THE FULNESS OF CHRIST THE TREASURY OF THE SAINTS.
NO. 1169
A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 19TH, 1874,
BY C. H. SPURGEON
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
“For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.” — Colossians 1:19.
“And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace.” — John 1:16.
These two texts make up a very beautiful sketch of the plan of salvation. Put before your mind’s eye the sinner, empty of all holiness, and of all hope, despairing, and ready to die. Put also before your mind God full of mercy, willing to come and fill that sinner’s emptiness, to bring all his communicable attributes, and dwell in that sinner, and give him first the mercy which can blot out his sin, and then the holiness which can lift him up from his ruined condition. Next note the difficulty in the way: God cannot come as half a God, all his attributes must come together, and should the just God come into this guilty sinner to fill his emptiness, the flame of justice must destroy him. It is not possible for God, even our God, who is “a consuming fire,” to come into contact with that which is sinful without destroying it. What then? Shall the sinner remain empty, and shall God’s fullness remain uncommunicated? Behold the plan which infinite wisdom has devised! The Eternal Son of God becomes man, the divine nature comes in all its fullness and dwells in the Mediator Christ Jesus. Coming into him he was made to feel the mighty burnings of justice, which caused him agony but could not consume him, for in him was no sin. Justice burned and blazed within him, and cast him into a bloody sweat, yea, brought him to the cross and to death, because he stood in the sinner’s place; but this golden vessel though heated was not melted; it could contain the divine fire, and yet not be destroyed, and now in Christ Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and, moreover, the divine nature is in him in such a way as to be capable of communication to the sons of men; of course the essence of Deity is not communicated, for that would be to make men into Gods, but we are “made partakers of the divine nature” in the sense of receiving the same character, and becoming the children of God. That which God could not bring to us directly by reason of our inability to receive it, he has now brought to us through a Mediator, by placing it in the man Christ Jesus, that we, coming to him, might freely receive of it. The next step in the plan of salvation is this — that after the fullness of God has come to man in the person of his Son, every one that cometh to him by faith receives of his grace. Salvation is not by what you bring to Christ, but by what you take from him. You are to be receivers first, and then, by-and-by, through the power of grace you shall give forth from yourselves rivers of living water to others. In your first coming you come empty, having nothing but your sin and misery; as empty, undeserving sinners you receive of his fullness, and all your life long continue to do the same. The grace already given is not the climax, or the conclusion, you go on receiving more and more. Grace increases your capacity for grace, and that enlarged capacity becomes filled, and so the fullness of God comes into you till you are filled with it, and you rise from grace to glory, being made like unto God, and fitted to dwell where he is for ever and ever.
Now, unconverted ones, take note that this is the plan of salvation, and the only plan. You must obtain God’s love and mercy and holiness by receiving it through the Mediator, Jesus Christ. You have not yet received it: I ask you how long will you tarry without it? You are in some degree aware of your need, for you are not ignorant of the gospel; oftentimes have you heard the voice of its invitation, and have been almost persuaded to receive the fullness revealed in Christ Jesus. How long halt ye between two opinions? How long do ye hesitate? This is the way, the safe way, the suitable way, the only way which is open to you, and it is open to you at this very moment; will your feet never tread it? Will your disobedient steps for ever wander till at last you sink in despair, and die eternally? God have mercy upon you, and bring you to receive of the fullness which the Father has stored up in his Son Christ! Needy sinners, I charge you do not insult the fullness of Christ by thinking that you are full enough yourselves. Never think of putting your own righteousness side by side with the divine, nor think of mixing your tears with Jesus’ blood, nor of bringing your prayers or your faith to increase the all-sufficiency of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. He wants nought of you; come and take everything from him, for in him all fullness dwells.
As you may not insult his fullness, so I pray you do not neglect it. Do not stand by this fountain and refuse to drink. Do not pass by the riches of his grace as though they were nothing to you, lest haply when you come to die your heart should be wrung with terrible remorse because you have despised the Savior’s love. “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” Put not off these matters from month to month, but “to-day if ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts.” Hasten now unto the place where God himself has come to meet you namely, in the person of his Son.
Moreover, as I charge you not to neglect the grace of our Lord Jesus, so would I encourage you not to distrust it. All fullness dwells in Jesus, a fullness which is meant to be given out to all who receive it as the gift of grace. Believe in this fullness; and, empty as you are, do not despair any longer when you remember that Jesus has a supply for every possible need. Come, though your head be bowed with grief, for Jesus never did reject a sinner, and he never can. It is his office and calling to cleanse the guilty and to receive the lost. Come to him now, and may we, ere this service is done, be able all of us to sing, “It pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell,” and “of his illness have all we received, and grace for grace.”
Let not these words be forgotten by those for whom they are meant, but still I have not taken my text this morning with the view of so preaching from it; I have another aim altogether. Moreover, it will be right for me to say that I do not intend to go into an exposition of these texts, having explained them several times before; I have only taken them with one object, namely, to address myself vehemently to the servants of God, that they may be exhorted to lay hold of the fullness of the power, and holiness, which dwell in their covenant Head. During this last week I have given to my brethren in the Conference a motto which lay on my own heart; it is “Forward! Upward!” These are the watchwords of this morning–Forward! Upward! I want you, dear brethren, to see that every preparation is made for greater growth and greater success. I want you to be encouraged to seize upon that which lies before you, but which is too often treated as if it did not exist, and to rise by the power of the Eternal Spirit to something higher than you have hitherto accomplished or even attempted.
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I. My first point this morning is this: There Is A Glorious Fulness In Jesus. Brethren, if it be so, why are we so weak, unfurnished, and unhappy? There is an infinite fullness in Jesus, a fullness of all that any saint can ever want to enable him to rise to the highest degree of grace. if there be anything lacking for the attainment of the divine image in us, it is not a deficiency Christward, it is occasioned by shortcomings in ourselves. If sin is to be overcome, the conquering power dwells in him in its fullness; if virtue is to be attained, sanctifying energy resides in Christ to perfection. If I see before me an eminent child of God, whose conversation is in heaven, I may not dare to say that I am not capable of being as sanctified as he is, for the same Lord is mine as well as his. I have in my flesh no power whatever; for I am emptiness itself, and in me the truth is realized, “Without me ye can do nothing;” but on the other hand the power to do all things lies in Christ, and the power to become fully consecrated streams forth from him. “With God all things are possible.” “In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,” and they who dwell in him shall find things impossible with man become simple every-day facts with themselves if they will but have faith in the mediatorial fullness. Brethren, I am going to say nothing but what you all know, and I do not mean to garnish it with finery of words. The truth is that there are many who are barely Christians, and have scarcely enough grace to float them into heaven, the keel of their vessel grating on the gravel all the way; my prayer is that we may reach deep waters, and have so much grace that we may sail like a gallant bark on the broad ocean with a glorious cargo on board and all colors flying, so that there may be administered unto us an abundant entrance into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For this everything is provided. Christ has not merely placed enough bread on the table to keep us from starving, his oxen and fatlings are killed, he has spread a royal festival. He has not provided a scanty garment which may barely hide your nakedness, but he has brought forth the best robe, and has procured earrings for your ears jewels for your necks, and a crown royal for your heads; for it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell for all his saints. If you have not these riches the fault lies with yourself. It is there, you might have it if you had but faith to take it. Too often we sit down like beggars on the dunghill, and groan and cry because of the poverty of our nature when we ought to be rejoicing in the Lord. I thank God that we can groan, for that is something; but there is a more excellent way, a better gift to be earnestly coveted. In Christ ye are rich to the fullness of riches; get ye up, I pray you, to the high places, and realize for yourselves the fullness of God in Christ Jesus.
The fullness which dwells in our Lord we may rest assured is sufficient for the conquest of the world. It is not enough for you or for me that we should be wholly consecrated to Christ, our desire is that the whole world should be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. Never can we be satisfied while there remains one sinner unsaved, one idol upon its pedestal, or one single error to darken the minds of men. For Christ we do not desire England only and the civilised nations, but we claim for him the darkest dens of cannibalism and the vilest haunts of piracy. The pennon of the cross shall wave where now black flags poison the breeze; it shall be lifted high where to-day Kalee and Juggernaut set up their ensigns; for the Lord God omnipotent shall reign from shore to shore. We have in Christ Jesus all the might which is needed for subduing the nations, for all power is given unto him in heaven and in earth. We have, dear brethren, I fear, too often been considering the amount of money and the number of men which would be needed; indeed, I remember a remarkable paper being read explaining to us how much expenditure it would require to evangelise the world, a calculation which I regarded as vanity of vanities and nothing more, for if mountains of money were put before us it might just as well be shovelled into the infernal deep for all the good it could do, if regarded as at all essential. Our exchequer needs more golden treasure, and, thank God, we have it. Depend upon it, when the church is fit to be trusted with money she will have it. Pecuniary straitness is only an index of lack of grace, and is so far a good thing, because it brings before us in palpable form our real poverty before the Most High. But brethren, for the conquest of the world the strength lies in the man Christ Jesus, and since in him all fullness dwells, we have all the necessary power at our disposal. We are never to say, “Those thieves and criminals are too depraved to be converted;” for in our Lord there is fullness of power to convert the most abandoned. We are not to say, “That alley in the darkest part of the city will never be cleansed from its abominations;” Jesus could cleanse Sodom itself. We are never to leave a tribe of savages unevangelised because they are too degraded, nor are we to quail before an uneducated and subtle nation because it is too sceptical; all power for all cases is in Jesus; he is the armoury of the house of David, in him we shall find a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men. Let us go to the armoury, and we shall receive the invincible weapons of our Holy War, ay, and the strength with which to wield them, the might which ensures victory.
Beloved, the text puts away from us, as far as the east is from the west, every conceivable objection that may be raised as to what a saint can do, for surely the very thought of difficulty is rendered absurd by the fact of all fullness residing in our Lord on our behalf. It is not a fullness for teaching merely, but a fullness for convincing; not a fullness for convincing of sin simply, but for converting and bringing to full salvation. It is not a fullness for justifying the believer alone, but a fullness for sanctifying him; and not a fullness for sanctifying him for a little while merely, but a fullness to keep him to the end, a fullness which can fill him with all the fullness of God. Come to whatever place you may, you shall not say, “Here I am at a nonplus,” but there will you find a new illustration of the might of the eternal God which dwells in Christ Jesus. The fact is we have a superabundant force in Christ and if we did but know it, instead of talking about the struggles of the church, and the strain that is put upon us, to hold our own, the joy of the Lord would give such strength to us that we should not remember our own efforts, but like the flood which rushes down the mountain after the rain, the flush of life from Jesus would speed on with a tremendous force, overleaping every obstacle, and filling our souls to the brim. God grant us to feel that we do not serve a little Christ nor a niggard Lord. Our God is the God of the hills as well as the valleys, and in the strength of the Lord Omnipotent we triumph in every place. Only let us serve God in real faith, and we know not what we may live to see. God grant us to know this first truth that there is a fullness in Christ, and in the strength of that fullness may we cry, “Forward and upward.”
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II. The next encouraging fact is that The Fulness Is In Jesus Now. “It pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell.” The glory of the past exercises a depressing influence upon many Christians. “We have heard with our ears, and our fathers have told us the wondrous things which thou didst in their day and in the old time before them,” but we dolefully complain that the golden age of Christianity is over, its heroic times are matter of history. Indeed, this feeling is transformed to fact, for scarcely any church now existing realizes that it can do what its first promoters did, all appear to be quite sure that these are bad times and but little is to be done in them. We do not expect now-a-days to find a Methodist so full of fire as the first field-preachers, the Quakers are never fanatical, and even the Primitives are not Ranters now; the old reproach has ceased because the old ardor which provoked it has cooled down. So far so bad. I see grave cause for sorrow in all this. A people are in an evil case when all their heroism is historical. We read the biographies of former worthies with great wonder and respect, but we do not attempt to follow in their steps with equal stride. Wherefore not? It has pleased the Father that in Jesus all fullness should dwell, a fullness for Paul, a fullness for Luther, a fullness for Whitfield, and blessed be God, a fullness for me, and a fullness for you. All that Jesus has given forth has not exhausted him. Christianity has not lost its pristine strength; we have lost our faith, there’s the calamity. Oh, ignoble sons of glorious sires, ye have degenerated, but not your Master; and if, even in your degeneracy, you would cast yourselves upon your unchanging God, you would rise to more than the strength of your sires, and do yet greater things than they. The fullness of Jesus is not changed, then why are our works so feebly done? Pentecost, is that to be a tradition? The reforming days, are these to be memories only? I see no reason why we should not have a greater Pentecost than Peter saw, and a Reformation deeper in its foundations, and truer in its upbuildings than all the reforms which Luther or Calvin achieved. We have the same Christ, remember that. The times are altered, but Jesus is the Eternal, and time touches him not. “But we are not such men as they.” What, then, cannot God make us such? Are we weaker than they? The fitter to be instruments for the mighty God. Out on the cowardice which thinks the past is never to be outdone! Is not the Lord of Hosts with us? Is anything too hard for him? We must labor to eclipse the past as the sunlight eclipses the brightness of the stars.
The mass of professors have their eye on the future only, the good times are coming by-and-by, but they are not here yet. We look forward with much hope to the golden age that is to be, when we shall see the fullness of Jesus, and nations will be born in a day. Brethren, does my text say, “It pleased the Father that in him all fullness shall one day dwell”? I trow not, but in him all fullness now dwells. Whatever has been done can be done now, and whatever shall yet be done by his grace can be done to-day. Our laziness puts off the work of conquest, our self-indulgence procrastinates, our cowardice and want of faith make us dote upon the millennium instead of hearing the Spirit’s voice to-day. Happy days would begin from this hour if the church would but awake and put on her strength, for in her Lord all fatness dwells. When th
HYMNS FROM “OUR OWN HYMN BOOK” — 436, 415, 249.