"Barabbas, Part XV"
"Barabbas, Part XV"
“Barabbas, Part XV:” by Romans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUnDKD1NMH4
Tonight is Part 15 of our Series, Barabbas. He was a man whose name meant “son of the father.” He was guilty and worthy of punishment, but he was chosen, without merit, to be released without punishment. More than in name only, we are the adopted sons and daughters of God. We are continuing, this evening, on our third “rabbit trail,” namely the phrase, “ye are,” enabling us to examine how different we are from Barabbas.
We, as believers and members of the Family of God, experience a whole range of experiences and blessings that differentiate us from Barabbas. When Barabbas left that Judgment Platform, all similarities to us ceased. Unlike Barabbas, for us – in the present tense – “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:15). We are, now... right now, by and through Christ, renewed and transformed in ways Barabbas never dreamed of.
First, tonight, we will review and examine our first “ye are” declaration found in 1 Corinthians 3:16:
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”
The Sermon Bible says of this: “Consider the Offices of the Holy Ghost. I. It is the office of the Holy Ghost to effect such a change that the sinner may be described as born again and made a new man in Christ Jesus. The decayed frame of the soul is rebuilded, its lost powers restored, blind prejudice is removed from the understanding, and the bias of the will turned from the tendency to evil, and thus he who has been brought up a child of wrath with unruly passions and inclinations, and loving nothing but what God disapproves, is transformed into a child of God, with a capacity to apprehend spiritual things, a disposition to entertain them and strength to pursue them.
And as it is through the work of the Holy Ghost that man is first created anew to God in righteousness and true holiness, so it is owing to this Divine Agent that he is afterward enabled to pursue steadfastly the Christian course. It were even nothing that Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree, if there were no supernatural agency to apply to ourselves the expiatory virtue of Christ’s sacrifice. It is the office of the Spirit to translate us from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God’s dear Son.
I. Every Christian is a dwelling-place of God. This is not a metaphor. It was the outward temple that was the metaphor. The reality is that which you and I, if we are God’s children in Jesus Christ, experience. That God should dwell in my heart is possible only from the fact that He dwelt in all His fulness in Christ, through whom I touch Him. That Temple consecrates all heart-shrines; and all worshippers that keep near to Him partake with Him of the Father that dwelt in Him.
As temples all Christians are to be manifesters of God. The meaning of the Temple of all temples is that there the indwelling Deity shall reveal Himself, and if it be true that we Christian men and women are, in deep and blessed reality, the abiding-places and habitations of God, then it follows that we shall stand in the world as the great means by which God is manifested and made known, and that in a twofold way—to ourselves and to other people.
II. As temples all Christian lives should be places of sacrifice. The difference between all other and lesser nobilities of life and the supreme beauty of a true Christian life is that the sacrifice of the Christian is properly a sacrifice—that is, an offering to God, done for the sake of the great Love wherewith He hath loved us. As Christ is the one true Temple and we become so by partaking of Him, so He is the one Sacrifice for sins for ever, and we become sacrificers only through Him.
III. This great truth of the text enforces the solemn lesson of the necessary sanctity of the Christian life. The first plain idea of the temple is a place set apart and consecrated to God. Christianity is intolerant. There is to be one image in the shrine. One of the old Roman Stoic emperors had a pantheon in his palace, with Jesus Christ upon one pedestal and Plato on the one beside Him; and some of us are trying the same kind of thing—Christ there, and somebody else here. Remember, Christ must be everything or nothing. Stars may be sown by millions, but for the earth there is but one sun. And you and I are to shrine one dear Guest, and one only, in the inmost recesses of our hearts.
A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth, May 6th, 1886
Christians, the Temple of God. I. A temple is a place in which Deity is supposed specially to dwell, and in which He may be approached in worship. It supposes the existence of God and His willingness to hold intercourse with His creatures, and these are truths which have been universally admitted. The true dwelling-place of spirit is spirit; the true temple of Jehovah is the human soul. Christ appears not to abolish sacredness, but to extend it; not to defile holy ground, but to make all the earth holy; not to demolish temples, but to multiply them by making human souls more truly God’s habitation than ever had been the sanctuary upon the sacred hill. And thus our Apostle—Jew though he was—drew attention from the outward and visible, saying, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"
II. Glance at the past history of this temple. It is in ruins. The lamps have gone out, and the altar is overturned. No incense rises from the censer, no anthem swells from the choir. Majestic, it is still lovely even in decay; but the wind is wailing amid the colonnades, the filth defacing the chiselled relics, the screech owl nestling in the ivy, and the viper hissing among the rank weeds that grow round a few shattered columns that are still erect. Ah! how eloquently these things declare, "Know ye not that man was once the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God did dwell in him? If any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy."
III. Consider the reconstruction of the temple. This was Christ’s great work. He himself was a temple. This world has been consecrated by Jesus Christ, the High Priest of the universe. Not only so; He makes us individually temples. We were polluted—polluted by sin; but He cleanses the temple from its pollution. We are led under the influence of the Spirit of God to deplore the desolation, to long for the reconstruction of the temple, and when this change in our heart is produced the temple is rebuilt. Christ is the builder of it; He is the chief corner stone. Because sin polluted, God forsook it; but because Christ has purified it, God has returned to it, dwells in it, makes it glorious with His presence...
Newman Hall, Penny Pulpit, No. 3890.
References: 1Co_3:16.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii., p. 124; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 327; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College, p. 38; Hutchings, The Person and Work of the Holy Ghost, p. 118.
It is at the very root of all worship to believe not only that God is near us, but that He has made a temple within us. Every faculty we have is but the reflection of His light in us; our wisdom and our love, that seem so truly ours, are really His, as children believe that windows are in flame when their elders know that it is but the beam of the declining sun reflected back from them. All that is good in us—body or mind—is the present work of the Creator; nothing is ours but sin. What love must not this awaken in me towards Him who is my Father indeed! What an atmosphere of glory and sanctity invests every other soul that is or might be the possessor of the same excellent privilege!”
Our next “ye are” stop, tonight is 1 Corinthians 6:11: After listing a wide range of sinners whose deeds would keep them from inheriting The Kingdom of God, Paul goes on to say in this verse, “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
The Preacher's Homiletical tells us, “Observe “were … were … were.” Partly historical, partly ideal. In ideal, Faith, Baptism, Renewal, Separation from sins of old character and life, coincide in time; in fact, Baptism may be pre- or post-dated in regard to Faith and Renewal; Separation may very imperfectly accompany the rest. Justified.—Protestantism rightly lays stress upon the relative change involved in pardon of sin; makes this its definition of Justification. Yet (e.g. Wesley, Sermons) “some rare instances may be found wherein the terms ‘justified’ and ‘justification’ are used in so wide a sense as to include sanctification also; yet in general use they are sufficiently distinguished from each other both by St. Paul and the other inspired writers.”
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS. — I. The kingdom of God.—1. Observe how the phrase and idea had got cleared in Paul’s mind from all the foolish and ridiculous Rabbinical accretions and anticipations of a great temporal monarchy under Messiah, in which, freed from the Roman or other yoke, Israel should be the nation, and the Gentile world exist for the sake of the Jew. 2. We have here a case of the true Evolution.
(1) Israel had been the kingdom of God on earth. As Babylon was Nebuchadnezzar’s, or Egypt was Pharaoh’s, or Damascus Rezin’s or Hazael’s. Jehovah was the only, the real, King of the realm. David, Solomon, etc., were understood to be only viceroys under Jehovah. Jehovah’s law was State law. Idolatry was treason. Citizens were born into the citizenship; Israel, in the midst of the nations, stood distinguished as the nation of God in the land of God. But it never perfectly realised the idea. The land never was cleared of enemies for Jehovah. The people never did perfectly keep Jehovah’s law. They were not satisfied with, or mindful of, the true King Jehovah. At last, when the mob howled wildly around Pilate’s judgment seat, “We have no king but Cæsar,” came the beginning of the end of even this imperfect embodiment of God’s idea.
(2) Next, the Church of Christ is made to exhibit “God’s kingdom.” Again there is a separate people, God’s “peculiar people,” but of no one nation, located in no one land. The kingdom is wherever a heart is in which Christ is accepted as God’s anointed King of His new Israel. “Kingdom of God within you.” Every heart won is a new piece of territory added to God’s realm on earth. God’s “royal,” “perfect, law of liberty” is the State law, and rules the hearts of the citizens of this better setting forth of the “kingdom of God.”
(3) “Better,” but not perfect, or ideal. For that we look to Eternity. Heaven is at last the idea of God realised. A people all holy, all happy, in a land without sin or curse; every heart beating pulse and pulse in communion with the King; love to the King the one sufficient, all-embracing law for every subject, written in the heart; God ruling over a race, all His people, dwelling in a world [perhaps “a new earth”] undisputedly His dominion. Thus, as Israel, the Church, the inner Experience of believers, Heaven—God’s recovered idea of a “kingdom of God” has progressively been exhibited “in many parts and in many manners;” each “illustration” traced on the same lines as its predecessor, with additions, modifications, added detail.
II. Its citizens.—Not “the unrighteous.” 1. Only an absolute exclusion when the kingdom of God is Heaven. Impossible to conceive of the Holy City admitting “what defileth,” etc. (Rev_21:27; Rev_22:15); cannot pass the gates.
2. Very imperfectly attempted in Israel. Levitical law had many enactments whose sanction was, “That soul shall be cut off from among the People.” But those—never actually enforced to any great extent—missed nearly all forms of “unrighteousness” which did not culminate in overt action.
3. Only partially to be accomplished in the Christian Church. In the sub-Pentecostal, almost ideal, days of the Church, the King vindicated the principle by the cutting off of Ananias and Sapphira [the New Testament analogue of the death of Achan]. But God is not perpetually stepping forth in acts of holy self-vindication against sin in His world or in the Church of His Son.
All Church discipline, and forms (or tests) of Church membership, are so many humanly devised, often God honoured, methods of endeavouring to keep out the “unrighteous,” or to exclude them when in. But they never can secure more than an approximation to the idea of a kingdom in which no “unrighteous” are found. No method, actual or proposed, ever gets worked with perfect intelligence, or perfect faithfulness; no method of human administration can deal with heart-unrighteousness.
4. There is a perfect, self-acting, discipline of exclusion; a Divine excommunication. Sin means real incapacity for understanding, seeing, entering, the kingdom here; an utter unfitness for heaven, a moral impossibility, hereafter. Sin forfeits justification; the “blood” no longer “cleanses;” it negatives the possession of the holiness without some degree of which no man is really regenerate or sanctified, nor can be a child in the family or a citizen of the kingdom. “Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away”; the Vine-dresser’s knife executes its sentence of excommunication. The Church must often leave the dead branch still attached to the Vine; or must be ignorant of the fulness of its death. “Be not deceived.”
III. Candidates for citizenship.—1. Who but the “unrighteous”? What a catalogue! “Thieves,” “effeminate,” “drunkards,” cannibals, murderers, sinners of every type, degree, age, race! From such the citizens are recruited! No citizen who was not an alien once. [No quarry from which stones cannot be got fit for Christ’s building. No stone which cannot be utilised by Him. There is really no other stone than such as this in the building.] The life-history of every citizen follows the formula, “Such were you, but ye were washed.… Ye are citizens.”
2. To such the kingdom comes by “inheritance.” (True now, and true “when the Son of Man shall come in His glory,” ut supra, {Latin: "as above.") Such became “joint-heirs with Christ” in the possession of the kingdom. By inheritance; a concomitant of the new status, the new life; so certainly as they are “washed,” etc., do they inherit. The “washing,” etc., brings with it, ipso facto, an entering into possession. And as certainly by-and-by, with an unbroken sequence, does the “washing,” etc., go with the “inheriting.” There is no other final goal and resting-place congruous with, and possible for, the renewed citizen life. No entering without a change preceding; no change without the inheritance following.
IV. The initiation.—“Washing, “sanctifying” justifying.” (See CRITICAL NOTES, above) Paul not speaking with any theological precision of order. Yet if sanctification be only the relative holiness, completed by a “separating” act, no necessary difficulty to find it followed by “justification” in the ordinary sense of pardon,—the (forensic) discharge from all liability to penalty on account of a broken law; the two acts of God’s grace, separable in thought. coincide in time. Or, better, remember that the status of a justified man is a perpetually renewed grace; underlying all after-developments of the gracious life; assumed as the foundation on which all the superstructure of holiness is reared.
Even in {God's Kingdom}, the saint will be there, and will remain there, only as a sinner justified, accepted, for the sake of that “Lamb” in whose “blood” he has trusted for salvation. The basis of all is the objective work of that Christ, who is revealed in His name as exactly what He is to, and for, us. On this rests, and rises, the (subjective) work of the Spirit of God. As the eruption of the leprosy falls off when the new health courses through the system, so these old, foul sins fall away from the life, when the spiritual health is renewed and becomes full, by the entering and indwelling of the Spirit of God.
I. Past state of redeemed.—Applicable to all redeemed, everywhere; all sinners, by nature governed and influenced by same principles. Heart impure. Four things true of their past unregenerate state:
1. Void of moral rectitude. Conscience burdened with guilt. Heart’s throne occupied by intruder; they enslaved by sin.
2. Subject to impure influences. Affections defiled. If conscience loses authority, nothing to prevent most debasing slavery. Love of self, of pleasure, of the world—three mighty powers control soul. Every thought, emotion, feeling, under power of one of these. In us—in appearance better than Corinthians—these more successfully checked in outward development.
3. Slaves of wrong habits. Deeds evil. Conscience and affections wrong, deeds must be inconsistent with truth and righteousness.
4. Incapable of spiritual enjoyment. No capacity, no taste, no fitness, for the exalted pleasures of religion, the pure joys of the heavenly world. “New creatures” alone adapted to “new heaven.” A foul, old portrait.
II. The present state of the redeemed.
1. The change. (1) An initiatory act. “Washed;” allusion to baptism, striking emblem of moral cleansing. But evidently also reference to another washing, which alone can take away sin,—work of Holy Spirit on heart. “The commencement of wonderful change in believer’s soul: opening of understanding, impressing of heart, moving of affections, enkindling of new thoughts and desires. Separation from world, conversion to God.”
(2) Progressive development. “Sanctified.” No faultless perfection. A process of spiritual cleansing. An ascent by slow, gradual, continued progress.
(3) Beautiful completion. “Justified.” Condensed from J. H. Hughes, “Homilist,” New Series, i. 125.”
Our next “ye are” declaration is found in 1 Corinthians 6:20: “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.”
Albert Barnes tells us, “For ye are bought - Ye Christians are purchaseD; and by right of purchase should therefore be employed as he directs. This doctrine is often taught in the New Testament, and the argument is often urged that, therefore, Christians should be devoted to God; At this point there are two quite significant cross-references regarding our being bought with a price that I would like to list, here: The first is 1 Peter 1:18-19: “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:”
The second "bought with a price" cross-reference is Revelation 5:9 which states, “And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;”
With a price - A price is that which is paid for an article, and which, in the view of the seller, is a fair compensation, or a valuable consideration why he should part with it; that is the price paid is as valuable to him as the thing itself would be. It may not be the same thing either in quality or quantity, but it is that which to him is a sufficient consideration why he should part with his property.
When an article is bought for a valuable consideration, it becomes wholly the property of the purchaser. He may keep it, direct it, dispose of it. Nothing else is to be allowed to control it without his consent - The language here is figurative. It does not mean that there was strictly a commercial transaction in the redemption of the church, a literal “quid pro quo,” for the thing spoken of pertains to moral government, and not to commerce. It means:
(1) That Christians have been redeemed, or recovered to God;
(2) That this has been done by a “valuable consideration,” or that which, in his view, was a full equivalent for the sufferings that they would have endured if they had suffered the penalty of the law;
(3) That this valuable consideration was the blood of Jesus, as an atoning sacrifice, an offering, a ransom, which “would accomplish the same great ends in maintaining the truth and honor of God, and the majesty of his law, as the eternal condemnation of the sinner would have done;” and which, therefore, may be called, figuratively, the price which was paid. For if the same ends of justice could be accomplished by his atonement which would have been by the death of the sinner himself, then it was consistent for God to pardon him.
(4) Nothing else could or would have done this. There was no price which the sinner could pay, no atonement which he could make; and consequently, if Christ had not died, the sinner would have been the slave of sin, and the servant of the devil forever. (5) As the Christian is thus purchased, ransomed, redeemed, he is bound to devote himself to God only, and to keep his commands, and to flee from a licentious life.
Glorify God In your body - Let your entire person be subservient to the glory of God. Live to him; let your life tend to his honor. No stronger arguments could be adduced for purity of life, and they are such as all Christians must feel. Honor God; live to him; From Barnes' Comment from Matthew 5:16: “Let your light so shine ... - Let your holy life, your pure conversation, and your faithful instructions, be everywhere seen and known. Always, in all societies, in all business, at home and abroad, in prosperity and adversity, let it be seen that you are real Christians.”
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Barabbas, Part 15”
This Discussion was originally presented “live” on July 31st, 2019
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