Sermon 3223. Salvation As It Is Now Received
(No. 3223)
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1910.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, JUNE 23, 1872.
"Whom having not seen, you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full ofglory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls." 1 Peter 1:8,9.
[Another Sermon by Mr. Spurgeon upon the same text is #698, Volume 12-SEEING IS NOT BELIEVING, BUT BELIEVING IS SEEING.]
We usually speak of the greater benefits of salvation as being in the future. We desire that we may be found in Christ inthe day of His appearing and that we may have a share in His eternal Glory. But, Beloved, salvation is not altogether a thingof the future-it is very decidedly a present matter, a blessing to be possessed now and to be enjoyed now-and our text bringsout that idea very clearly! Peter does not write about the elect strangers hoping to receive salvation, by-and-by, but puttingit all in the present tense, he says, "Whom having not seen, you love. Though now...you rejoice... receiving the end of yourfaith, even the salvation of your souls." The perfection of salvation is reserved for the Second Coming of the Lord, for atpresent the body is mortal because of sin-it is subject to pain and it will die unless the Lord should first come and it will,for a while, lie in the grave. But at His appearing shall be a resurrection of the body and then body and soul reunited shallexperience the fullness of salvation! In that respect, therefore, salvation still remains in part a matter for the future,yet with the true child of God, the essence of salvation is a thing of today. Even now we rejoice with unspeakable joy andfull of glory, receiving the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls!
I am going to speak upon this matter in the following way. First, we will enquire, what part of salvation do we receive hereand now? Secondly, how do we now receive salvationl And then, thirdly we will make the solemn enquiry for all here, Have wereceived salvation, and if so, how far have we gone in the reception of it?
I. My first question is, WHAT PART OF SALVATION DO WE RECEIVE HERE AND NOW?
My first answer to the question is that, in a certain sense, we already possess the whole of it, for all salvation is wrappedup in Christ and Christ is ours if we are truly believing in Him. He is this day our Savior and our All-in-All- He is already"made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption." There is nothing of salvation that is outside of Christand, therefore, since Christ is ours, the whole of salvation is ours. It is ours by the grip of faith and the Grace of hope-thatliving hope which is sure of realization-that well-grounded hope which cannot be disappointed. Our expectation is of so vivida character that it brings not only near to us, but into actual present possession, joys which as yet are not revealed! Soagain I say that, in a sense, it is true for us to say that we have received in faith and hope the salvation of our soulsif we have truly believed in Jesus, for-
"The moment a sinner believes, And trusts in his crucified God, His pardon at once he receives, Redemption in full throughChrist's blood."
But, secondly, if we are to answer the question distinctly and in detail, we should say that if we have really trusted inJesus, we have so far received the salvation of our souls that we have, at this moment, the assurance of the perfect pardonof all our sins. Let me repeat those words-if we have really believed in Jesus, we have, at this moment, the assurance ofthe perfect pardon of all our sins! And I will venture to put it as strongly as this and to say that yonder white-robed spiritsbefore the eternal Throne of God are not more clear of the guilt of sin before the bar of Infallible Justice than was thedying thief the very moment that he turned his eye in faith to Christ upon the Cross of Calvary-or than you are if you arenow trusting to the same Savior, or than I am as now depending alone upon the blood and righteousness of Jesus
Christ, my Lord and Savior! The pardon which God gives to Believers in Jesus is not a semi-pardon. It is not a putting awayof some of their sins, or a putting them away for a time-it is a perfect putting away of their sins forever, a casting ofthem, once and for all, behind God's back into the depths of the sea so that they shall never be found again! Yes, they shallbe so completely put away that they shall cease to be, according to that Divine declaration, "The iniquity of Israel shallbe sought for, and there shall be none." Oh, what a glorious Truth of God is this, that although a poor tried child of Godmay feel the force of his inbred sin and have to continually struggle with it-and though he may, from day to day, be consciousof his many imperfections, yet before those Eyes that see everything, there is no spot to be seen upon the Believer in Christ-Imean no spot in this respect-that he can never be condemned or punished for his sin! His sin is finally and forever pardoned!God has blotted it out like a cloud that has been blown away and completely dispersed. Therefore let our spirits rejoice ifwe are truly trusting in Jesus! And oh, that some who have never done so before, would now look believingly unto Him! If theydo thus look this moment, they shall obtain perfect pardon and so shall receive the end of their faith, even the salvationof their souls! I cannot help repeating that sweet verse of Kent's which I have often repeated to you, which sounds so strange,but which is, I believe, absolutely true-
"Here's pardon for transgressions past, It matters not how black their cast. And, O my Soul, with wonder view, For sins tocome, here's pardon, too."
And next, Beloved, we have received the salvation of our souls in this sense, that the alienation of our hearts from God isnow effectually removed. We are saved from that alienation and that is a very great part of salvation. Once our backs wereturned towards God, but now our faces are turned towards Him. At one time we did not admire His Character, nor desire to imitateHim, nor wish for His friendship nor, perhaps, even so much as think of His existence, much less did we aspire to give Himhonor! But now, having believed in Jesus, we have undergone a complete change! We are not yet what we ought to be-we are stilla long way off what we expect to be one day-yet we do desire to be what we should be. We admire the Character of God eventhough we have to prostrate ourselves in the dust when we see how far our own character is from likeness to it, and the wholeset and current of our desires is towards purity and holiness. If we could have our way, our way would not be a sinful one.If our will could be gratified, our will would be that God should have His will with us and that we should be in all thingsconformed to the Divine Will! All true Christians are conscious that it is so with them and this is a great part of salvation.Indeed, it is destruction to be alienated from God, and it is salvation to be reconciled to Him! It is destruction to anyoneto be a lover of sin. The man who loves evil is a destroyed man-a man who is broken in pieces-that which should be the gloryof his manhood is absent from him. But when he is brought to love God, the ruins are rebuilt! And though, as yet, every partof the renovated building may not be finished, the Divine Architect who drew the plans of it from eternity, will never leavethe work till the last stroke of the sacred hammer and chisel shall have been given-and the completed structure shall havehad the headstone placed upon it amid shouts of, "Grace, Grace unto it!" Blessed be God that we have this salvation, now,in that we are saved from our former alienation of heart from God!
In the next place, we have received the salvation of our souls in the sense that we are saved from the killing power of sin.Before we believed in Jesus, we were not capable of those sacred actions which are now our daily delight. We could not pray.We may have "said our prayers," as so many do, but the living breath of true God-inspired prayer was not in us. How couldit be in us while we were still dead in trespasses and sins? We could not believe. How could we do so when we had not receivedthe gift of faith from the ever-blessed Spirit? The fact is, we were under a terrible bondage and just as a corpse is underbondage to death and cannot stir hand or foot, lip or eye, so were we under bondage to sin and Satan. But we are under thatdeadly bondage no longer, for we are living men, free men in Christ Jesus our Lord who has overcome that death for us! Nowwe can pray! Now we can praise-not always as we would like to do, but still, the aspiration is there and the power is there-andwhen God graciously helps us by His Holy Spirit, we rise to a high degree of vigor in both those sacred exercises! So, whenthe killing power of sin is gone, what a mercy it is! What a bliss it is! And in this sense, also, we receive the salvationof our souls.
More than that, Beloved, the reigning power of sin has now gone from every Believer Once we were slaves to sin, under sin'sdomination. Sin said to us, "Go," and we went, or sin said to us, "Stay! Obey not God," and we stayed and at sin's biddingdisobeyed God. But now, sin no longer has dominion over us, for we are not under the Law, but under Grace. And though we evennow sometimes hear sin's mandate and the flesh inclines us to yield obedience to it, there is a
blessed spirit of rebellion against sin within our heart so that we will not obey sin's commands, but seek after that whichis just and holy and right in the sight of God!
Now I am going to take another step and possibly some of the feebler folk among us may think it is too long a step for themto take. Yet I pray God that many of us may practically prove that we have taken it. Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,it is possible and it ought to be the general rule for Christians to enjoy present salvation in the sense of being now free,to a very high degree, from sin in their daily life and conduct No, more-they ought not to be satisfied without aspiring tobe absolutely free from it! It is after this that they should seek, even though they do not attain to it. I am fully persuadedthe perfection in the flesh is not attainable here, yet that Truth of God, as I believe it is, has been used by a great manypersons as a sort of damper to the sad ambition of renewed spirits! I do not think it ought to be so used, nor that it wouldlegitimately be so used. Suppose I am a sculptor? If it is not possible for me to attain to the perfection of Praxiteles orPhidias, yet I must come as close to them as I can-and I shall not be a master of the sculptor's art unless I seek to imitatethose who have been the most proficient in it. Suppose, also, that through the infirmity of the flesh, I shall never in thislife be perfect, like Christ-yet I must have no lower model, nor must I say to myself, "I cannot imitate that perfect Model,"but, crying to the Strong One for strength, I must believe that the Omnipotence of God can overcome every sin! And I mustalso believe that it is possible for me, by the Grace of God, to get every sin beneath my feet. And I must never say to anyone sin, "I shall have to spare you, for you are too strong for God to slay." It would be blasphemy to talk like that!
I fear that some Brothers and Sisters think that a quick temper can never be overcome. But it must be overcome! The reasonwhy so many professors so often fall into that sin is that they do not believe that it is conquerable and, therefore, theydo not pray it down! Another person, perhaps, has a sluggish disposition and he thinks, "I must always be so. It is my natureand the flesh is weak." It is true that the flesh is weak, but it is equally true that God is Almighty! And it is not ourown strength but Divine strength that is to procure the deliverance of our soul from sluggishness! So we must cry mightilyunto the Lord for Divine Grace to overcome this or any other sin to which we are peculiarly prone. God has not put us intoCanaan and said to us, "You may spare some of those Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites and Jebusites!"His command to us is, "Slay them all! Let not one of them escape!" There must be no sin tolerated in any Believer in Christ!And though you are not perfect, you must never say, "Up to this point, I am perfect, and that is as far as God can make meperfect." Dear Friends, do you believe in an Infinitely powerful God? Do you believe that the Holy Spirit is able to workin you anything and everything that He wills to work? Then, Brothers and Sisters, stop not short of the highest point thatis attainable by mortal men and seek to be "holy as God is holy!" Alas, some professors of religion are hardly even moral!Their pretended Christianity is a stench even in the nostrils of worldlings, for they do not conform to the common rules ofordinary decent society-and what true Christians long for is to possess real holiness, to walk with God as Enoch did, to abidein Christ, to shun every false way, to have-
"A heart from sin set free"-
and a conscience tender as the apple of the eye! Oh, that we could all come up to this standard! And we can! It is possible!This is attainable, by the Grace of God, through the effectual working of the Holy Spirit. I again say that I do not thinkthat absolute perfectioncan be reached here, but I cannot tell how near we can come to it. That I would like to prove by happypersonal experience-and I beseech every Brother and Sister in Christ here to join with me in seeking to know how we may, evennow, receive the salvation of our souls from the power of sin!
I am quite sure that there are many Christians who have been completely delivered from sins into which they readily fell intheir early days. You know that infants suffer from a great many diseases. All through the period of babyhood, they are liableto various ailments which no longer afflict us who are grown-up men and women. So it is with some Christians-when they havegrown in Grace to the stature of men in Christ, they do not have the little complaints of babyhood. I do not say that thisis true of all professors of Christianity, for alas, there are many of them who have to be wheeled about in baby carriagesalthough they are 50 or 60 years of age! While they were little children, we had to dandle them on our knees and carry themin our arms and give them milk-and they still want milk, and still want dandling now that they are getting gray-gray-beardedbabies! But we need to get them out of that state of babyhood, for there is something far better even on earth than beingspiritually mere babes all our lives! May all of us who are in Christ grow to the stature of men and women in Christ! Themore of such any Church shall have among her members, the better will it be for her and the more will God be glorified! Letus who are the Lord's, resolve that everything that is to be had of God this side of Heaven, we will have! Let us not be contentto get just inside Christ's house and to sit down there and say,
"Thank God, we are safe. We have got over the threshold," but let us seek to press onward to the chief table of rich refreshmentand inner fellowship with Christ and to know the secret of the Lord which is with them that fear Him, that so we may findthat "glory begun below" of which Dr. Watts so truly sings-
"The men of Grace have found
Glory begun below!
Celestial fruits on earthly ground
From faith and hope may grow." II. And now, secondly, (and with greater brevity, not professing to dive into the depths ofthe text, but merely skimming its surface, as the swallow touches the brook with its wing)-HOW DO WE NOW RECEIVE THE SALVATIONOF OUR SOULS?
First, it is entirely from Jesus Christ-" Whom having not seen, you love, in whom, though now you see Him not, yet believing,you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls." Everythingof salvation that a Believer receives, comes to him out of the one storehouse wherein all fullness abides-that is in ChristJesus! Never believe, Christian, that you will ever get any Divine Grace out of yourself! It is a dreary and useless taskto send the bucket down into the dry well of our nature in the hope of drawing up a supply of Grace. Oh no, Beloved, lookaway from self and look alone to Jesus, for from Him, and from Him, only, do we receive the salvation of our souls!
Then note that the channels through which we receive salvation from Christ are first, faith-"in whom, though now you see Himnot, yet believing, you rejoice." None of us have seen Christ. We sometimes foolishly wish that we had, but believing in Himis better than merely seeing Him-for many saw Him when He was upon the earth-and yet perished! But no man ever truly believedin Him and then perished. Faith is that eye which savingly sees Christ on the Cross. And it is only as we continue to lookto Him by faith that we receive the present salvation of our souls from sin. You can never kill any sin if you turn your eyesaway from the Cross. There is no stream that can cleanse from inward lusts but the precious blood of Jesus that flowed onCalvary. Whoever has been victorious over any temptation, it may truly be said of him, "he overcame through the blood of theLamb." So that there is no way of receiving the blessings of a present salvation except through believing in Jesus!
Our text also tells us that another channel of salvation is love-"Whom having not seen, you love." The love of Christ is thegreat force that enables Grace to kill sin! The love of Christ and sin are like the two balances of a pair of scales-if singoes up in our esteem, our love to Christ is going down! And whenever our love to Christ goes up, sin must go down in thesame proportion. With little love to Christ, you will walk unwarily, but with great love to your Lord, you will walk carefullybefore Him and your practical holiness will become manifest to all around you. Though we have not seen Christ, we love Him!And through that love we receive a further assurance of the salvation of our souls from inward as well as outward sin. Thisis the precious golden conduit through which the power of Divine Grace flows freely into our souls. Oh, for more fervent loveto Christ!
Then our text stays that we also receive this present assurance of salvation through joy in the Lord-"In whom...believing,you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." This joy is a flaming sword like that which the cherubim waved at thegates of the Garden of Eden! It blazes, it cuts, it kills. Once let us really rejoice in Christ as our Savior and we becomeimmediately guarded from sin. I believe that many sins are hatched beneath the wings of doubt and fear, but when we get awayfrom those ugly things and live rejoicing in God, then we say, "Down with sin! We cannot endure to have it in our lives."He who has sweet flowers in his hand flings away evil-smelling weeds! And he who has such a diamond of Heaven as "joy unspeakableand full of glory" casts away the pebbles of earth with which He was pleased before. He who rejoices with joy unspeakableis not likely to be allured by the paltry joys of earth-they have lost all their former charm to him. Their siren songs haveno attraction to his ears for he has heard the celestial note of the harps of Heaven! What bliss it is to be able to rejoicein Christ as our Savior, for this guarantees to us the salvation of our souls, not only now, but to all eternity!
Why does the Apostle say that we rejoice with joy unspeakable?. Is it not, first, because this joy is too great to be told?He is indeed rich who cannot count his wealth. He has so much that he does not know how much he has and he is indeed fullofjoy who has so much joy that he cannot tell anyone how much he has!
I also think that Peter calls our joy, "unspeakable," because if we were to try to explain or describe it to carnal men, theycould not understand us. You cannot explain to a person who has never tasted honey, how sweet it is. Neither can
you explain to a man who knows not the joy of the Lord, how joyous a thing it is. He could not comprehend what your wordsmeant-you would be talking to him in an altogether unknown tongue!
Moreover, Brothers and Sisters, you all know the old proverb, "Still waters run deep." The worldling joy barely covers thestones of his daily sorrow and, therefore, it babbles like a shallow brook as it runs along in its narrow bed. But the Christian'sjoy is broad and deep and it scarcely makes any sound as it majestically rolls on like some great river on its way to thesea! The Christians joy is unspeakable because it is unfathomable even by those who enjoy it! And wherever this joy comes,it has a purifying effect, delivering us from sin and making us thus receive the salvation of our souls.
This joy is also said to be "full of glory." Now, the joys of this world have no true glory in them. Look at the worldly manwho is most joyous and glad-what glory is there about him? Any so-called joy that comes through sin is just the opposite ofglorious! The drunk's joy puts him below the level of beasts. But there is an elevating power about the Christian's joy-thejoy of salvation, the joy of adoration, the joy of gratitude, the joy of love to God, the joy of being made like Christ, thejoy of expecting His coming-all this is glorious joy and it is "full of glory!" I saw lately a picture representing the ComingMan, the Lord Jesus Christ. It represented Him as having in His hands cannons, triumphant arches, flags, kings, emperors andall the insignia of royalty-and blowing them away as chaff is driven before the wind! Come, O blessed Coming Man! You knowhow we need You! Well, He will come at the right time-and all the glory of this world will fly away just like that when Hecomes! But our joy is full of a glory which the Coming Man who is, "over all God, blessed forever," will keep on increasingso that it shall be to us the more full of glory forever and ever! Such joy as this glorious joy is, makes us look down uponthe world's joys and sin's joys as utterly despicable! And so, by lifting us up above them, it further enables us to receive,here and now, the salvation of our souls!
III. There was much more that I wanted to say, but my time has almost gone. In the good old Puritan times, they had an hourglasson the pulpit and when the sands were running out, the minister was warned that it was time to stop. But he often turned itover, again, and went on for another hour! I cannot do that, so I must hasten to a close with the
solemn enquiry, HAVE WE RECEIVED THE SALVATION OF OUR SOULS? AND IF SO, HOW FAR HAVE WE
GONE IN THE RECEPTION OF IT?
The first and most vital question for you, my Hearers, is this-have you received the salvation of your souls I know that youhave heard about salvation and many of you know what the Bible says about it. But that is not enough. "I know what salvationmeans," says one, "I know the way." Then take heed that you do not perish in the light! If two men have to go out in the dark,which is the one to whom the darkness is the more dense? Why, the one who has been sitting in the light! If you go out ofyour brilliantly illuminated room, you realize how dark it is outside where there is no light above or below. Take care, youwho are sitting in the Light of God today, lest for you there should be "reserved the blackness of darkness forever" becauseyou shut your eyes to the Light and will not receive the salvation of your souls.
"Ah, but," say some, "we profess to be saved." I am glad to hear that and I would not even hint that your profession is notsincere, but I would urge you to hint to yourself that there is a possibility that all may not be well with you! Are therenot many who think they have received the salvation of their souls, but who have not really done so? In St. Peter's, at Rome,I saw monuments to James III, Charles III, and Henry IX-kings of England-but these potentates were quite unknown to me! Certainlythey never reigned in this land, so the royal names upon their monuments are only a subject for ridicule and scorn! And youprofess and call yourselves Christians? If you really are so, it is well, but if you are not so, I can conceive that in thenext world there may be spirits that shall say to you, "You professed to be Christians, yet you are in Hell! You sat at theLord's Table and ate the bread and drank the wine in memory of His death-that death in which you had no saving interest-theAtonement that never redeemed you!" O no, my Hearers, may this never be true of any of us! But may God, in His Infinite Mercy,save us and so may we really and truly receive, and not merely profess to have received the salvation of our souls! If wehave really cast ourselves upon Christ, though we have not seen Him-if we do truly love Him and if we have, to some extent,at least, the joy unspeakable and full of glory within our hearts- then, indeed, we have received the salvation of our souls!
Then comes the other question, how far have we received this salvation? If we had a sacred thermometer given to us in orderto measure our spiritual heat, what would our temperature be? Are you, Brother, above freezing? I fear that some here arebelow zero! Have any of you come up to anything like blood heat yet? What a wondrous heat of love that must have been whenthe lifeblood of Jesus flowed from His wounds as He hung upon the Cross of Calvary! Oh, that we could always have our religionat such blood heat! Have we reached that spiritual temperature yet? There have been saints-and there are still saints willingto suffer the loss of all things for Christ's sake. Nothing has been too hot, too hard, or too heavy for them to endure inHis blessed service. They have counted shame and loss to be honor and gain if they might but "glorify God and enjoy Him forever."Have we come anywhere near to them? We do have occasional communion with Christ, but have we abiding fellowship with Him?Do we dwell near to Christ?
But what about these who have not yet believed in Him? I heard an evangelist say one night in this Tabernacle, "He that believeson the Son has everlasting life. H-A-S-that spells, 'got it.'" That is an odd way of spelling, but it is sound divinity! TheLord enable you all to believe in Jesus! Then you will have "got it," as our friend said. Or, as Peter, writing under theInspiration of the Holy Spirit wrote, "Believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end ofyour faith, even the salvation of your souls."
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: 1 PETER 1.
Verse 1. Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ It must have been very pleasant to his heart to write those words-not "Peter, whodenied his Master." Not, "Peter, full of imperfections and infirmities-the impetuous and changeable one of the twelve," but,"Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ," as truly sent of God as any of the other Apostles and with as much of the Spirit of hisMaster resting upon him! "Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ"-
1, 2. To the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia andBithynia, elect according to the foreknowledgeof God the Father You might go for 50 years to some places of worship and never hear the word, "elect," ever mentioned! Modernministers seem to be ashamed of the grand old Doctrine of Election, but it was not so with the Apostles and the early Christians!They were accustomed to speak of one another as the elect of God. The Doctrine of Election was most precious to their heartsand, therefore, Peter writes, "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father"-
2. Through sanctifcation of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace,be multiplied. We not only need Grace, but we need much Grace! And also peace. And we need a greatly increased measure ofboth those blessings. Do not be satisfied, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, with the Grace that you already have. Be thankfulfor it, but ask for the Divine multiplication of it-regard the Grace which you have already received as being like the boy'sloaves and fishes-and expect that Christ will continue to multiply it for you and for thousands of others round about you!"Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied."
3-5. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again untoa lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and unde-filed, and thatfades not away, reserved in Heaven for you who are kept by thepower of God through faith unto salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time. [See Sermon #948, Volume 16-A STRING OF PEARLS.] What a vast mass of meaning is packedaway in these words! Men's books, even when they are good, are like gold-leaf-a little precious metal is very thinly hammeredout so as to cover a wide surface-but almost every Word in the Bible seems to contain a whole mine of heavenly wealth! Note,Beloved, what Peter says concerning your new birth-you are begotten by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! At yourfirst birth, you were born in sin. But now you have been born-again, through Grace, by the almighty power of God! Notice,also, unto what you are born-unto a hope that is full of life, a lively hope, a hope of immortality, a hope whose root isin the grave of Christ, the empty grave from which He has risen and which is the assurance that because He has risen, youalso shall rise. See, further, to what you have been born-"to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadesnot away." See, also, how that inheritance is entailed upon you, for it is "reserved in Heaven for you." And see, too, howyou are kept for it, for you "are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."
6. Wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if necessary, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations[See Sermon #222, Volume 4-THE CHRISTIAN'S HEAVINESS AND REJOICING.] What? Can there be rejoicing and heaviness in the sameheart at the same time? Oh, yes! Our experience has taught us that we can be at the same moment in heaviness of heart andyet rejoicing in the Lord!
7-9. That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it is tried with fire, mightbe found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: whom having not seen, you love; in whom thoughnow you see Him not, yet belie ving, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith,even the salvation of your souls.You have that already if you have believed in Jesus! You have received a
present, immediate salvation! There are some who do not understand or realize this. They miss the whole joy of our holy religion.They are always hoping to be saved, by-and-by, but those who are in Christ Jesus by a living personal faith, receive hereand now the end of their faith, even the salvation of their souls!
10-12. Of which salvation the Prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the Grace that should comeunto you: searching what or what manner of the time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testifiedbeforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves,but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the Gospel unto you withthe Holy Spirit sent down from Heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.
[See Sermons #1524, Volume 26-YOUR PERSONAL SALVATION and #2697, Volume 46-ANGELIC INTEREST IN THE GOSPEL.] Observe, dearBrothers and Sisters, that the Prophets did not speak without due consideration, but they "enquired and searched diligently"into the meaning of that salvation of which they "testified beforehand." Holy Scripture must not be read by us carelessly.We ought to peer, pry and search into it to get at its hidden meaning. And the prophecies as well as the rest of the Wordare to be searched into by us upon whom the ends of the earth have come. Observe, also, that this Divine Revelation is ofgreat interest to the holy angels before the Throne of God-they stand gazing down as if they were trying to understand thewondrous mystery of Redemption and the great and glorious Gospel of the Grace of God.
13-16. Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the Grace that is to be brought unto youat the Revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance:but as He which has called you is holy, so be you holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, be you holy;for I Am holy. Be not only moral, upright, truthful and so forth, but, "be you holy." That is a very high attainment! "Beyou holy" and observe the reason for obedience to the command-"for I Am holy." Children should be like their fathers. Thereare many children who bear in their very faces, evidence of their sonship. You know who their fathers were by the image thatthe children bear. Oh, that it were always so with all the children of God! "Be you holy; for I Am holy."
17. And if you call on the Father, who without respect of person judges according to every man's work, pass the time of yoursojourning here in fear. You are only here for a while. You are sojourners, foreigners, pilgrims passing through a countrywhere you have no abiding place. Be, therefore, careful and even fearful lest you should become like the people among whomyou dwell! Have a holy dread of the contaminations of sin-"Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear."
18-21. Forasmuch as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversationreceived by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by Him dobelieve in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. What a wellof joy this always was to Peter, that God had raised His Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead! And this is our joy today! Thisis one of the facts which are proved beyond all question, that Jesus Christ, who died upon the Cross and was buried in Joseph'stomb, did actually rise again! This is the cornerstone of the Christian faith- one of the great facts upon which we foundour confidence as to salvation by Jesus Christ.
22, 23. Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, seethat you love one another with a pure heart fervently: being born-again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, bythe Word of God, which lives and abides forever. God's Word never dies! God's Word never changes! There are some who thinkwe ought to get a new Gospel every few years or even every few weeks-but that was not Peter's notion. He wrote and he wasDivinely Inspired to write concerning "the Word of God, which lives and abides forever."
24, 25. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower thereoffalls away: but the Word of the Lord endures forever. And this is the Word which by the Gospel is preached unto
you. [See Sermon #999, Volume 17-THE WITHERING WORK OF THE SPIRIT.]