accuse those blessed spirits, or to suggest that if they were tried by the ordinary and strict justice of God, they would be found guilty, and have need of pardon; but rather to signify either that the authority of God over his creatures is so great and so absolute, that he owes nothing to the angels themselves, how exquisite soever their sanctity, the light of glory wherewith he crowns them being a gift from his own bounty, and not the due reward of their merit; or else that the infinite purity of this supreme Majesty is so splendid and so glorious, that the light of the most holy spirits fades before him, and is found dusky and defective in comparison of his; as the shining of our lights, and of the stars themselves, disappear at the brightness of the sun. Others, not able to approve of this interpretation, (and I think justly,) that the angels were reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, in order to exclude them from this passage, restrain the apostle's words to men only; understanding by the "things that are in heaven," the already hallowed spirits of the faithful, which death had taken out of this world; and by "the things that are on earth," the faithful that yet live here in flesh. But, not to dissemble, this exposition seems both forced and frigid. Forced, because the Scripture, by "things in heaven," ordinarily means the angels, whose element and natural habitation the heavens are; whereas souls separated from their bodies are received in and lodged there by a supernatural grace and dispensation. Frigid, because the sense it attributes to the apostle no way answers the sublimity and dignity of his words. For if his aim were to express nothing but that the faithful are reconciled to God, what need was there to divide them into two ranks, some who are on earth, others who are in heaven? Who doubts but he reconciled these as well as those? But without question he purposed to magnify this work of God by Jesus Christ, and to this end saith that it extends not to men alone, who are reconciled to the Father by the efficacy of the cross of the Lord, but that it exerts an influence in heaven itself, reuniting and reconciling the things that are there. What shall we say then to these difficulties, and in what sense shall we take the apostle's words, that God hath reconciled all things in himself, both those that are on earth, and those that are in heaven? Dear brethren, we will leave them in their genuine and ordinary sense, and say that these expressions signify the recomposing and reuniting of the creatures, both terrestrial and celestial; not with God, but among themselves, with each other. For as in a state the subjects have a twofold union; one with their prince, on whom they all depend; another among themselves, as members of the same political body, joined together by the bond of mutual concord, amity, and correspondence: in like manner is it with things celestial and terrestrial, the two principal parties of this great state of God, which we call the universe. Besides the union they have with God as their sovereign Monarch, from whose bounty they receive the being and the life they enjoy; they have another alliance and conjunction one with the other, as parts of one corporation, having been formed and qualified for mutual fellowship. It is in this relation, and in this union, that the beauty and perfection of the universe consists, when heaven and earth have amicable intercourse, and conspire to one and the same end, with a holy and reciprocal affection. Sin having broken the first union, and separated man from his Creator, by the same means dissolved the second, loosening us from the creatures. As in a state, when some of the subjects rise against the sovereign, those who remain loyal presently disunite from the rebels, and instead of the intercourse they held before with them, make implacable war upon them, while they continue in their disobedience. Such the event proved in the world. Man had no sooner rebelled against God, but heaven, and all that remained in obedience, separated from man. All nature took up arms against this rebel, and would even then have utterly ruined him, if the counsel of God, who would not destroy us, had not hindered it. And as from one disorder there never fail to spring up many others, this first rupture of man with God and the good creatures brought forth innumerable others, rending mankind itself into several pieces, dividing one from the other by diversity of religions, and the aversions and animosities that attend them. Such was the sad and dismal state of the world, the end of which could be nothing else but ruin and eternal perdition; therefore God, to restore its primitive beauty, yea, to raise it to a perfection higher than that of its first original, reconciled all things by his Christ, both terrestrial and celestial. He took away the wars, hatreds, and aversions that divided them, and reduced them all into that union which they ought to have for his glory and their own good. As to things on earth, you know the enmity of the Jews and the separation of the Gentiles, whom the law, as a partition wall, prohibited from the fellowship of the people of God. Christ laid this enclosure even with the ground, and, recalling the Gentiles, associated and re-allied them with the Jews, to make them thenceforth one and the same people. He did as much to the distinctions which separated the more polite nations from the barbarous, the Latins from the Greeks, the east from the west, the north from the south. He removed all these marks and differences, and united all nations, sects, and conditions into one only people, into one body, namely, his church. Thus things on earth" were reconciled. As for "things in heaven," it was the good pleasure of the Father to reconcile them also by his Son. For after sin entered, the angels, the true citizens of heaven, were our foes; whereas they are henceforth our friends and allies, united with us under Jesus Christ, our common Head. Aforetime they were armed against us with a flaming sword; now they fight for us, and encamp about us. They drove us away from the entrance into Paradise; now they bear our souls thither, at their departure from this life. They take part in our interests, are sad at our disasters, and rejoice at our repentance. And to testify how delightful this reconciliation is to them, they saluted the birth of our Lord, who came to make it, with their songs and melodies. For it they glorified God, and blessed and congratulated men. But as the mischief of our sin communicated itself to all parts of the universe, even to those which are without life, putting them all in disorder, and subjecting them to vanity; so I account that this blessed reconciliation must be extended also to them. The will of God was to comprehend them also in it; reuniting the heavens with our earth, and all the elements with us. For heaven, which had nothing but lightnings and thunder for us, and that would rather have reduced us to nothing than receive us into its courts, is now liberal towards us of its comfortable light, and opens to us the most secret sanctuaries of its glory. Life is at agreement with us, immortality is in good understanding with our flesh, the grave is no longer our enemy, the elements shall be serviceable to our welfare, they shall work no more against us. Thus you see how the will of God was to reconcile things on earth and things in heaven by his Son; and reduce all the parts of the universe to good terms each with other. This great work is begun, the foundations of it are laid, 66 the pledges of it are given us. But it will not be perfectly accomplished till the latter day, when the world, freed from the bondage under which it yet groans, shall appear entirely changed; its new heavens, and its new earth, and its new elements, with the angels and saints, and all its other parts, conspiring together in an eternal concord, and an inviolable intercourse, to the glory of their common Creator, who shall then be "all in all," as the apostle declares, 1 Cor. xv. 28. And, in my opinion, he specially means this in this place, when he saith that the Father would reconcile all things in himself, as the original precisely means. For these words signify, not the term, but the end and event of this reconciliation; that is to say, that it shall be made, not with God, (as the greater part of expositors have understood it,) but for the glory of God. For it is plain that heavenly things were not reconciled to God, for they never were opposed to him. But it is no less evident that their reconciliation with us, in the sense we have explained it, will redound to the glory of God, when this whole universe shall return entirely to its true and due union. When therefore the apostle saith, that it is the good pleasure of the Father to reconcile all things in himself, he intends it shall be for himself, that is, for his own glory. III. It remains now that we speak of the means which God used to bring this great work of the reconciliation of the world to its end. St. Paul shows this to us, when he adds, having made peace by the blood of the cross of Christ. The war that man had with God, in consequence of his sin, was the true and only cause of the bad understanding which existed between us, the angels, and the other parts of the world. Whence it is clear that, to make the latter cease, it was only necessary to extinguish the former; that is, to reconcile us with the creatures, it required only to recover us to the favour of the Creator. This is the means which the Father in his sovereign wisdom used, and which the apostle means, when he saith that he "made peace;" that is, our peace having pacified his own justice, and quenched all the fire of his wrath against us. By the sacrifice that Jesus Christ offered on his cross this miraculous change was wrought. This precious blood satisfied the justice of the Father, and the odour of this Divine burntoffering sweetened his Spirit; and, severe and inexorable as he was, rendered him propitious and favourable to us. Instead of fulminating his vengeance, he tenders us the arms of his love; and no man is so wretched but he is ready to receive him, provided he accept the promise of his mercy with a humble faith. Not long since, upon one of the foregoing texts, we treated of the reality, the worthiness, and necessity of this satisfaction, by which the Lord Jesus made our peace with the Father, through the shedding of his blood on the cross, and his voluntarily suffering there, in our room, the curse which our sins deserved. Therefore we will dispense with speaking more of it at this time; and, to conclude the exercise, will content ourselves with briefly remarking upon each of the three points explained, the principal heads of consolation and edification which they contain. And here, dear brethren, which shall we most admire? the goodness of the Father, and the will he had to raise us up from our fall, and to reconcile us with the whole creation, whose hatred and aversion we had incurred; or his unspeakable wisdom, in ordering this great work, and in the means he elected and employed to compass it; or the love of the Son, who for our welfare spared not his own blood? Sinner, approach the throne of God with boldness. He is no longer environed with flames and lightning flashes. He is full of grace and clemency. Fear not his indignation or his severity; peace is made. Your rebellions are expiated, your sins are purged. God requires nothing of you but faith and repentance. His justice is satisfied, and doubt not but the satisfaction it hath received is sufficient. He that made it for you is the well-beloved of the Father, the Lord of glory, in whom all fulness dwells. You will find abundantly in him all the good things which are necessary for your felicity; the light of wisdom, to dissipate your darkness, and illuminate your understandings to a perfect knowledge of Divine things; a righteousness most complete, and sufficient every way to justify and exempt you from the curse of the law, and to open the entrance of the tribunal of God to you; a most efficacious sanctification, to mortify the lusts of your flesh, and fill you with love, honesty, and purity; and a most plentiful redemption, to deliver you from death, and from all the evils that have connexion with it, and put you in eternal possession of immortality. Make your advantage of this Divine well of life. Give no ear to them that call you any where else. You are happy enough, if you possess the Lord Jesus. He is the only Prince of salvation, the way, the truth, and the life. And as for creatures, whether earthly or heavenly, fear them not. If you are Jesus Christ's, they shall do you no evil. He has reconciled them all to you. He has taken from them all the will and power they had to hurt you. They desire your good, and secretly favour you, owning you for their friends and allies. Heaven looks down on you in peace, and calls you up into its holy place. The angels bless you, and direct all your ways. This earth will hold you no longer than your common Lord shall judge expedient for his own glory and your salvation. But if this general peace which you have now with God and the world rejoice you, the means by which it was procured should no less ravish you; even that blood of Christ shed upon the cross, the grand miracle of God, the price of your liberty, the salvation and the glory of the universe. What and how ardent was that love which gave so rich and so admirable a ransom for you! What will he deny you, who has not kept back his own blood from you! who, to make you happy, abhorred not a cross, the most infamous of all punishments! who, to raise you up to the most eminent contentment, underwent the extremest dolours; the lowest disgrace, to bring you to the highest glory; the malediction of God, to communicate to you his benediction! Oh, over-happy Christians, if you could discern your bliss! Where is the anguish of spirit, or the trouble of conscience, or the loss, or the suffering, or the reproach, which the meditation of this love should not console? Who shall condemn us, since the Son of God died to merit our absolution? Who shall accuse us, since his blood and his cross defend us? Who shall take from us the benevolence of the Father, since he has obtained it for us, and preserves it for us? Who shall pluck out of our hands a life he has given us, a salvation that he has so dearly bought? Dear brethren, these considerations, which open to us so rich a source of consolation, oblige us also to a peculiar sanctification. For how great will be the hardness of our hearts, if these great evidences which God has given us of his love do not affect us! if they kindle not in us an ardent affection towards a God who has so loved us, a sacred and inviolable respect towards a Redeemer who has done so much for us! He has reconciled and reunited all things in him, both terrestrial and celestial. Let us live then henceforth in such a manner as may answer this happy alliance. Let us no more afflict heaven, no more scandalize the in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight." To heighten the excellency of the benefit God had conferred on them, he first sets before their eyes their miserable estate by nature, before the gospel was preached unto them. You were, saith he, formerly alienated from God, "and enemies in your mind by wicked works." Next, he sets forth the favour which God afterward showed them, notwithstanding all their unworthiness. And "yet now," says he, "hath he reconciled you in the body of his flesh through death." Finally, to induce them to pursue a complete sanctification, he represents to them the purpose or end of their reconciliation with God: "To present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight." These three points we will handle, God willing, in this sermon, distinctly, one after the other. The first and natural estate of the Colossians before grace; their reconciliation with God, made in the body of the flesh of Christ, by his death; and the end of this reconciliation, to be holy and unreprovable before him. earth, by the impurity of our deportment. Let us labour, in conjunction with all the creatures, for the service and to the glory of our common Lord. Let us imitate the purity, the zeal, and the obedience of those celestial spirits, into whose society we are entered by the benefit of this reconciliation. Let us be clothed, as they are, with a beautiful and pleasing light. Our lot is, to be one day like them, in immortality; let us be so, for the present, in sanctity. Our peace is made with God. Let us not make war upon him any more. He has pardoned us all the enormity and rage of our rebellion; let us never turn to any of them again. He will be our good Lord and gracious Master. Let us be his faithful subjects and obedient servants. Let the blood of Christ wipe away both our guilt and our filth. Let us fasten our old man to his cross; let the nails that there pierced his flesh pierce also the members of ours. Let the cross that made him die make all our lusts die, and extinguish by little and little in us that earthly, carnal, and vicious life which we derive from the first Adam, to regenerate and raise us up again with the Second, to a new, holy, and spiritual life, worthy of that blood I. Certainly, since the sin of Adam corrupted and by which he has purchased it for us, and of that Spi-infected our nature, there are no men born into the rit by whom he has communicated the beginnings of world whose condition of itself is not most wretched. it to us, and of that sanctuary of immortality, where Yet their misery is no where so clearly discovered as he will fully finish it one day to his own glory and in the heathen, who are born and live without the our own eternal blessedness. Amen. covenant of God. For as to those whom he prevents with his grace, by training them up in his church from the beginning of their life, his light and his goodness encompassing them from their nativity, hinder them from discerning so fully the horrid corruption of our nature. Whereas, heathens having no other guide but that nature, its state and strength is to be manifestly seen in them. The Colossians, to whom St. Paul writes, were of this order, Gentiles by extraction, by religion, and in manners, before Jesus Christ enlightened them. Let us behold in them an image of the condition in which we should be if God had not separated us from the rest of men, and seasonably drawn us out of our original misery. The apostle saith, first, that "sometime," that is, before their conversion, they were "alienated," that is, estranged from God, from his covenant, and from his people, as he explains it more largely elsewhere. Remember, says he to the Ephesians," that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world," Eph. ii. 12. They had no communion with the true God; were so far from adoring him, that they not even so much as thought on him, and derided the only nation in the world that knew and served him. This is clear from the books of the ancient heathens which are still extant, as well as from the ignorance and idolatry of the modern. SERMON XI. VERSE 21, 22. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight. DEAR brethren, it was long since observed by philosophers, and we still find it by experience, that general things actuate the spirits of men but very little. The cause is, that being naturally bound too closely, every one to his particular interests, they mind only that which affects them, and are not solicitous about a common concern, till by some means they are made painfully sensible that they have a part in it. The ministers of the church therefore should not content themselves with proposing the maxims of heavenly doctrine collectively, and in general terms only, to the souls whose edification is committed to them; but that they may get hold of them, and produce some good effect upon them, they must apply to them in particular each of those Divine verities. St. Paul, whose example should serve for a rule to all the true servants of God, takes this course in several places in his Epistles; and particularly in the text we have now read. For having before represented to the Colossians the reconciliation of things on earth and things in heaven, by means of the peace which was made through the blood of Christ, according to the good pleasure of the Father, he now descends from general things to particular cases; and to excite in the hearts of these faithful persons a more lively feeling of this grace of God, he reminds them by name of the part which they had in it; inasmuch as the efficacy of this grace had been displayed upon them, in drawing them out from perdition, and advancing them to the highest happiness. "And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled But the apostle goes further still, and adds, that at that time they were enemies of God; which comprehends two things: first, that they hated God, and warred against him; the second, that God accounted and pursued them as his enemies. And, first, St. Paul declares this expressly in the Epistle to the Romans, where, among other characters which he gives the heathen, he mentions that they were "full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God," Rom. i. 29, 30; upon which a question arises, how it is true that the heathen hated God. For either they knew him, or they knew him not. If they knew him not, how did they hate him, since love and hatred are two passions which cannot be exercised but towards objects known, it being as impossible to hate as it is to love that which we know not? And if they knew him, seeing he is the chief good, how is it possible they should hate him, standing; seizing, if we may so speak, on this grand since our will is not capable of hating any known citadel of our nature, and from thence continually good? To this I answer, first, that when the Scrip- making war against God. This war the apostle inture says the heathen hated God, it does not mean tends, when he adds, " by wicked works." I should that God was the proper and formal object of their never finish if I were to attempt now to describe all hatred. For it is certain that in this sense the the enormities of the lives of the heathen. St. Paul Deity cannot be hated by them who are ignorant of gives us an epitome of them in the first chapter of him, nor can he be otherwise than loved by those the Epistle to the Romans: he there expatiates upon who know him. But the Holy Ghost thus speaks, the principal fruits of their impiety, their injustice, to signify that these wretches act altogether as if their uncleanness, and their abominations; vice being they hated God. It is a form of speech familiar grown to such a height among them, that they not enough, to put the cause for the effect, and the an- only committed it, but also favoured it, and took no tecedent for the consequent. Now these people, in shame to adore the very persons whom they confessed their blindness, defaced the glory of God as much to have been extremely imbued with it. This dissoas they could. They battered down the most il- luteness and abandonment to wicked works was a lustrious marks of his Godhead; they blasphemed clear conviction of their enmity against God, and his providence, they reviled his nature. They rob- renders them altogether inexcusable; because howbed him of the honour of creating and preserving ever great and universal their corruption, yet they the universe, and gave it to monsters. They despised were not ignorant, as the apostle says shortly afterhis will, and reversed all his orders. They passion-wards, " that they which commit such things are ately loved that which he most abhorred, and ab- worthy of death," Rom. i. 32. horred that with which he is best pleased. Are not these the ordinary and natural effects of hatred? It is therefore with great propriety that the Scripture, to set forth the impiety and fury of the heathens, says that they hated God, since they treated him in the very same manner as if they had directly hated him. As when the wise man says, that the wicked hate their own soul, or their own life, Prov. xxix. 24; viii. 36, it is not to signify that their will has properly any aversion to their own life; on the contrary, they love it too much: but to declare that they conduct themselves just as if they expressly hated it, loving and practising, with extreme vehemency, the things that cause their ruin, and neglecting and abhorring those which would lead them to salvation. Secondly, Though the heathen have some knowledge of God, yet because they suppose him to be quite opposed to that which he really is, they may with propriety be said to hate him. For though it be not possible for us to hate good, so far as it is good; nevertheless it often happens, that error representing things to us as quite contrary to what they are in themselves, we love that which is indeed worthy of hatred, and we hate that which is in truth most worthy to be loved. From such an illusion did the pagans hatred of God arise. For imagining him a tyrant, full of cruelty and injustice; or an idle king, who has no care of his state; it needs not to be wondered that, their understanding falsely conceiving him under so monstrous a likeness, their will should be influenced to hate him, rather than to love him. And those among them who had a better opinion of him, nevertheless loved him not; for by an extreme perversion of mind, which placed their supreme happiness in the enjoyment of pleasures and vices, while sensible that God hated them and punished them, they considered him as an enemy to their felicity. Thus the love of vice induced them to hate him. Whence it followed, that God on his side being supremely good and just, condemned their impiety, and resolved to punish it. This is what the Scripture figuratively calls God's hatred; and this is what the apostle means, when he says that the Colossians in their paganism were enemies of God. But to show us how deeply this enmity was rooted in them, having said that they were enemies, he adds, "in their minds" or understanding. The understanding is the principal and highest faculty of our soul, which moves and guides our wills and affections, and is consequently the governor of our whole life. The apostle says therefore that rebellion and enmity against God have taken up their seat in the under This doctrine, touching the state of the heathens, deserves great consideration. For it teaches us two things of very great importance: first, the quality of the corruption of our nature by sin; and secondly, its extent. Respecting its quality, you see it is so horrible, that it sets us far from God, and makes us strangers and enemies to him; it is so deep, that it has insinuated itself into all the faculties of our souls, even the understanding itself, the noblest of them all; and finally, it is so contagious, that it infects all our works with its venom, none issuing forth but wicked ones. Hence it appears, first, how false and pernicious is the imagination of those who place this corruption in the lower part of the soul only, in the affections and sensual appetites, and in their resistance of reason; and assert that the understanding has remained in its integrity. St. Paul plainly declares the contrary, lodging enmity and rebellion against God in the understanding of the heathens; and this truth he testi fies in various places: as when he says, that "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them," 1 Cor. ii. 14; and that "the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be," Rom. viii. 7. And in the Epistle to the Ephesians, that the Gentiles have their "understanding darkened," Eph. iv. 18. We confess, then, that this evil is universal; that it has depraved our whole nature, and left nothing sound or whole in us, from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head. It has extinguished the light of the understanding, and filled it with the thickest darkness. It has made the motions of the will irregular, and dreadfully disordered all the passions and affections. And so palpable is this, that the two masters of pagan philosophy have in some degree perceived it, and as it were felt it, while they were groping in their darkness. One of them records in writing, that the soul of man is sick of two maladies, ignorance and wickedness; and the other, that there is something in our nature, I know not what, which resists right reason.* On the same ground you may observe again, how vain is the conceit of those who ascribe I know not what merits of congruity, as they call them, to men out of the state of grace. Would you know how the Colossians invited God to gratify them with the light of his gospel? They were, says the apostle, "alienated and enemies in their minds by wicked works." If a subject merits the favour of his sovereign, by turning his back upon him and departing from him; if rebellion and enmity constrain him to * Plato in Soph. Aristotle, Ethic. 1. 1. be gracious; if wicked works incline the goodness of God to communicate itself to men; then I confess that they who are out of his covenant may merit his grace. But since it is quite the contrary, and every body well knows that such conduct evidently provokes justice, and enforces punishment; who does not see that man, while he is in the corruption of his nature, merits nothing, either by way of condignity or of congruity, but the curse of God, according to what the apostle says in another place, that "by nature we are children of wrath ?" Eph. ii. 3. | friends, and chose them for his children, when they showed him the greatest hatred and enmity. Their wicked works deserved his curse, and he bestowed on them his grace. Their rebellion deserved his direful flashes, and he sent them his comfortable light. II. This contrast the apostle here indicates when he says, "yet now hath he reconciled." A similar contrast he expresses elsewhere, upon the same subject, saying, "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," Rom. v. 8. To set forth this great grace of God Secondly, this text discloses to us the extent of towards these faithful people, he says that God hath this corruption. For if any sort of men could be reconciled them. Having spoken of their estrangefound exempted from it, in all probability it would ment and of their enmity with God, with great probe the Greeks, the most polite and civilized of all priety he uses the word reconcile to signify bringing people. Nevertheless, the apostle involves them them again into his love and favour. It happens here in this universal misery. From this it appears sometimes, in the misunderstandings of men, that how much some of the most ancient writers of Chris- aversion and hatred are only on one side, one of the tianity were mistaken, whom the love of learning and parties seeking the favour of the other. Here, as we secular erudition so charmed, that they hesitated not have before intimated, the aversion was mutual. For to say that the Gentiles, by means of their philosophy, we hated God, and he, because of our sins, hated us. might become acceptable to God, and attain salva- It was necessary therefore, for our restoration, that tion. I admit that they had a very quick under- both the one and the other of these passions should be standing, as we discover by their books, in which remedied; that is, that the wrath of God against us they have left us admirable specimens of the acute- should be appeased, and our hatred and enmity against ness of their minds. Neither do I deny that God pre-him extinguished. The word reconcile, of itself, comsented them, both in the nature and government of prehends both; but in the apostle's writings it refers this vast universe, with very clear and most illustrious principally to the first, that is, the mitigation and aparguments of his power, wisdom, goodness, and provi- peasing of the wrath of God; and indeed this is the dence; as St. Paul says, "He left not himself with- principal point of our reconciliation. For God being out witness," Acts xiv. 17; and again, "That which our sovereign Lord, it would not benefit us at all to may be known of God is manifested in them," &c., change our will towards him if his did not operate Rom. i. 19, 20. But all this light only shows us the favourably towards us; as the repentance and tears greatness of their corruption. For they, with all the of a subject are vain if his prince reject them, and vivacity of their spirits, made no proficiency in the remain still angry with him. school of providence toward fearing God and serving him, but became vain in their imaginations, and miserably abused the gifts of Heaven; so that the only result of this dispensation was, that they were thereby rendered inexcusable. We conclude, then, that all men generally, not one excepted, are by nature such as the apostle here describes the Colossians, alienated, and enemies in their minds by wicked works. There is nothing but the word of the Lord which is able to bring them out of this state, by the saving grace of his Spirit with which God accompanies it. And this the apostle represents here to the Colossians, in the second place. For having minded them of their former condition, he adds, "yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh," that is, the flesh of Jesus Christ, through his death. Their former condition was very miserable. For what can be imagined more wretched than men far from God and strangers to him, in whose communion alone all their welfare consists? men, enemies to him without whose love they can have no true good? yet, in addition to misery, there was also horror in their case. Misery ordinarily stirs up pity; theirs was worthy of abhorrence and hatred. For what is there in the world that less deserves the compassion of God and men, or is more worthy of the execration of heaven and earth, than a subject who withdraws from his sovereign; who hates him, and wars against him; who insolently violates all his laws, and abandons himself to all the crimes he has forbidden; especially if the sovereign be gracious and beneficent, as the Lord is, the only author of all our being, life, and motion? But, O inestimable and incomprehensible goodness! God, for all this, did not forbear to have pity on the Colossians. He sought them when they were alienated from him; he offered them peace when they made war upon him; he took them for his * Clem. Alexand. Strom. 6. Again, the word reconcile, as also most words of the same form and nature, is taken two ways. For either it signifies simply the action which has the virtue necessary to make reconciliation, or it comprises the effect of it also. It is in the first sense that the apostle used it before, when he said that God hath reconciled all things, celestial and terrestrial, in himself, or for himself, having made peace through the blood of the cross of Christ. For he means simply that God has taken away the causes of hatred and enmity, and opened the way of reconciliation; not that all things are already actually reconciled. It is thus again that we must understand that which he says in another place, "that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them," 2 Cor. v. 19. But the apostle uses the word reconcile in the second sense, when he says that we have obtained reconciliation by Christ; and when he beseeches us to "be reconciled to God;" it being evident that in these places he intends not the right and power only, but the very effect and actual possession of reconciliation. According to this import we must understand the word reconcile in the text. For this reconciliation may be again considered two ways: first, in general, as made by Jesus Christ on the cross; and secondly, in particular, as applied to each of us by faith. In the first consideration it is presented to all men as sufficient for their salvation, according to the doctrine of the apostle, that "the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men," Tit. ii. II; and that also of St. John, that Jesus Christ "is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world," I John ii. 2. Under the second consideration it appertains only to the believer, according to that clause of the covenant which declares that the only begotten Son was given to the world," that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life," John iii. 16. |