death cannot rob us of it. For death is ours in Christ.
(b) The past, too, is ours. The centuries have swept away a hundred signs of human devotion; one is left, it is the Cross. Thousands of words of human wisdom have been forgotten; the Word of God remains. Names that once shone brightly in the firmament are now never mentioned; one name remains, it is the name Christ. Numberless hopes have vanished like the morning mist; one hope remains, is ours--the hope of eternal life. The past is ours: all that is worthy and imperishable in it.
(c) And therefore are the present and future ours too. Let men set up new signs, the Cross alone will remain. Let them utter wondrous words, they will all cease to be heard; the Divine Word will remain. Let new names rise into favour, they will all disappear like meteors, while the name of Christ will be like the sun. Let new hopes delude men, our hope is an anchor sure and steadfast.
II. The conditions to be fulfilled that this may be so. The natural man cannot inherit the kingdom of God; therefore, cannot say “all things are mine,” but must rather confess “I belong to all things.” The context shows how freedom may be gained, and with it the assurance that all things are ours. The apostle is not addressing the unbelieving, but (verse 16) those who have received the Holy Ghost. This is the condition. The way to become possessed of the Christian’s wealth is the way of repentance which leads us to the knowledge of what sin is before the Father; the way of faith which causes us to find in God the Son reconciliation and redemption from sin; the way of regeneration-we are renewed and sanctified by God the Holy Ghost. (D. Schenkel, D. D.)
Christian riches
“Give me a great thought, that I may live upon it,” said a noble man in his dying hour; but even in life there is often need of a great thought to expand and elevate the soul. Such a thought we have in our text.
I. The world has often used these words to deck out a gospel of the flesh. Do we not hear men calling out, “All is yours”? Lordship over the earth is yours; therefore seize, rule, and enjoy. And because all is yours, ye must all equally rule and enjoy; therefore demolish the old distinction between masters and servants, rich and poor. We know, indeed, that in the early Apostolic Church there was a short time when the word, “All is yours,” was quite literally fulfilled (Act_2:44), but this state of matters had of necessity very soon to disappear. The providence of God is not uniform, and in different ways will lead different men, setting some as stewards over much, others as stewards over little. But--
II. The highest good is common to all. In the sense of faith, and hope, and love, we say with the apostle, “All is yours; for ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” What can be more my own than what I possess in best thoughts and feelings? Name anything in the whole world, and I ask whether it is not mine if it may serve my inner man and serve me for growth in wisdom and grace. Wert thou ever so poor, art thou Christ’s, then the whole world must serve thee, for Christ is God’s; but wert thou so rich that thou wouldst have to pull down thy barns and build greater, &c., the days of thy riches are soon numbered. Here, however, are riches which moth and rust cannot corrupt and which cannot be counted. “All is yours.”
1. Paul, Apollos, and Cephas belong to thee, with their varying gifts. For thee the evangelists write, apostles preach, the sacred poets unfold the depths of their soul. For thee is the exhortation and the promise.
2. The world. Yes, not only the kingdom of grace, but also the kingdom of nature, and the lilies of the field and the birds of the air reveal to thee the glory of God.
3. Life or death. How poor would we be if death, too, did not belong to us. The gospel of the flesh leads its adherents up to the gates of death, and just there death, as it were, calls out, “Nothing is yours!” But art thou Christ’s, then “to die is gain.”
4. And whosoever can speak thus can also say, “things present or things to come.” Many perhaps will say, “Yes, no doubt the present is ours--these misfortunes and sufferings--but where are our joy and peace?” But art thou Christ’s, then these times contain a great wealth of Divine exhortations, warnings, appeals, which also belong to thee for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction in righteousness. And if thou yieldest to these, then also the great word belongs to thee: “We are saved by hope,” hope in the brighter morning of eternity, when all the children of God will reap with joy, for they bring in the fruits of righteousness.
III. If the Lord is to be able to give us all, then must we be able to give the Lord all. “Lord, we have left all and followed Thee.” Luther sang, “Everything may go … To us thecrown remaineth.” This we too must learn if we would obtain the promise. Let all go that is now thine own; the earthly, selfish desires which hold thee back, because thou thyself holdest them so fast; and many a thing which, though it has had a noble origin, yet turns thee from the riches of God, if thou wilt hold it fast against the will of God. Let go, therefore, the vain dreams of a happiness which knows neither sufferings nor the cross. Perhaps thou hast thyself already experienced the disappointments of this life. There were perhaps some dear ones whom thou couldst truly call thine own! The grave covers them, and why wilt thou still cling to the earthly possession? In the name of Jesus, let it go. For in Him we know that we should not seek the living among the dead; we know that what is sown in corruption will be raised in incorruption, &c. And the better we learn to say from the heart, “Let everything go, to us the crown remaineth,” the freer, the more joyous, the richer will we be. For then that dies in us which ought to die, and then that lives in us which ought to live. And then we feel that all is ours. (Bp. Martensen.)
The Christian’s heritage
I. The believer may be said to possess all things in God.
1. The mind of a great author is more precious than his books, of a great artist than his pictures. To have the mind is better than to have merely the products of that mind. Give the fountain, and you virtually have the streams. But no earthly or finite mind can transfer its gifts to another. But there is a sense in which we may become sharers of the Infinite Mind from which all that is true and good and fair in the universe proceeds. As really as true, or noble, or holy thoughts become a portion of the mind which apprehends them, does God communicate Himself through the spirit of the believer.
2. The happiness of this mysterious nature of ours is never to be found merely in the possession of God’s gifts; the soul can find its true satisfaction only in rising beyond the gifts, and claiming the Giver as its own. When you covet the friendship or love of a fellow-man, it does not satisfy you that he bestows upon you only outwardgifts; unless the man give you himself, the rest are but worthless boons. So the wealth of worlds would be, to the heart longing after Deity, a
