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

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

Fourth. It is the great design God drives at in his word and ordinances, to make his people holy and righteous.  The word of God—it is both seed to beget, and food to nourish, holiness begotten in the heart. Every part of it contributes to this design abundantly.  The preceptive part affords a perfect rule of holiness for the saint to walk by, not accommodated to the humours of any, as man’s laws are.  These make their laws to fit the crooked minds of men, as tailors their garments to fit the crooked bodies they are [designed] for.  The commands of God gratify the lusts of none. They are suited to the holy nature of God, not the unholy hearts of men. 

 The promises present us with admirable encouragements to toll and allure us on in the way of holiness.  All of them [are] so warily laid, that an unholy heart cannot, without violence to his conscience, lay claim to any of them—God having set that flaming sword, conscience, in the sinner’s bosom, to keep him off from touching or tasting the fruit of this tree of life—and if any profane heart be so bold, while he is walking in the ways of unrighteousness, as to finger any of the treasure that is locked up in the promises, it doth not long stay in their hands, but God, sooner or later, makes them throw it away as Judas his ‘thirty pieces’—their consciences telling them they are not the right owners.  False comforts from the promises, like riches, which Solomon speaks of, ‘make themselves wings and fly away’ from the un­holy wretch, when he thinks he is most sure of them. Again the threatenings—the minatory part of the word—this runs like a devouring gulf on either side of the narrow path of holiness and righteousness, ready to swallow up every soul that walks not therein.  ‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,’ Rom. 1:18. To the promissory and minatory is annexed the ex­emplary part of the word, as Bible instances to con­firm our faith concerning truth and certainty of both. The promises—they are backed with the example of holy men and women, who have beaten the path of holiness for us, and ‘through faith and patience’ in their holy course, have at last ‘obtained’ the comfort of ‘the promises’ in heaven’s bliss, to the unspeakable encouragement of all that are ascending the hill after them.  To the threatenings are annexed many sad ex­amples of unholy souls who have undone themselves, and damned their own souls in unholy ways—whose carcasses are, as it were, thrown upon the shore of the word, and exposed to our view in reading and hearing of it, that we may be kept from being engulfed in those sins that were their perdition.  ‘These things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted,’ I Cor. 10:6.

Thus we see how the whole composition of the Scripture befriends holiness, and speaks what the de­sign of God therein is, to carry on which the more strongly, God hath appointed many holy ordinances to quicken the word upon our hearts.  Indeed all of them are but the word in several forms; hearing, prayer, sacraments, meditation, and holy conference. The word is the subject-matter of them all; only, as a wise physician, doth prepare the same drug several ways—sometimes to be taken one way, sometimes another—to make it more effectual, and [to] refresh his patient with variety; so the Lord, consulting our weakness, doth by his word, administering it to us now in this, and anon in that ordinance, for our great­er delight and profit, aiming still at the same end in all, even the promoting of holiness in the hearts and lives of his people.  And what are they all, but as veins and arteries by which Christ conveys the life-blood and spirits of holiness into every member of his mys­tical body?  The church is the garden, Christ is the fountain, [and] every ordinance, as a pipe from him, to water all the beds in his garden.  And why? but to make them more abun­dant in the fruits of righteousness.

Fifth. It is his design in all his providences.  ‘All things’—that is all providences especially—‘work to­gether for good to them that love God,’ Rom. 8:28. And how do they work for their good, but by making them more good and more holy?  Providences are good and evil to us, as they find, or make us, better or worse. Nothing is good to him that is evil.  As makes use of all the seasons of the year for the harvest—the frost and cold of the winter, as well as the heat of the summer—so doth he, of fair and foul, pleasing and unpleasing providences, for promoting holiness.  win­ter providences kill the weeds of lust, and summer providences ripen and mellow the fruits of righteous­ness.  When he afflicts it is for our profit, to make us partakers of his holiness, Heb. 12.10.  Afflictions Bernard compares to the tease, which, though it be sharp and scratching, is to make the cloth more pure and fine.  God would not rub so hard if it were not to fetch out the dirt that is ingrained in our natures. God loves purity so well that he had rather see a hole than a spot in his child’s garments.  When he deals more gently in his providences, and lets his people under the sunny bank of comforts and enjoyments, fencing them from the cold blasts of affliction, it is to draw forth the sap of grace, and hasten their growth in holiness.  

Paul understood this, when he besought the saints at Rome, ‘by the mercies of God, to present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,’ Rom. 12:1, implying that mercies came from God to us on this very errand, and that God might reason­ably expect a such a return.  The husbandman, when he lays his compost on the ground, looks to receive it at harvest again in a fuller crop; and so doth God, by his mercies.  Therefore doth he so vehemently com­plain of Israel’s ingratitude, ‘She did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal,’ Hosea 2:8.  God took it ill, and well might he, that they should entertain Baal at his cost.  If God sends in any cheer to us, he would have us know that it is for his own entertainment, he means to come and sup upon his own charge.  And what dish is it that pleaseth God’s palate?  Surely he would not have his people eat of any unclean thing, will not himself.  They are the pleasant fruits of holiness and righteousness which Christ comes into his garden to feed on: ‘I am come into my garden, my sister, [my] spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk,’ Song 5:1.

REASONS WHY the Christian Should Have Care to Keep on his Breastplate 2/3

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

Were it possible —which is the height of all blasphemy to think—that the holiness of God could be separated from any of his attributes or works, God himself would cease to be glorious; his sovereignty would degenerate into tyran­ny, his wisdom into craft, his justice into cruelty, &c.  Now the glory of all God's attributes and works re­sulting from his holiness in them all; it follows, that then we glorify God, when we give him the glory of his holiness, and who but a holy creature will or can do that?  While man stands under the power of sin, how can he give God the glory of that which his own sinful nature makes him defy and hate God for?  Had Christ’s therefore been to procure man a pardon, and not to restore his lost holiness, he had been but a minister of sin’s, and instead of bringing glory to God, had set sin in the throne, and only obtained a liberty for the creature to dishonour God without control. Again, man's happiness could not have been obtained without a recovery of his lost holiness.  Man’s hap­piness stands in his likeness to God, and his fruition of God.  He must have the first before he can enjoy the latter; he must be like God before God can take any liking in him.  And God must take full content in man, before he admits him to the enjoyment of him­self, which that he may do, Christ undertakes to make his people ‘holy as God is holy.’ 

 You see now what was the great design that the heart of Christ was so full with, to ‘make us a holy people.’  Well therefore may the apostle bring in that heavy charge against all unholy professors, which he doth with tears, ‘that they are enemies of the cross of Christ,’ Php. 3:18.  Christ came to destroy the works of the devil.  The loose unholy walker—he goes about to destroy the work of Christ.  The Lord Jesus lays down his heart’s blood to redeem souls out of the hand of sin and Satan, that they may be free to serve God, without fear, in holi­ness; and the loose Christian, if I may call him so, ‘denies the Lord that bought him,’ and delivers up himself basely unto his old bondage, from which Christ had ransomed him with so great a sum.  Whose heart doth not tremble at such horrid ingratitude?

Third. It is God’s great design, in the regen­erating work of the Spirit on the hearts of his people, to make them righteous, and to fit them to walk holily before him, Eze. 36:26,27, where God promiseth ‘a new heart,’ and to ‘put his Spirit into them.’  And why will he do this? that he may cause them to ‘walk in his statutes, keep his judgments, and do them.’  An old heart would have served well enough to have done the devil’s drudgery withal.  But God intending them for more high and noble employment, to lift up their head out of sin’s prison, and prefer them to his own service, therefore he throws away their jail-clothes, and beautifies them with the graces of his Spirit, that their hearts suit their work.  When God ordered the temple to be built with such curious care and costly materials, he declared that he intended it for holy use.  That however was not so glorious as the spiritual temple of a regenerate heart is, which is the ‘work­manship’ of God himself, Eph. 2:10.  And for what in­tent reared by him?  If we read on we may see, ‘cre­ated in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.’  This accents the unrighteousness and unholiness of a saint with a circumflex; it lays a deeper aggravation I mean upon his sin, than others’, because committed against such a work of the Spirit as none have in the world besides.  A sin acted in the temple was greater than if the same had been committed by a Jew in his private dwelling, because the temple was a consecrated place. The saint is a consecrated person, and, by acts of unrighteousness, he profanes God’s temple.  

The sin of another is theft, because he robs God of the glory due to him; but the sin of a saint is sacrilege, because he robs God of that which is devoted to him in an especial manner.  Better not to repent at all than to repent of our repentance.  ‘Better not to vow’ and dedicate ourselves to him, and after this to inquire how we may evade and repeal this act.  Such a one tells the world he finds some 'iniquity in God,’ that alters the opinion and practice formerly taken up by him.  In a word, the saint is not only by the Spirit consecrated to God, but is by him indued with a new life from God: ‘you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins,’ Eph. 2:1.  A noble princi­ple of high extraction hath been given you on a high design, that you should live up to that principle in righteousness and holiness.  When God breathed a rational soul into man, he intended not that he should live with the beasts, and as the beasts; nor that thou shouldst have thy conversation as a mere carnal man doth; but that ‘as thou hast received Christ, so thou shouldst walk in him,’ Col. 2:6.

The apostle blames the Corinthians for living below themselves, and like the poor-spirited men of the world, in their corrupt passions.  ‘Are ye not car­nal,...and walk as men?’ I Cor. 3:3.  When thou, Christian, actest unholily, thou sinnest at a high rate indeed.  Others sin against the light of God in their consciences.  That is the furthest they can go.  But thou sinnest against the life of God in thy very heart. The more unnatural any act is, the more horrid.  It is unnatural for a man to be cruel to his own flesh; for a woman to go about to kill the child in her womb.  O how your ears tingle at such a flagitious act!  What then art thou going to do, when, by thy unholy walk­ing, thou art killing the babe of grace in thy soul?  Is Herod marked for a bloody man that would have butchered Christ newly born in the world, and canst thou, without horror, attempt the murdering of Christ newly formed in thy heart?

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.