Romans 5:11 And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. I. JOY IN GOD IS THE CLIMAX OF CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGE. 1. In the whole passage from ver. 1 we have an account of the new feelings that are introduced by faith into the heart of a believer. (1) Peace with God, of whom we could never think formerly, if we thought of Him aright, but with disquietude. (2) Exultation in the hope of glory. (3) Exultation, even in tribulations, the process which manifests a work of grace here, and so serves to confirm all our expectations of a harvest of glory and blessedness hereafter. 2. And indeed how can it be otherwise, the apostle reasons. He hath already given us His Son, will He not with Him freely give us all things? And now that He has done so much in circumstances so unlikely, will He not carry on the work of deliverance to its final accomplishment when circumstances have changed? It is thus that the believer persuades himself into a still more settled assurance of the love of God to him than before; and whereas (ver. 2) he only rejoiced in the hope, he now rejoices in possession. 3. To feel as if you were in the company of God — to have delight in this feeling and find that the minutes spent in communion are far the sweetest intervals of your earthly pilgrimage — to have a sense of God all the day long, and that sense of Him in every way so delicious as to make the creature seem vain and tasteless in the comparison is certainly not a common attainment; yet no true saint can be altogether a stranger to it. "Rejoice evermore," says the apostle, "the Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice," says the patriarch. It is easy to walk in the rounds of a mechanical observation. It is easy to compel the head to obedience against the grain of the heart. It is very easy to bear towards God the homage of respect, or fearfulness, or solemn emotion. To serve Him as a master to whom you are bound in the way of obligation is more the tendency of nature than to serve Him as a friend to whom you are bound by the heart. But is not the latter the far more enviable habit? — to have the spirit of adoption and cry out Abba, Father, rather than to drivel before Him among the restraints and the reluctances of a slave? — to do His will, not as if by the force of a compulsory law, or as if under the stipulation to discharge the articles of a bond, or as if pursued by an unrelenting taskmaster? This is the way in which God's will is apt to be done on earth; but it is not the way in heaven — where the doing of His pleasure is not a drudgery for which they get their meat and drink, but where their meat and drink is to do the will of God, where the presence of God ever enlivens them, and their own pleasure is just His pleasure reflected back again. To carry onward the soul to this were to work upon it a greater transformation than to recall it from profligacy to mere external reformation. II. MANY ARE STRANGERS TO THIS JOY. 1. There are those who care little about the matters of the soul and eternity, who live as if the visible theatre which surrounds them were their all; all they mind is earthly things, and of joy in God they have no comprehension. Give them a warm habitation, stock it well with this world's comforts, and surround them with a thriving circle of companionship, and they would have no objection to he done with God and eternity forever. When the preacher speaks of the woefulness of their spiritual condition, their response is, "We pay our debts; we can lift an unabashed visage in society; we compassionate the necessitous," etc., etc. We do not deny this, but we charge you with joying in the creature, and not at all in the Creator; and, to verify your woefulness, you have only to read the future history of this world. That scene, on which you have fastened your affections so closely that you cannot tear them away from it, will soon be torn away from you. It is then that God will step in. And had your joy been in Him, then heaven would have been your fit habitation. But as the tree falleth so it lies; and you rise from the grave with the taste, the character, the feelings which you had when you breathed your last; and so all that is in your heart, carrying upon it a recoil from Him, will meet with nothing but that which must give dread and disturbance to your carnal affections; and these affections will wander in vain for the objects which solaced them upon earth. It is thus that he who soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption. 2. There are others who make the interest of their soul a topic of great care and thought; who have recourse to active measures in the prosecution of this great interest, and are all alive to the great object of being right with God. It is indeed a most natural forth-setting of the whole man on such an occasion, to proceed on the principle of "work and win," just as an ordinary workman does. It is not his work or his master that gives him pleasure, but only the receipt of his wages. There is many a seeker after life eternal, toiling with all his might, who has no joy in God — satisfied if he can escape hell and reach heaven; but who does not reflect that it is altogether essential to this blessedness to have such a taste for the Divine character as to be glad in the contemplation of it — to have such a liking for the Divine life as that the life itself shall be reward enough for him. Without this, all he can do is but the bodily exercise that profiteth little; and that, instead of heightening his affection for God, may only exasperate the impatience, and aggravate the weariness and distaste that he feels in His service. III. HOW IS THIS PRIVILEGE TO BE OBTAINED. There is a high ground of spiritual affection and of joy in God, to which you would like to be elevated. But you see nothing between you and that lofty region, saving a range of precipice that you cannot scale, and against which you vainly wreak all the native energies that belong to you. Let one door, hitherto unobserved, be pointed out, open to all who knock at it, and through which an easy and before unseen ascent conducts you to the light and purity and enjoyment of those upper regions after which you aspire; and what other practical effect should all the obstacles and impossibilities you have before encountered have upon you, than just to guide your footsteps to the alone way of access that is at all practicable? This is just the open door of Christ's mediatorship. 1. It has been objected to the gospel — (1) That it exacts an unnatural and unattainable elevation of character; and this is a most likely objection to proceed from him who looks at this economy with half an eye. (2) The very same people may also, on looking at another side of this dispensation, be heard to object to the freeness of the gospel. 2. Now these two parts are those which give support and stability to each other. It is just by faith that you enter upon peace and hope and love and joy; through Jesus Christ, not by working for the atonement, but simply by receiving the atonement, that you are translated into this desirable habit of the soul. (T. Chalmers, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. |
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