2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 5, Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the spirit. There are three things which are brought out for us in this remarkable text. and they can be expressed, I think, very, very simply indeed. First of all is that the Christian is a work of God, he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing. And the second point which is raised in our text is that a Christian is a work of God with an end in view. That end is expressed in the words, for the selfsame thing, he that has wrought us for this specific thing which I, Paul, have been mentioning in the preceding verses. The Christian is a work of God with an end in view. And the third point of our text. It must also be fairly obvious to us that the Christian is a work of God with an end in view, and with a pledge within himself that that end is sure, who also hath given unto us the earnest, or pledge, of the Spirit. Now it takes these three things, apparently, to make a Christian. He is a work of God, with an end or a destiny in view, and with a pledge of that destiny already bestowed upon him, so that he can say in the first verse of this chapter, we know. As we were emphasizing this morning, we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle We have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in end. A destiny for which we groan, for the Christian groans after immortality. The great poet Wordsworth wrote a mystic poem entitled Intonations of Immortality. And his true poet soul felt the grip of these things as he wrote. There was in him an intimation of immortality. Truly the Christian, perhaps in a purer and higher sense even than many of the poets have enjoyed, has this intimation of immortality, so that in this body in this present mortal condition, we groan, longing for our destiny and all that is involved therein, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. If so be that being clothed, we shall not be found naked. Again Paul repeating himself in verse 4, For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now, we pointed out this morning that there was nothing morbid or diseased about Paul's expectation and longing for and groaning for immortality. It was not that he might be unburdened or unclothed but clothed upon, that is, he wasn't longing for death. But he was longing for that life which death only can bring. For as long as he was in this mortality, he was not enjoying the full fruits and blessings and benefits of immortality. And so he longed for the time when he would put off the mortal in order that he might put on the immortal, that his corruptible might be disposed of. and he might put on that which was incorruptible. While on the one hand we excuse Paul of the charge of morbidity, in his apparent longing for death, perceiving that it was not death he longed for, but the life which lay beyond, at the same time we must excuse him also of any charge of mere religious enthusiasm, that he should speak dreamily about a coming world in which all sorrow should be gone, and all problems should be solved, and he should be happy forever and forever. A kind of a primary Sunday school dream, some of his critics would say. a mere exhibition of religious enthusiasm. It's all very well for a man having his head in the stars, but we've got to live upon this earth, let his feet be on hard, solid ground. For if ever there was a man who had both, it was the Apostle Paul. It is true that his head was in the clouds. It is also true that his feet were on the ground. He was a man of immense stature. He was a man who'd had a privilege peep into heaven's glory itself. And at the same time found his feet firmly planted upon earth among sorrows and pain, and knew how to show sympathy and compassion and understanding, to weep with those who wept, and to rejoice with those who did rejoice. There was never a more human man than the Apostle Paul, and at the same time never a more heavenly man than our great Apostle. the apostle to the Gentiles. Of course you can be enthusiastic about anything else under the sun. I was telling an audience recently in a country where they seem to indulge, at least the menfolk, in that form of sport more than they do over here, although it began in Scotland many years ago. Grown-up men, otherwise highly intelligent men, spending all their spare time hitting a little white ball with a club, a little ball about an inch or an inch and a half in diameter, and trying to punt it round several miles of distance to get it into little holes which are here and there with flags in them. Well, I suppose it does them good. I might be better myself for a country walk now and again, even if I don't push a little ball into a hole all the time. Healthy exercise is good, though they brought it to a fine art there. I was seeing the other day over there, passing a golf course, there were golfers chug-chugging around the course in little cars. Instead of having a cabbie to hold their clubs, they had a little car and they were sitting at the wheel. going from green to green to save themselves the trouble of walking. And due to the fact that most of them have taken the sport up in order to keep themselves alive with exercise, it seems that they have got to go to the lasseurs afterwards in order to get that exercise lying upon a bed or upon a stretcher of some kind to be pummeled away by some other man in order to bring their muscles back into use again. And so they are a contradiction in turn. What great enthusiasm people have for this and that. You can shout your head off at a football match. I don't see why you shouldn't neither if you're interested in it. You can be very well lifted almost out of yourself with enthusiasm for that wonderful game of cricket, which is as near poetry or religion as any sport can be, I suppose, if it wasn't for the professionalism. But not about religion, please. Let nobody be enthusiastic. Let them not speak in glowing terms of the world it is to be, of having your name written down in the Lamb's Book of Life. All this must not be. Let us have all our religion calm and according to the copy book. Let us not be round within ourselves. Let's talk about divinity and theology in terms of a mathematical equation and keep ourselves entirely calm and respectable. I find it difficult to keep calm, dear friends of time, when I think of the wonder and the of Emmanuel's land. When I see this scene of death and sin and guilt and shame down here below, and become marvelously enthusiastic about another world where these things shall not be, and about having a built-in enthusiasm for it in my soul, so that though I don't feel very much ready for heaven yet, I know that somehow or other I will be ready for it when the time comes. And we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we'd have a building of God and house not made with hands eternal in the heavens. For as we were pointing out this morning, I remind you of it again this evening, that your pure mind might be lifted up by way of remembrance, that our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. And so Paul comes down through his anthem of immortality, with his feet back upon earth and tells us that he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God. This thing that he's been speaking about, the glories of the eternal world, the kingdom of Emmanuel, that land that is very far off as far as this world is concerned, of fadeless flowers, of glorious and eternal of vistas such as in this world we never dream of, of glories beyond the telling which it is neither possible nor lawful for a man who has been there like Paul and come back again even to explain or to describe. He that hath brought us for the selfsame thing is God. A Christian therefore is a work of God. How important for all of us to remember this, that we are not found amongst those who try to work their way meritoriously to heaven. We see that this is not the case, that if we ever reach that bright and happy and glorious land, it will be by the work of God. and not by our own. He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing. A Christian is the product of the consummate workmanship and wisdom of the eternal God. He hath wrought us for this great end. What are our works not taking into account? Not at all. It is a great mistake for people to suppose that in order to prove our doctrine of the total depravity and helplessness of man, and the complete absence of any meritorious or saving righteousness in him, that we are to take the lid off human society. and show it in all its steaming rottenness, and say, there, that proves our doctrine on the practical level, that man is a totally depraved creature. I say, dear friends, it is a mistake to present our doctrine in those terms. We don't go to the worst of men to show total depravity. We go to the best of men, the most righteous of men. those whose works are most praiseworthy, shall we say, the apostle Paul himself, before he was converted. This is the proof of total depravity, that every man, not at his worst, but at his best state, is altogether vanity. Why, we have read in the third chapter of Philippians, this evening, about Paul's qualifications for heaven. If ever a man could qualify by what he could do, Paul was that man, if any man might, if any man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, he says I am all, I can surpass them all, bring the best man of the lot of them, tell me all that he has done and I'll set aside, set alongside that what I have done. I have got more cause for boasting in myself than anybody else that I ever met, says the apostle Paul. circumcised the eighth dead. Oh, I'm a true Israelite. The tribe of Benjamin, the Hebrew of the Hebrews, is touching the law, Pharisee. Remember this, there were good Pharisees as well as bad Pharisees. They weren't all hypocrites. Don't run away with that mistake. Many of the scribes and Pharisees, as a class, were hypocrites. But not every one of them. Gamaliel was no hypocrite. And Paul was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. These were honest men. They had a zeal for God even if it was not according to knowledge. They were wise men. They were highly respected men. They were pillars of society. Society could not have continued in the providence of God unless there had been men like this. Let us remember this in the midst of all our doctrine of total depravity. Unless there are maintained by good men standards of honesty, of peaceableness, of wisdom and of intellect, of decency and order in our society, the whole place would be given over to the devil. But thank God the world is not given over to the devil, and very far from it too, very far. As much in this world, outside the Church of Christ. for which we rejoice and give God thanks, for men and women who work hard, for those who in their domestic circle teach their children the standards of decency and good behavior, who bring them up to pray, even although they may not know much about prayer themselves, who are peaceably inclined, and who labour in very humane ways and show forth affection and honesty and decency and compassion to their fellow men. The devil doesn't have it all his own way. Our doctrine of total depravity of man consists with very, very high standards of behaviour and decency. And don't let us be so churlish as not to acknowledge it. Because we thank God for it, that the Lord reigneth. He has his hand over all things. And he sees to it that the devil does not get his own way. Else it would be not possible for human society to continue in this world. And so Paul says, as touching the law he was a Pharisee. And he says that was a thing about which he should be commended because he was not a hypocritical pharisee. Paul never was a hypocrite. He was an honest man. He was a decent man. You couldn't fault him as touching the outward framework of the law. He kept all the rituals of Moses and deep down in his heart there was a profound respect for God and for his law. Make no mistake about that, and he was still unregenerate. He had a very high and elevated ambition to be righteous, as touching the law a paragon. He could not be faulted concerning his zeal. He was a persecutor of the church. All right, you say, that wasn't to his credit. No, it wasn't. It was the only way in which he could express his zeal for God, being the man that he was. He badly needed enlightenment, true enough. But at least he was sincere in what he did. That didn't excuse him. He never did excuse himself. He said, I should never have received any mercy at all, considering what I did to the Church of God. in the days of my blind zeal for what I thought was God, but it was not according to knowledge, concerning zeal persecuting the Church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. That is the ritual righteousness, the keeping of all the ordinances, all the rudiments of this world which the law ordained should be kept. And it was God who ordained it all, and I kept it," says Paul. I was not aware of my true heart's condition until the day came when the commandment arrived. The commandment came and I died. I was alive without the law once. That is, without the law as touching its spiritual power over life and conscience. did not respect, says Paul, I didn't know the law. I only thought I knew it. I knew it out of its outward form, but though I was alive without the law once, when the commandment came in its spiritual and inward power, sin revived in me. Sin came to its full strength, and I died. Died to all hope of righteousness in myself. Died to all hope that ever I would attain to heaven by anything that I could do. I died to all that. I found that I was dead in trespasses and in sins. And there is our total depravity. Here was a man at his best, who could truthfully say all this about himself. but only because he did not perceive the will of God in its full spiritual aspect. Until he was stopped in his tracks upon that road by a light above the brightness of the sun, by the voice speaking, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Who art thou, Lord? I am Jesus. Whom thou persecutest. What wilt thou have me to do? The language of the new man immediately. He thought he knew what to do. Arise and stand upon my feet and go into the city. It will be shown thee what thou shalt do. And what was shown him was this. I will show him what great things he must suffer for my name's sake. What an experience was that of Paul indeed! It was necessary that Paul should attain to the standard of public righteousness and individual integrity, to which he did attain, in order that you and I might understand what regeneration is and what justification by faith is. Paul gives us the full story, the full picture by what God did with him. There are three men in the Christian era who by their conversion have set the stamp and the tone and the standard of what true conversion is. and where the secret of the gospel lies. Three men supreme in this, like three of David's mighty men, who were mightier than all the rest and took precedence over them all. These three men in the two thousand years of the Church's history are easily singled out. One is the Apostle Paul, the second is Augustine of North Africa. And the third is Martin Luther of Saxony, Germany. And the conversion of each of these three men was more or less of the same pattern. It was tremendous and dynamic and public in its nature and in its consequences. And each one fully illustrated the fact that a Christian is a work of God, an act of divine providence, something which only God can do. When God does a work, he does a God-like work, and it's permanent and immutable, and can never fail. The nature of Paul's conversion set its stamp upon all succeeding ages. In the mode of his conversion, all Christian thought and theology would be cast until Christ came again. And for two thousand years we go back to Paul to find out what is regeneration, and what is conversion, and what is justification by faith alone. Yea, doubtless I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but that I may win Christ. He puts in the scale on one side all that he has lost, his future career in the Jewish race, his eminence amongst them. There was scarcely a height to which he could not rise in eminence and respect amongst the Jewish people. In the Roman world too. All fields were open to him because, being a foreign Jew born in Tarsus, a Roman colony, he enjoyed all the rights and privileges of a Roman citizen. The world was at his feet. Wealth and eminence and distinction, the praises and the plaudits of his fellow men, were all coming his way and were bound to come. till he was stopped in his tracks by conversion and that undid the lot of it. Oh, consider what you've missed, this conversion of yours. Consider the world that you've lost. I, he said, I'm considering it, I'm setting it alongside the world that I've gained, the things which were gained to me. those I counted lost for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but lost for the excellency and the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but done, that I may win Christ and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ. the righteousness which is of God by faith? Is that all, Paul, that you've got? Have you got justification with God? Yes, I have that, he would say, but more, oh, infinitely more besides. For I am following on that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. That is the glories of immortality, the glories that awake me when I pass through that barricade into the eternal world, and there clasp those blessed feet. which trod so many weary miles for me, which went so far, and days into that countenance I have come so far to behold, and I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Now Paul tells us, he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God. This is the nature of his conversion. free and full salvation in Christ. Not his name, but the name of Christ. Not his merits, but Christ's merits. Not his strength, but Christ's strength. Not anything that he has done, but the blood of the Saviour upon the tree. A fountain, says Paul, or he might have said, a fountain open for me, for my sin. and for all my uncleanness. A strange thing indeed is this total depravity, which in our Calvinistic theology we've scarcely begun to define a right, much less to understand. Do you know that despite all that can be said about man being dead in trespasses and in sins, there's a sense in which he is very much alive to God all the time. I was discussing with two men, that was three of us all together, a long distance from here a week or two back, and we all believed in total depravity, and we were like the three points of a triangle. We are all looking at each other from a different situation. One in particular has the cold, dry sort of doctrine, absolutely nothing in man of God at all. The other man had a half-way house, equally believed in total depravity to the trouble, as neither of the two of them have ever defined. One was a middle-aged man, the other was an elderly man, an elderly man to whom I will always take off my hat in reverence for his godliness, the deep acquaintance which he had with the Saviour and with divine things. Yet, in his long life I've never really come to define what he meant by total depravity. I don't know whether you have. I would hesitate to say that I have sufficiently, and to my own satisfaction. It's not easy to define these things. I said, gentlemen, there is one thing that we have been overlooking in this discussion about total depravity. We have overlooked the fact that God has left a witness for himself. in the heart of the very worst and most befouled of men. And that witness is conscience. Conscience. There is no man's soul to pray, but the voice of God speaks in his soul. It's only because of that you can account for the fact that there are temporary conversions. There's a temporary faith. Even Agrippa the king, though he's an unregenerate man, he did many things. Herod did many things, the murderer of John the Baptist. He did many things because of certain matters which John the Baptist brought before him. Felix, the Roman governor, trembled when Paul reasoned of sin, righteousness and judgment. All right, he was totally depraved, but he was very much alive to God. Very much alive indeed. How was this the case? How is it that people come so near to the Kingdom of God at times and do many things and their lives are cleaned up and they give up their foolish and sinful ways and yet never attain unto a true faith in Christ Jesus or receive only that temporary faith which is spoken of in the Gospel of John when he said these things many believed on him. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them because he knew what was in man. He knew it was not real. But how is it that people are able to travel so far on the road to gospel righteousness? Because there is a witness for God in the soul of every man. We call it conscience, and conscience never dies. It may be smothered over. It may speak with a very hoarse voice at times, for as John Bunyan in The Holy War so magnificently puts it, he tells us there of the city of Mansoul, completely captured and dominated by Diabolus, the evil one. He speaks about the old recorder of the city, and the recorder is conscious. whom they had to lock up in the jail because he often disturbed the city with his fits. He had fits every now and then and took the chance of roaring and declaring what little things he had left of the old tattered copy of the law of God which he had with him and of which they could not decline. The tattered knowledge which all men have of God and his truth. still abiding in them so that they are without excuse. And even in prison, as John Bunyan says at times, the recorder, when he had his fix upon him, would do such desperate things he would even pull up the very drains of the city and set the whole place upon a flood and in a terror. And shoutings and roarings would be heard to the uttermost parts of the city. Conscience is never quiet. It is never absolutely silent for God. There is a voice of God which speaks in the soul of man. And remember this, that in hell the conscience of the wicked will be more enlivened then that it is upon earth. Don't think that conscience dies in hell. Even Satan will discover in hell that he's got a conscience. If he doesn't know it now, he will know it then. Hell is a strange place, dear friends. None of us have defined what we mean, nor can we, because we've no means of knowing. But the Lord lifted up a corner of the veil once in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, a strange story that. They could converse from the pit of hell with Abraham in paradise. Time and space do not exist in that eternal world. And you know what the rich man in his torment said? He thought not only of himself. and that Lazarus might come and put a drop of water upon his tongue who was parched in the flame of his own conscience. But I got my brethren, send Lazarus that they come not to this place of torment to suffer with me. Is there compassion in hell? We could hardly put it in those terms. But there must be some meaning in the fact that the man in hell didn't want to see his brothers there, and wanted something to be done to stop them from coming. Into that I don't enter very far. Not our point this evening. All I'm saying is this, that conscience is a very lively thing in hell. Conscience in hell. Hell is a very different place to what many of us have supposed. Oh yes, its torments are real. But they are torments of the conscience. That is why conscience is so much alive. It is no longer smothered over and damped down as it is upon earth. Truth and reality are known in hell, and because of that, conscience is aware of it all. Beware of the torments of the damned. They are the torments of conscience. Not only are you sorry to find yourself there, but you would that nobody else was in hell but yourself. Conscious, conscious. So let us define what we mean by total depravity. Let us have done with these cold clinical theological definitions. Let's close the whole business with life and understanding. In our preaching, perhaps, we'll count more with the ungodly and the unbeliever and the unregenerate than it does at present, and count more for godliness and holiness amongst the righteous as we see the realities of life, life, eternal life, and the realities of eternal death. our next two points, for next week, if the Lord suffers us to continue that long. And so I intend to break off our talk upon these things here and now, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds, but that we may carry away with us this one central truth, brethren and sisters, We are in the hands of God for good or for ill. We have conscience of evil. Don't play fast and loose with conscience. Don't try easily to satisfy and fob off your conscience, because your conscience will be your enemy, your worst enemy in the end, your eternal enemy in hell. it will still speak for God then. Here we fly to the righteousness of Christ, and all the hopelessness and helplessness of the human soul, so far as attaining to its own righteousness is concerned, is exhibited in the grim reality and tragedy of the cross, the thorn the wounds, the nails, the shame, the reproach, the dying, the entire mystery of the atonement, to what a length God must go before he can attain what he wants to attain, the salvation and the justification of my poor sinful soul. Truly a Christian is the work of God, when nothing less than that would suffice, that thou, my God, shouldst die for me. Amen. Shall we sing that hymn in our hymn book, which is headed in the music editions by the text, By Grace Ye Are Saved? Nine hundred and seventy-eight. Someday the silver cord will break, and I know more as now we shall see.