Page images
PDF
EPUB

DISCOURSE XXI.

PART I.

HEAVEN THE CITY OF CHRISTIANS.

PHILIPP. iii. 20, 21.

For our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

IN

N some of the verses which precede the text, the Apostle had directed the Philippians to be followers of him as their pattern in Christian conversation, and to mark them as examples of holy living, who copied after him in the conduct of their lives. He hath thereby not only intimated, but established it to be the duty of all Christian ministers, to adorn their station in Christ's Church with a holy and unblamable life; exhibiting all the graces and virtues of that heavenly conversation which their religion requires. Hence the duty of those who live under their ministry, to follow and imitate their example, will be evident.

The propriety of this conduct, both in Christian ministers and people, appears from what the Apostle hath said in the two verses immediately before the text-" Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now again tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things."

This declaration of the Apostle ought to convince us, LI

VOL. II.

that those professors of Christianty who, instead of exhibiting the open practice of the graces and virtues of their holy religion in their lives, indulge themselves in vice and immorality, are enemies to the religion they profess. As much as in them lieth, they destroy the efficacy of the redemption of Christ: With regard to themselves, they entirely defeat it. The design of Christ's redemption is eternal salvation; but their end will be destruction.

That we might be at no loss with respect to that conduct which makes a man the enemy of the cross of Christ, and endeth in destruction, the Apostle hath told us, it is the conduct of those "whose God is their belly"—of those, namely, who indulge themselves in the excesses of sensual living; who exert themselves to enjoy the pleasures of the palate; who place their happiness in eating and drinking, not to satisfy their natural hunger, but to gratify the cravings of appetite, made capricious and humorsome by indulgence.

tr

If we reflect that our religion requires abstinence from sensual pleasure, the denial and mortification of the appetites of the body to that degree, that the flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may obey all godly motions in righteousness and true holiness;" we shall not be surprized at the heavy censure the Apostle hath cast on those who make the indulgence of the stomach the principal end of their living. "His servants ye are to whom ye obey." He who obeys the cravings of his stomach, and is perpetually contriving ways and means to gratify its desires, is properly its servant-all his care is, how to serve it; and his greatest happiness arises from its gratification. In truth, it is his God, for it has his affections and services, and is the source of his highest enjoyment.

Another reason which shows the baneful effects of habitually gratifying the cravings of the stomach is, that overfeeding, especially with rich and delicate food, increases and inflames all the other appetites of the body, and, in proportion, the passions of the mind. They become more unruly, more difficult to be controlled, and lead directly to the perpetration of those crimes which the Apostle cen

sures, when he says of those who live in them, "whose glory is in their shame"-Shame, indeed, to follow the bent of inordinate affections into the practice of wantonness and lewdness: Still greater shame, to boast and glory in them, as if they were the highest honour and perfection of human nature.

No better conduct, however, is to be expected of those enemies of the cross of Christ, whose evil character the apostle hath summed up, when he said that they "mind earthly things"-mind them so as to mind little else. The enjoyments and delights of the present scene of their being, engage entirely their attention; in them they place their happiness; on them they employ their pains; regardless of all the hopes and promises of another life; as if, like the brute animals, their nature were capable of no enjoyment but what springs from this world, and is to be obtained in this life.

With far different sentiments does our holy religion inspire all its true votaries. View the pattern which the holy apostle set to the Philippians and to all Christians; to the imitation of which he ardently pressed them, when he said, "Brethren, be followers together of me; and mark them which walk so, as ye have us for an ensample." The example he set in this matter is described in his Epistle to the Corinthians. (1 Cor. ix. 27.) Instead of feeding his body beyond what the necessity of nature required, he kept il under, and brought it into subjection, lest if he neglected to practise that abstinence and mortification which he preached to others, he should become a castaway—a reprobate rejected of God.

In the text he also proposeth his own example as a pattern to others, and describeth it as springing from very different principles, when compared to those which govern the conduct of men of the world. "Our conversation," saith he," is in heaven." We pamper not the body, that we may enjoy its lusts: we make not our belly our God; nor glory in our shame; nor mind earthly things. So far from it, we are scarcely men of this world, and live not according to the fashion of worldly maxims.

The Greek word wairua, translated conversation, signifies the government of a city or country, the administration of that government, a number of people living under the same laws, the rights and privileges of a citizen.

The meaning of the expression, "Our conversation is in heaven," is, therefore, that the government of the community to which Christians belong, and the administration of that government, are in heaven, not on earth-that they are members of a society which, though part of it be in the world, is not of the world, but is taken out of it, and, by adoption, made free of the New Jerusalem, the city of the great King, Jesus the Saviour, the head of the Church which is his kingdom.

Of this kingdom Jesus spake when, before "Pontius Pilate, he witnessed a good profession," and said, "My kingdom is not of this world." Its polity, therefore, and the administration of it, are from heaven, the residence of its King. For when he had finished his ministry here on earth, having made expiation for the sin of the world by his death; having laid the foundation of his Church in this world, and committed the administration of it. to his apostles, under the direction of the Holy Ghost; having triumphed over the devil, sin, and death, by his resurrection from the grave; he ascended up on high to take possession of his kingdom which he had purchased, or earned by his humiliation and sufferings, and is now "seated at the right hand of the throne of God." Heb. xii. 2.

From this state of exaltation he gave gifts unto men, (Ps. lxviii. 18. Eph. iv. 8.) particularly the gift of the Holy Ghost, the blessed Spirit of God, whom, according to his own most true promise, he sent from the Father upon his Apostles and Church, to be with them to the end of the world," that the Lord God might dwell among them." Under the direction of this Spirit is the government, the ministry, the faith, doctrines, discipline, and whatever relates to the Church, placed. All the offices in the Church are his various ministrations for the edification, the building up, the improvement, the perfecting of the Church in faith and holiness. And through the Church, every mem

ber of it receives the heavenly influences, and holy inspirations of this divine and life-giving Spirit.

Men, therefore, are not born members of this Church by their natural birth; but according to the appointment of him who is its King and Governor, its Redeemer and Saviour, they who by faith embrace his mediation, are taken out of this world, because of its enmity against God, translated into his Church, and made denizens of it by the regeneration of baptism and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.

All our sentiments and expressions of spiritual and eternal things, being taken from things natural and temporal, it is highly probable that St. Paul was led into this manner of representing the condition of Christians, by the practice of the Roman government under which he lived. With them it was common, in reward of services perform-.. ed, or as an encouragement to the performance of them, or from mere good-will, to admit, not only particular persons to the freedom and franchises of Rome, but whole cities in many parts of their empire. All who were afterward born free of such cities, were born free also of the city of Rome.

.

This was the case of St. Paul. He was born at Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, a free colony; that is, its inhabitants enjoyed the immunities and rights of citizens at Rome; and this freedom he pleaded on more than one occasion, to screen himself from such punishment as could not be inflicted legally on Roman freemen.

Philippi, to the Christian inhabitants of which St. Paul wrote this Epistle, had been admitted to the same privileges. They would readily understand the meaning of his expression, "Our citizenship is in heaven," to be, that as they were citizens of heaven, they ought to attend to the interest, and honour, and manners of that city to which they belonged; not to mind earthly things, because they related merely to this world, out of which they had been taken by the mercy of God, and translated into the kingdom of his dear Son; made freemen of Jerusalem, which is above, the city of the living God. And that as they

[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »