He Which Stablisheth Us

He Which Stablisheth Us

II Corinthians 1:21

Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God;

God has taken full responsibility; and therefore shall have all the glory: for everything He has accomplished by covenant promise in Jesus Christ. The First Cause of all the blessedness procured, by covenant, for the children of the covenant, is the everlasting love of God the Father in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:39; John 17:23), which blessedness, is according to His love; and His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began (II Timothy 1:9). The Meritorious, Procuring Cause of this blessedness, is the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ; which is the clothing, the wedding garment, of the children of God in the covenant of grace in Christ Jesus. The “righteousness of God” (Romans 1:17) established by Jesus Christ in His life: by fulfilling the precept of the law of God, and in His death by enduring the infinite punishment of the law of God, and exhausting the total cursedness of the broken law. This obedience unto the death of the cross, is the wedding garment required of all those who would have part in the “marriage supper of the Lamb” (Matthew 22:11-14; Revelation 19:6-9). The Immediate Efficient Cause or the Immediate Efficacious Cause, is the “holy calling” (II Timothy 1:9) of God the Holy Ghost. The gift of the Holy Ghost is procured, or purchased for the children of the covenant, by the blood of Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus said: “Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away: (by His cross death: writer) the Comforter (the Holy Ghost with all His gifts and influences: writer) will not come; but if I depart, (if I ratify, or establish, or seal, the everlasting covenant, Hebrews 13:20, in my blood of the New Testament, Matthew 26:28, through My cross death) I will send him unto you.” (John 16:7).

“The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the LORD.” (Proverbs 16:1). Without this preparation of the heart from the LORD, men will perish, spiritually dead in trespasses and in sins, for since the fall of human kind in Adam all men are born spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1). Being evil by nature (Matthew 7:11) and having no inclination to live unto God their creator, they will live in chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment; (II Peter 2:4). By that corrupted nature and living unto the desires of the flesh and of the mind, they will continue the children of wrath to all eternity.  As it is written: “Having the understanding darkened, (to spiritual things, by spiritual death in Adam: writer) being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:” (Ephesians 4:18).

In this verse (Ephesians 4:18) the Apostle Paul tells us four terrible things about human kind as we are brought from the womb of nature.

(1.)            Having the understanding darkened: our natural understanding is darkened. In our first created condition, the race of men was upright (Ecclesiastes 7:29; Genesis 1:26-31) created in the image of God, with abilities commensurate with that exalted station in which we were created. Man was created in the image of our Lord Jesus Christ; who is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). In the condition in which we were created, spiritual understanding was a character of our creation, for God breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living soul, until that event man was a lifeless body formed from the elements of earth, from the dust of the ground, of the earth, earthy, a mixture of the elements of earth as it had pleased God. But man was not made complete, until he was made living; by the breath of God; and as it was then so it is now, God must breathe upon us the breath of life, in the birth which is from above, for “that which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:6).  As human kind comes forth from natures womb, we come forth in the image of Adam, after the fall (Genesis 5:3): not with our spiritual abilities impaired; but, spiritually dead in trespasses and in sins, with our understandings of spiritual things darkened by an “evil heart of unbelief” (Hebrews 3:12); and the total depravity of the will, which is “after the workings of Satan”, whereby men will not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved, (II Thessalonians 2:9-10; John 5:40; Jeremiah 6:16-17). As the race of men came from the Creator’s hand we had within us the ability to know God, to obey, love, and rejoice in God. We had the ability to fellowship with God, but after the fall in Adam all this is lost; and we as a race are come forth lost to God, in our minds there is only enmity to God (Romans 8:7; I Corinthians 2:14). And in our fallen nature we love sin and self, being rebellious against God (Psalm 68:18): and the truth as touching “the doctrine of God” (Titus 2:10), the gospel of God (Romans 1:1-4); and not understanding how God justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5; 3:26). Unless God will shine the gospel light in our darkened hearts, we will remain in that state to all eternity; being blinded by the god of this world (that is Satan: writer), to the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ (II Corinthians 4:1-6).

(2.)            Being alienated from the life of God: not God’s own life that He lives in Himself, but that life that the saints of God have from Jesus Christ. For it is written, “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” (I John 5:10-11). Our Lord Jesus said: “And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” (John 10:28). This is the life of faith, a shared life in Christ Jesus and infused in the believer at the birth from above: as said the Apostle Paul: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20). And again: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above not on things on the earth. For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:1-4). Christ Jesus lives in believers by His Spirit, and they live unto God in Christ, as it is written: “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” (John 14: 19-20). In our Lord’s Great High Priestly Prayer He said: “Neither pray I for these alone, (the Apostles: writer) but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; (believers of after ages, not to the exclusion of believers in former ages: writer) That they all may be one: (one body in Christ: Ephesians 4:4: writer) as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:19-26)

(3.)            Through the ignorance that is in them: Man by nature is religious, almost everywhere there is man, there is also religion of some sort. The diversity of religions shows the ignorance there is in men of the true and living God. Men, almost universally, believe there is a God, (witness the religions of the world) but the particulars of His being and worship they know not. The “God of truth” (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 31:5; Isaiah 65:16) has revealed Himself, or “declared” Himself in His Son, who is The Truth: through the Holy Scriptures (John 1:1-3,14,18; 14:6; 18:37). The “Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive,” (John 14:17), engrafts, the “word of truth” (James 1:18, 21; I Peter 1:23; John 6:63) in the hearts of the children of God who are found “walking in truth” (II John 1:4); and “for The Truth’s sake, which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us for ever.” (II John 1:2). The men of the world receive not the truth; because there is no truth in them. (John 8:42-47; 10:26). Man in his created condition had the ability to know God: whom to know is life eternal (John 17:3). “But the natural man receiveth not he things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (I Corinthians 2:14).

(4.)            Because of the blindness of their heart: Men by prejudice against the doctrine of God, and of Christ: will not hear the truth of the scriptures, but, as of old: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:3). The heart of nature is hard: a stony heart: as hard as flint, it will not receive any impression from anything outside itself concerning God; until, the grace of God apprehends the man and by the effectual operation of God Almighty, the Holy Ghost; breaths into the man’s soul the breath of life. A new heart is given, a heart of flesh, which is capable of receiving the impressions of the doctrines of the gospel. The total enmity of the mind is to some extent done away by the renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2) the man is made willing by the power of the Holy Ghost (Psalm 110:3) by giving a desire after God in Christ (Song 1:4). The regenerate soul finds that it can no longer be content in this world, but, being born from above: must seek the life from above in Christ Jesus. So that the new creature finds it’s total sufficiency in the Lord Jesus Christ, to live in Christ, and unto Christ, is the new desire of the new heart. The new object of love is the God of truth, and the truth concerning Him, which draws out the heart to Jesus Christ, “who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.” (Romans 9:5).  The truth of God is the all important thing, love of truth sets the heart seeking after the truth, when the truth is found the old idols of self will, self love, self determinations, loose their allure, and the will of God becomes the all important desire of the soul. Not that indwelling sin he is altogether eradicated, but indwelling sin, which before regeneration was the ruling principle, has now a superior opposing principle: which wars against the power of indwelling sin. “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (I Corinthians 6:19-20).

God has acknowledged that He Himself is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, in the Salvation of the elect children of God. It was the Father who chose His beloved children, who were to be redeemed, from among men (Revelation 14:4); and “out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;” (Revelation 5:9). It is Christ Jesus who has redeemed the elect “out of every” kindred, tongue, people, and nation by the blood of His cross (Galatians 3:13; Colossians 1:20; Romans 3:25; 5:9). And it is God the Holy Spirit who calls the elected and redeemed children of the covenant, by giving them eternal life in Jesus Christ: therefore His call is always effectual: for to whomsoever he gives life: they are made to live, and they live unto God. Therefore it is God who has established us with the Apostles in Jesus Christ, and who has anointed us with the Holy Ghost (I John 2:20, 27) not we, the elect, ourselves;” Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and thy truth’s sake. (Psalm 115:1).

AJ Ison

See the writers blog at www.hebrews915.blogspot.com hear the true gospel preached at www.13thstbaptist.org webcasting live at listed service times.