REASONS WHY the Christian Should Have Care to Keep on his Breastplate 1/3

I shall adduce some reasons why the Christian should have especial care to keep on the breastplate of righteous­ness;—that is, exhibit the power of a holy and righteous life.

           

First.  In regard of God, whose great design is, to have his people ‘a holy people.’  Second. In re­gard of Satan, whose design is as much against the saints’ holiness as God is for it.  Third. In regard of holiness itself, the incomparable  excellency of which commands us to pursue it.

God’s great design—his people’s holiness.

          

 Reason First. In regard of God, whose great design is, to have his people ‘a holy people.’  This is enough to oblige, yea to provoke, every Christian to promote what God hath so strongly set upon his heart to effect.  He deserves to be cashiered that endeav­ours not to pursue what his general declares to be his design; and he to have his name blotted out of Christ’s muster-roll whose heart stands not on tiptoes ready to march, yea to run, on his design.  It is an honourable epitaph which Paul sets on the memory of David, long before deceased, that he, ‘in his own gen­eration served the will of God,’ Acts 13:36.  He made it the business of his life to carry on God's designs: and all gracious hearts touched with the same loadstone of God’s love stand to the same point.  All the private ends of a sincere soul are swallowed up in this, that he may ‘do the will of God in his generation.’  This he heartily prays for, ‘Thy will be done.’  This is his study—to find what is the ‘good and acceptable will of God,’ which is the very cause why he loves the Bible above all the books of the world beside, because in none but that can he find what is the mind and will of God concerning him.  Now I shall endeavour to show that this is the great design of God to have his people holy.  It runs like a silver thread through all God’s other designs.

          

 First. It appears in his very decrees, which—so far as they are printed and exposed to our view in the Scripture—we may safely look into.  What was God driving at in his electing some out of the lump of mankind? was it only their impunity he desired, that while others were left to swim in torment and misery, they should only be exempted from that infelicity?  No, sure.  The apostle will tell us more.  ‘He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy,’ Eph. 1:4.  Mark, not because he foresaw that they would be of themselves ‘holy,’ but ‘that they should be holy;’ this was what God resolved he would make them to be.  It was as if some curious workman, seeing a forest of trees growing upon his own ground—all alike, not one better than another—should mark some above all the rest, and set them apart in his thoughts, as resolving to make some rare pieces of workmanship out of them.  Thus God chose some out of the lump of mankind, whom he set apart for this purpose—to carve his own image upon them, which consists in ‘righteousness and true holiness’—a piece of such rare workmanship, that when God hath finished it, and shall show it to men and angels, it will appear to exceed the fabric of heaven and earth itself.

Second. It was his design in sending his Son into the world.  It could be no small occasion that brought him hither.  God wants not servants to go on his or­dinary errands.  The glorious angels, who behold his face continually, are ready to fly wherever he sends them.  But here God had a work to do of such im­portance, that he would put trust, not in his servants, but [in] his Son alone to accomplish.  Now, what God’s design was in this great work will appear by knowing what Christ’s was, for they—both Father and Son—were agreed what should be done before he came upon the stage of action.  See therefore the very bottom of Christ’s heart in this his great undertaking opened.  He ‘gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works,’ Titus 2:14. Had man kept his primitive righteousness, Christ’s pain and pains had been spared.  It was man’s lost holiness he came to recover.  It had not been an enterprise becoming the greatness and holiness of such a one as the Son of God to engage for less than this. Both God and man, between whom Christ comes to negotiate, call for holiness—God’s glory and man’s happiness; neither of which can be attained except holiness be restored to man.  Not God’s glory, who, as he is glorious in the holiness of his own nature and works, so is he glorified by the holiness of his people’s hearts and lives.