A Heavenly Conference

Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and said to him, Rabboni; that is to say, Master. And Jesus said to her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say to them, I ascend to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God. (John 20:16-17)

The same love of Christ that drew him from heaven to the womb of the virgin, from the womb of the virgin to the cross, and from the cross to the grave, that same love of Christ moved him, after he had risen from the grave, to make himself known to those he knew loved him entirely and wonderfully. And therefore, before he would ascend to heaven, he graciously gave many appearances and revelations of himself. He did this partly to instruct them in the certainty of his resurrection, and partly, but especially, to comfort them: those he knew loved him.

His very first appearance was made to Mary, the woman out of whom he had cast seven devils (Luke 8:2). She owed him much, and therefore she loved much (Luke 7:47). Whether man or woman, no sinner should be discouraged from coming to Christ. She showed her love for Christ by her desire to find him, by her seeking and weeping, in spite of every obstacle, before she found him. As she wept, she stooped down and looked into the sepulcher, and there she saw two angels in white, a color of glory, purity, and joy, because it was a time of joy. One was at the head, and the other at the feet. In the law, when the mercy seat was made, two cherubim were also fashioned and placed, one at the one end and the other at the other end of it, with their faces looking toward one another (Exod 25:20). And when Christ was risen, there were two angels, one at the head and another at the feet, to show that peace was to be expected in the true mercy seat, Jesus Christ.

One was at the head, the other at the feet of the body of Jesus. And they sat there. It was a time of peace. Peace was made between heaven and earth, between God and man, and here is a posture of peace: they sat quietly. In Christ, angels and we are at one; God, and we, and all. There is a summing up and gathering together of all things in heaven and earth (Col 1:20).

The angels attended on Christ in all the events of his life and death until they brought him to heaven. They brought news of his birth (Luke 2:9-10); they comforted him in his agony (Luke 22:43; John 12:29); they were at his resurrection, and you see them attending here. At his ascension they accompany him (Acts 1:10). And as they did to the Head, so they will do to the members (Heb 1:14). In our infancy they take charge of our tender years; in our dangers they pitch their tents around us (Ps 34:7); at our deaths they carry our souls to Abraham’s bosom, a place of happiness (Luke 16:22). At our resurrection their office is to gather our bodies together (Matt 24:31). The service and attendance they gave to the Head, they give to the members, to the mystical Christ as well as to the natural Christ. Therefore let us comfort ourselves in the service they did for Christ.

Now, besides the appearance of the angels, here is the speech of the angels: “Woman, why weepest thou?” They knew she had no cause for weeping, for Christ, whom she was seeking, had risen again.

She answers, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” If it had been as she supposed, if her Lord had really been taken away, there would have been cause enough for her weeping. For when the Lord is taken away, what is left that can comfort? And if the Lord is not taken away, it does not matter what is taken away, for he is all in all. Carnal people do not care what is taken away, so long as they have their wealth and friends and comforts in the world. But she is of another mind: “They have taken away my Lord,” and what comfort can I have if my Lord is taken away?

But this was only the language of opinion; she only thought it. There were two things that might have guided her: truth, and probability, which is the foundation of opinion. Probability: he is not here, therefore he has been taken away. Truth: Christ promised he would rise again, therefore he would take himself away. There was certain truth to ground faith, and weak probability to ground opinion. Yet such is the nature of weak persons in distress. Even when there is probability on one side and certain truth on the other, they will be sure to cling to their probabilities. “Oh, my sin is great!” Yes, but there is greater mercy for faith to lay hold on.

So, too, the presumptuous sinner says, “God is merciful.” Yes, but God has shut you out of heaven: you are an adulterer, a swearer, a filthy person. Your opinion is grounded on scarcely even a probability. “God is merciful,” but not to such sinners as live in sins against reconciliation, as you do (1 Cor 6:9). Therefore, when one side has only probability to ground opinion, and the other has certain truth to ground faith, let us be wise enough for our souls to take the better and leave the other. If she had remembered his promise to raise himself out of the grave, she would not have needed to doubt.

“They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” “They have taken away.” She names no one. And when she had said this, she turned back and saw Jesus standing, and did not know that it was Jesus. The angels fall silent when Christ speaks, and it is their place to do so.

But she did not know that it was Jesus, because of her passion. Her senses were held partly by the power of God, and partly by a kind of passion that was a cloud between her and Jesus, so that she did not know him at that time.

What does Jesus say to her?

“Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?” The first words Christ ever spoke after his resurrection to those he appeared to were, “Woman, why weepest thou?” It is a good question after Christ’s resurrection. What cause is there for weeping when Christ is risen? Our sins are forgiven, because he, our head and surety, has suffered death for us; and if Christ is risen again, why do we weep? If we are brokenhearted, humbled sinners who have a share in his death and resurrection, we have no cause to grieve. It is therefore a good question to those who believe: “Why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?” These questions were not asked to inform him (he knew well enough), but to draw out her mind, and to draw out by confession what God had hidden in her heart, so that he might comfort her afterward.

“But she, supposing him to be the gardener, said, Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me…”

She had a mistaken idea of Christ, as if he had been the gardener. Beloved, so it is with a sinner, especially in times of desolation of spirit and in a disconsolate condition. Such people picture Christ to themselves as an enemy. In her passion she thinks Christ is the gardener. When many are melancholy in body and troubled in mind, do they not conceive of Christ as an austere judge who will certainly damn such wretches as they are? They picture Christ to themselves in a way that the Scripture does not. Does he not bid all who are weary and heavy laden to come to him (Matt 11:28)? And yet, out of passion, they will picture Christ as an austere judge who will catch them at a disadvantage, watch all their ways, and surely damn them.

Passion and opinion do great violence to truth, even to saving truth. And it is the hardest thing in the world for a distressed conscience to conceive of God rightly and to conceive of Christ rightly. Complacent people conceive of God under a false notion. They think of God as a God all of mercy, and of Christ as if he were not a judge of the world (Acts 17:31), as if he did not notice them or their sinful courses; and therefore they do not care whether they serve him or not. And Satan presents Christ as all mercy, and when Satan and their own hearts meet together in this, the mistake is dangerous.

It is a great art of faith, and an excellent skill, to conceive of Christ in a way suited to the condition we are in. When we are in any sin, then let us think of him as a judge; then let us think of Moses rather than of Christ; then let us think of Christ as one who will judge both the living and the dead for their hard and wicked deeds. But when we are humble and brokenhearted, and touched with a sense of sin, let us present him to ourselves as a sweet Savior, inviting and alluring all to come to him: “Come to me, all ye…” (Matt 11:28). Let us present him as a gentle shepherd (Isa 40:11); let us present him in all the sweet relationships by which he names himself in the Scriptures, so that we do not otherwise dishonor Christ and wrong ourselves.

“If thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”

She was a likely woman indeed to take Christ away, a weak woman to carry off a heavy body! But love thinks nothing impossible. Faith and love agree in this: nothing is impossible. “Love is strong as death” (Song 8:6). Neither love nor faith cares about difficulties; they arm the soul to break through everything.

“Tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” One would think the dead body might have frightened the woman, and that the heavy body would have been beyond her strength. But she was in such an ecstasy of love and desire, and of grief at lacking what she desired, that she did not consider well what she said.

These are words of passion. Indeed, if you look at the story of Mary Magdalene, she was a woman of extremes in every condition. She was like Jonah: when he grieves, he grieves exceedingly; when he rejoices, his joy is wound up to the highest pitch. So she was full of love when she loved, full of grief when she grieved, and full of joy when she rejoiced. She had large affections. They were all in the highest measure, strained in her to the highest peg; and that is what made her say, “If thou hast borne him hence…”

Jesus could not bear to keep her any longer in this perplexed condition. He was too merciful; and therefore he says, “Mary.” She turns to him and says, “Rabboni,” which is to say, Master.

And Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

These words are a sweet and loving exchange between Christ and Mary. They came at a fitting time. When she was in all her perplexity, in the depth of her sorrow for the loss of her Lord, Christ at length, at just the right moment, as if he could hold back no longer but had to make himself known, says to her, “Mary.”

You see, first of all, that Christ begins and says, “Mary”; she answers in the second place and says, “Rabboni.” And until Christ begins, no voice in the world can do any good. The angels spoke to her, but until Christ spoke, nothing could comfort her. Christ began, and until Christ began, nothing would comfort Mary. Christ began himself, and he used only one word. It is a word, and only one word. Nothing will comfort but the word of Christ. That was the word that comforted her when he spoke; and it was only one word, yet it was enough, there was such fullness of spirit and comfort in that one word. And she answers with one word in return.

You may ask why they spoke only one word. Beloved, he was full of affection, and she was full of affection too, too full to express themselves in many words. So it is in grief: grief may sometimes be so great that scarcely any words can express it, for great griefs are struck dumb; and if there are any words, they are broken words, which show fullness of affection rather than any distinct sense. Christ was so full, and she so full, that a single word reveals it. And indeed there was so much meaning, so much love, so much contained in these little words, “Mary” and “Rabboni,” that it would be impossible to express it more briefly; and her passion would not wait for any longer conversation.

It was by words, and by one word: “Mary.” It was by a word that shows he took notice of her. Christ knows the names of the stars; he knows everything by name. He knows everything about a person, down to the very hair. He knows their parts, and even the very outgrowths of their parts. He knew her, and he acknowledged her too: “Mary.”

1. It is a word of knowledge, of familiar acquaintance, and of acknowledgment.

2. It is a word of compassion, because he had kept her waiting long and now could do so no longer. He pities the state she was in. He saw her ready to sink for grief and melt for sorrow, and therefore he said, “Mary.”

3. As it is a word of compassion, so it is a word full of exceeding love.

4. And it is a word by which he claims her particularly as his own: “Mary,” whom I have regarded so highly before now. And it is a word of satisfaction on his part, coming out of his pity and his love, and out of their former familiarity and acquaintance. “Mary,” I am the man you are seeking; I know what all your seeking aims at. You are missing the one you love; you are missing me; I am the one you seek.

She answered him in turn, “Rabboni,” which means Master. She returned him an answer; she spoke to him. He began first; then she follows. She felt the power of his speech in her heart. Its power flowed into her heart, and his love, witnessing to her heart, raised her love to him in return. So it was an answer to Christ’s speech, and from the same affection: an answer of love, and an answer of exceedingly large affection and of satisfaction to her soul. O my “Rabboni,” the soul of my soul, the life of my life, my joy, my rock, my all that can be dear to me! “Rabboni,” I have enough.

As he desired to give her satisfaction, so she takes satisfaction in the word. And yet it was not full satisfaction, for afterward she clings to him and would not let him go. It was an affection that stirred up great desire to have more and more communion with him, so that he had to check her afterward: “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” She did not have enough, as indeed a believing, affectionate soul never has enough until it is in heaven.

And so you see the sweet exchange at the appearance and first revealing of Christ to Mary. He spoke to her, and she answered him in turn with the same affection. And, as is fitting, it is a word of dependence: “Rabboni, my Master.” It is not only a word of honor, and not one used for just any superior, but for a superior by way of teaching. There was a submission of conscience to the Rabboni, as the Rabboni labors to have his seat in the consciences of people. It is a Syriac word, which in the original signifies “multiplication of knowledge” in the one who speaks, who labors to breed much knowledge in the one spoken to; and therefore it is a word of great respect and dependence.

She might well call him “Rabboni,” for he was the “Master of masters,” the “Rabboni of rabbonis,” the angel of the covenant, the great teacher of the church, the great “Gamaliel” at whose feet all must sit and be taught. So you see how much meaning and affection are in these little words. The fullness of heart in these two could not be expressed, even if it were possible to say all that could be said. And therefore we leave the particular case and come to apply it to ourselves.

Observation 1. We may learn here that until Christ himself makes himself known, no teaching will serve. No; the teaching of angels will not serve until Christ himself makes himself known by his Holy Spirit. When Christ does it, it is done. And therefore this should teach us to attend on the ministry in such a way that we look up to the great teacher who has his chair in heaven and teaches the heart. If he teaches, it does not matter how dull the scholar is. He is able to make anyone a scholar, if he instructs. I will not enlarge on the point, because there are particular places where these things will be enlarged.

Observation 2. The second thing I will observe is this: that Christ, when he teaches, does it by words, not by crucifixes, not by sights. We lost our salvation and all our happiness by the ear, and we must come to it again by the ear. Adam, by listening to Eve, and Eve to the serpent, lost everything; and therefore we must recover salvation by the ear. As we have heard, so we shall see. We must first hear, and then see. Life comes in at the ear as well as death. Faith, you know, is what brings a Christian to life, the spiritual life of a Christian. Now, faith comes by hearing; and therefore I beg you, by the tender compassion of Christ, set aside prejudice and meekly attend on God’s ordinances. Do not consider who we are; we are only poor ministers, frail men like yourselves. But consider the Lord, who is pleased to convey life and salvation and grace, and whatever is fit to bring to heaven, by this way. Therefore those who despise this way make light of salvation. As the apostle says, they judge themselves unworthy of the kingdom of heaven (Acts 13:46). They can read at home, but is that the way God has sanctified? Did not the manna stink when it was gathered on the Sabbath day? There is a curse on all private industry and devotion when it goes along with neglect of the public ordinances. Mary could have no comfort until Christ spoke. No, the very sight of Christ could not comfort her. Let this be enough, I beg you, so that I need not enlarge on the point any further. This is the way to comfort. We must hear him in his ministers here, if we would hear him speaking comfortably to us hereafter: “Come, ye blessed of my Father” (Matt 25:34).

Observation 3. It was only one word, “Mary.” Is there so much force in one word? Yes, when Christ speaks it. One word coming from Christ, and set on the heart by the Spirit of Christ, has a mighty power. The word had power to create all things: let it be done, and it was done. “Let there be light: there was light” (Gen 1:3). So let there be light in the understanding, and it will be there at once. So it was in all Christ’s cures: he said the word, and it was done. So it is in all spiritual cures: let him say the word, and it is done. Even a single look from Christ, if the Spirit goes along with it, is able to convert the soul. Christ looked on Peter, and he wept bitterly. What will his word do, when his look does so much? It was only a word, and only one word: “Say but the word,” the centurion says in the Gospel, “and my servant shall be healed” (Matt 8:8). This should make us long for Christ to speak to the soul, even if only a few words, and to clothe the words of men mightily with his word and with his Spirit. Then they will be mighty in their working and effects. It was one word, but a pregnant word. It was full of affection. She knew it well enough: “Mary.” What! To call her so familiarly, so sweetly, by the name she was used to hearing? It moved her to the depths of her heart at once.

Observation 4. But to go on. You see here again that Christ must begin with us before we can answer him. He began with “Mary,” and then she said, “Rabboni.” All the steps of salvation take place by way of covenant, by way of exchange and fellowship between God and man, but God begins first. In election, indeed, we choose him; but he chooses us first. He knows who are his, and we know him; but he knows us first. In calling, we answer, yes; but he calls first, and we only echo his call. In justification and the forgiveness of sins, we accept justification and submit to the righteousness of Christ, and to God’s purpose of saving man that way; but he gives faith first, for faith is the gift of God. We glorify him here on earth, but that comes as a result of God’s glorifying us in heaven. We have some pledges in advance, but they are of God’s giving. All we do is only a reflection of his love first, or of his knowing us first.

The Christian soul says, “Thou art my God”; yes, but he says first, “I am thy salvation” (Ps 35:3). As Augustine says, when God says, “I am thy salvation,” it is easy for the soul to say, “Thou art my God.” And this may teach us in our devotions. When we have to deal with God, when we bring any request to him, let us first ask him to reveal himself to us; let us ask Christ to reveal himself to us by his Spirit. People go wrong here in their devotions. They think they can bring something of their own strength and break in, as it were, on God, without his first making himself known. But Paul says, we know God, or rather, are known of him (Gal 4:9). We must ask him to make his heart known to us first, and then we will know him in return; to speak to us by his Spirit, and then we will answer him in return; to say to our souls that he is our salvation, and then we may lay claim to him: he is our God. Ask for the “Spirit of revelation,” to reveal his tender heart and love to us in Christ by his Holy Spirit. For certainly, in every turning of ours to Christ, God begins with us, all in all, though we may not feel it. But we ought to pray, more and more every day, for a revelation we can feel, that God would reveal his love to us in Christ. Then we cannot help but answer. If Christ says, “Mary,” Mary cannot help but answer, “Rabboni.”

Objection. But then you will say, “It is not our fault but Christ’s, if he must begin. If God begins, we will answer.”

Answer. I answer briefly that God always begins with us and is beforehand with us in all his dealings with us. He gives us many stirrings, and he never withdraws himself from us unless he is first despised and slighted. Therefore let us take care to answer Christ’s call when he calls. If we slight it, then by way of judgment he stops speaking to us any further, if we slight the beginnings of his revelations. There are many degrees and steps on the way to faith and assurance. If we do not heed the beginning, how God begins to reveal himself to us little by little, speaking to us by his Spirit in our hearts when he begins, then sometimes, in a spiritual judgment, he leaves us to ourselves. So let us regard all the stirrings of the Spirit and all the speeches of the Spirit of Christ, for he begins little by little. Otherwise our consciences will tell us afterward that we are not saved because we would not be saved. We would not yield to all the steps of salvation. When he was beforehand with us and offered us many sweet stirrings, we still loved our sins better than our souls, and so we pushed it all away.

Therefore, I beg you, do not refuse the sweet messages from heaven, the gracious and sweet stirrings of the Spirit of Christ. Make much of them. God has begun with you; be sure to answer. Learn it from Mary. When Christ began, she did not set her heart and unbelief against it, but she opened her heart and said, “Rabboni.” Learn, then, the duty of spiritual obedience. When God speaks, say, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth” (1 Sam 3:10). Do not shut your ears to the stirrings of God’s blessed Spirit. Do not harden your hearts against his voice, but open your hearts as she did: “Rabboni.”

Our Savior Christ says here, “Mary.” But when? After he had concealed himself from her a long time. It is not “Mary” at once, nor “Rabboni” at once. He had concealed himself a long while. Christ does not usually open himself fully at first, though he does to some degree at first; he observes degrees, as he does in the church in general. You see how he makes himself known in his gracious promises little by little, darkly at first, and at last the Sun of righteousness rises clearly. So the day star rises in our hearts by degrees. It is a long while before Mary hears that satisfying word from Christ: “Mary.”

Question. But why does Christ conceal himself in this way, as to his fuller manifestation?

Answer. It is partly to test and exercise our faith and our other graces. That is why God seems to withdraw himself as far as our sense of his love is concerned.

1. To see whether we can live by faith, or whether we are wholly given over to sense, as the world is, which lives altogether by sense and not by faith.

2. He would have our patience tried to the utmost. He would have “patience have its perfect work” (Jas 1:4). Mary had much patience to endure all this, but her patience did not have its perfect work until Christ spoke.

3. Christ will stir up and quicken zeal and fervency in his children. That is why he seemed to refuse the woman of Canaan (Matt 15:21 and following; Mark 7:27-28). At first he gave her no answer, and then a harsh answer: a dog. And she worked on that: though I am a dog, yet dogs have crumbs. All that refusal was only to stir up her zeal and earnestness. So, though Christ does not show himself to us at first, it is to stir up our zeal and affection to seek after him more earnestly. There is a notable passage on this in the Song of Songs (Song 3). The soul sought Christ, and sought long, and sought in the use of every means; but at length she waited, and in waiting she found him.

4. Christ does this to set a higher value on his presence when he comes, to make his presence highly prized when he does make himself known. Things long desired please more sweetly. And things are made dear to us by going without them, as warmth after cold and food after hunger, and so with every particular thing in this life. So God, to set a greater value on his presence, and so that he may be held more firmly when he does reveal himself, delays a long time. That is one reason why he delayed revealing himself to Mary: so that she might have all the sweeter contentment in him when he did reveal himself, as indeed she had.

Long delay of a thing only enlarges the soul. Want enlarges the desire and capacity of the soul, and so does love. Now, when we lack what we love, that empties the soul wonderfully; it puts our affections to death. When God keeps away a long time, and we see that God alone must do it, then our affection is drawn off from earthly things, and the heart is enlarged toward God by love and by the want of the thing we love. And so we set a high value on the thing, so that we become wonderfully pleasing to God. It is very beneficial to ourselves as well. What did Mary lose by it? Neither will we lose anything. We have it at last more abundantly. We have it as a mighty favor. Mary takes this as an altogether new blessing. When things are kept from us a long time, and God alone must make them known, when the heart is kept from leaning on second causes, the heart is enlarged. Certainly this comes from God, and God should have all the glory for it. God is wise, and so he makes us wait a long time for what we desire.

All of us are in Mary’s case in a spiritual sense. At one time or another we miss Christ, I mean the sweet sense of Christ. Lay this down as a rule: Christians ought to walk in sweet communion with God and Christ, and it ought to be the life of a Christian to maintain the communion that Christ has graciously granted between us and himself. Then certainly we lose Christ wonderfully, and not against our wills, but willingly, by our own slighting of him and our own undervaluing of him, or by our negligence or presumption. Christ, though he is lowly, is still great, and he will have us know his greatness. There must be communion with due reverence. One way or another we deprive ourselves of the sense and sweetness of communion with Christ.

What must we do, then? We must do as the woman did: turn over every stone, use every kind of means, leave out not one until we find him; and when all means have been used, still wait. Persevere in waiting, as Peter says. Believers, wait; hold out in waiting, for Christ will come in his time. He cannot hold back long. Joseph suppressed his love and affection for reasons of policy a long while, but his pity toward his brothers was such that his heart would not let him conceal himself any longer. His feeling was stronger than his policy: “I am Joseph” (Gen 45:3). So let us, in the use of all things, seek Christ and the sweet sense of his love, which is better than life itself. And indeed, what is everything without Christ? Christ is so full of compassion that he will not let us be kept waiting long, but will at length satisfy the hungry soul (Ps 63:5). How many promises we have to this end!

Beware of a temper of soul that does not care whether we find Christ or not. Oh, beware of that! If we would seek him, let us seek him as Mary did. She sought him early in the morning (Matt 28:1; Mark 16:9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1); she broke off her sleep and sought him with tears. If anything is to be sought with tears, it is Christ and communion with him. She sought him urgently and constantly. She sought him in such a way that no obstacle could hinder her, she was so full of grief and love. She sought him with her whole heart; she waited as she sought. That is the way to find Christ. Seek him early, in our younger years, in the morning of our life. Oh, that we could seek Christ as we seek our pleasures! We would find more pleasure in Christ than in all the pleasures of the world, if we could only persuade our base hearts of it. Seek him above all other things. Wake up with this resolution in our hearts: to find Christ, and never to rest until we can say with some comfort, “I am Christ’s, and Christ is mine.” When we have him, we have everything. Seek him with tears, and at length we are sure to find him. He has bound himself, that if we knock he will open, and if we seek we will find, if we seek wisdom early, with our whole hearts, entirely and sincerely. Seek Christ for Christ’s own sake, and then we are sure to find him, as she did.

Seek him in this way in the word and sacraments, where he makes himself known familiarly. Seek him in the temple (Christ was found in the temple, Luke 2:46), and then we are sure to find him both here and hereafter. Especially we will find him in our hearts. You see how familiarly he comes to us in the word: he speaks to us through a man like ourselves. And how familiarly in the sacrament, by common bread and common wine, set apart to do great things above nature, to strengthen faith. In the sacrament he comes to us through our senses into our souls. He comes to us through our ears in hearing the word, and through our sight in seeing the bread broken. He comes by familiar things, and by a familiar manner of conveying himself, as if he were naming each one: “I come to you, and give you my body.” Let us think to ourselves, “Now Christ is coming to me.” When the minister hands the bread and comes to me, let me think of the heavenly bread, and of Christ given to me through these means. Could he do it more familiarly? Is it not as if he were saying, “Mary”? And that is the excellence of the sacrament. It conveys Christ to all the saints, and to each one in particular, as if he named each one. And what an encouragement this is to answer him in return, to open our hearts to receive him together with the elements, to embrace Christ, to join with Christ, and then to keep him when we have him! Do not lose him. He will not be dealt with in that way. Remember the covenant we have made with him.

I beg you, let these sweet thoughts of Christ dwell in us and work on every one of our hearts. If they do us good here on earth, if we lay hold of him by faith and have fellowship with him, what will it be at the day of judgment! How comforting it will be to hear him say to each one in particular, “Come, you, and you; stand at my right hand; sit and judge the world with me” (1 Cor 6:2). Does he know our names now on earth, and give to each one particularly in his own person, if we come worthily? And will he not know us then? Oh, that is worth far more than all the world’s goods, for him to know us then and call us by our names! Therefore, I beg you, become acquainted with Christ. Have all the fellowship with him you can in the word and sacraments, and never rest until you find this sweet result from the use of the means: that he is ours, and we are his.

So beware, in these times so desperately given over to formality and popery. I say, beware: let us not depend on any outward thing, but look to Christ in all his ordinances; look to the Spirit. All God’s children, the church of the firstborn, are such as are “taught of God” (1 Thess 4:9). Who can take away the disposition of man’s nature that is opposed to goodness, but God by his Spirit? Who can shine into the soul and quicken the soul, but Christ by his Spirit? Who is above the heart and conscience, but Christ by his Spirit? Therefore beware of formality. Submit your hearts to the great prophet of the church that Moses speaks of, who would be the great teacher of the church (Deut 18:18). Lift up our hearts to him, that he would teach our hearts and remove the natural disposition that is in us; that he would take off the veil from our hearts, and teach us not only what to do, but teach us the very doing of it. Teach us to hate what is evil, teach us to believe, and to resist all Satan’s temptations. Who can teach but the great teacher, whose chair is in heaven? Therefore beware of depending on formal things. Lift your hearts to God, that he would join his teaching to all other teaching. This cannot be stressed too much. I beg you, then, take it to heart.

Give me leave, then, to add a few things more. When Christ spoke to Mary in general terms, she answered in general terms; and when he spoke to her at a distance, she answered him at a distance, from afar, and never gave him a direct answer until he gave her a direct word. When he said, “Mary,” she gave him a direct answer, “Rabboni,” and not before. I beg you, therefore, let us not rest in general promises and general graces, which some make so much of, as though God had the same regard for all. Do not trust in that. We must not pry into his secrets, but let us obey his precepts and commandments.

And remember this as well. When we hear of a general mercy, and of a command for all nations to believe, and that Christ came to save a world of sinners, alas, what is that to me, unless you, by your Holy Spirit, speak to my soul and say in particular, “I am thy salvation” (Ps 35:3), and speak familiarly to my soul? General truths are comforting to some degree. But if I do not find a particular share in them by the witness of your Holy Spirit to my soul, if you do not say to my soul, “I am yours, and you are mine,” it is all to little purpose. Therefore, in the desires of our souls in prayer, let us ask the Lord to reveal himself in particular. We trust too much in general truths: God is merciful, and Christ came to redeem the world. These are truths, and good foundations on which to build faith, but they will not do the work until, by daily prayer, we seek the Lord, asking him to reveal himself to us in a particular way. This is what Paul prays for, that God would vouchsafe to them the Spirit of revelation (Eph 1:17).

And this is the office of the Holy Spirit. His special office is to reveal to each one in particular his state and condition toward God. The Holy Spirit knows the secrets in the heart of God and in our own hearts. Now the Holy Spirit can reveal the particular love that lies in God’s heart toward our particular souls. Therefore we should ask God that the Holy Spirit may be sent to seal to us our particular salvation, and we should never be at rest until we are sealed with particular assurance that we are among those whom Christ came to save. This is what we ought to labor for. If we labor for it, we will have it at one time or another, for God loves to be familiar with his children. He does not love to be a stranger to them, if they seek his love, but loves to reveal himself, sooner or later. And there are few who seek it to whom God does not reveal himself by his Spirit before they die; and if he does not, they are sure of it in heaven. So those who are against particulars are enemies of their own salvation. Mary paid no attention while Christ spoke in general terms, but when he came to particulars, then came “Rabboni,” and not before.

Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; I am not yet ascended to my Father. (John 20:17)

This verse contains Christ’s prohibition, and Christ’s commission or charge. His prohibition is “Touch me not,” and his reason is “for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” His charge is “Go to my brethren,” and then he directs her what to say to them: “I ascend to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God.”

The words are very plain and need no breaking open for you. But I will handle them as they follow one another.

“Jesus said to her, Touch me not.”

“Touch me not.” Why? He would have Thomas not only touch him but put his finger into his side, and that is more than touching him (John 20:27). But our Savior’s intent is to deal with a disposition in Mary that was somewhat carnal, somewhat low and mean, considering this glorious occasion. Christ was now risen and glorified, for his resurrection was the first stage of his glorification. And therefore, “Touch me not.”

She came with too carnal a mind to touch him when she said, “Rabboni.” It was not enough for her to answer, “Rabboni”; she ran to him, clasped him, and clung to him, as her love prompted her. But he says, “Touch me not” in such a manner. This is not a fit way for you to touch me, now that I am risen again.

In a word, she had thought to have fellowship with Christ in as familiar a manner as before, when she poured ointment on his head. He was the same person, but the case had changed. That was in the days of his humiliation. Now he was risen again, and this was the first stage of his glorification. Another kind of fellowship was now due to him; and therefore, “Touch me not.” You think you can touch me as you did before, but you must not do it. She was too much attached to his bodily presence.

1. It is the very thing that people will labor after, and have labored for even from the beginning of the world: to be too much attached to present things and to sense. They will worship Christ, but they must have a picture before them. They will adore Christ, but they must bring his body down to a piece of bread; they must have him present. And so, instead of raising their hearts to God and Christ in a heavenly manner, they pull God and Christ down to themselves. The pride and base earthliness of man will do this.

And therefore Christ says, “Touch me not” in that manner; it is not with me now as it was before. We must beware of low and base notions of Christ. What does Paul say in 2 Corinthians 5:16? I know no man now, according to the flesh; no, not Christ himself, now he is risen. Christ was of such a tribe and such a stature, and had such gifts and qualities. What is that to me? Christ is now Lord of lords and King of kings. He is glorious in heaven, and that is how I think of him: I know no man after the flesh; no, not Christ himself. I forget what he was on earth, and think of him as what he is now in heaven.

Therefore, to bring him down to our base notions, to sense, and the like, is the temper of people who labor against the whole aim of the gospel. For why are people so attached to outward things and outward ceremonies? It is pride; it is satanic pride. They think that God is delighted with whatever their folly delights in. Because among men there must be a great to-do, they think God is well pleased with such things. God is a Spirit (John 4:24). And though outward things are necessary, yet everything must not be turned outward, as in popery. We must not bring God down to our foolish notions, as if he were delighted as we are.

2. It is wonderfully easy, too. Any wicked man can have all outward things along with his sins. Outward things cannot please God. Let a man perform a little outward ceremony, and he may be whatever he likes and live however he pleases. Once he is persuaded that outward things will serve the turn, he is safe, as he thinks. His conscience is plastered over until God awakens it by the sense of his wrath; and then such people will find that dealing with God is another matter than ceremony.

3. There is also great glory in outward things. They win commendation, and people take notice of them, as with the Pharisees and in popery. But the spiritual worship of Christ draws no notice in the eyes of the world. It is between God and the soul. People naturally love the things that are glorious.

It is said of Ephraim that he loved to tread out the grain, but not to plow (Hos 10:11). That is, Ephraim will take what is easy in God’s worship, but not what is hard. There are two things in God’s service. One is easy, and that is outward ceremony. The other is hard: to trust him, to deny ourselves, to rely on him and live by faith. And that Ephraim will not do. Ephraim will tread out the grain, because the heifer may eat grain; but there are hard things in religion that he will not practice. He will not plow.

“Touch me not,” says Christ. Your thoughts are not spiritual enough to deal with me, now that I am risen.

But what is the reason? “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” That seems to be a strong reason. But it seems to be a contrary reason. Do not touch me now, when my body is present, but touch me when I am gone and removed out of the sight of all flesh. Do not touch me now, when you can touch me, but touch me when it is impossible to touch me. This seems strange. But in fact there is no contradiction in it: “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to the Father.”

There is a double meaning in the words. First of all, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended.” You need not clasp and cling to me as if I would stay no longer with you here below. “I am not yet ascended to the Father.” There will be time enough afterward.

For the word touch in the original does not signify merely to touch, but to clasp, associate, join, and solder oneself to a thing (Isa 52:11; 2 Cor 6:17). When Scripture speaks of the evil man and says you shall not touch him, it means you must not make yourself one with him: “Depart from the tents of wicked men” (Num 16:26). The devil shall not take you from Christ and make you one with himself. It is a striking word in the original: You clasp me, you do more than touch me; you cling to me and will not let me go, as if I were going to the Father at once. “But I am not yet ascended to the Father.” That is one part of the meaning.

But there is a further meaning than that: “I am not yet ascended to the Father; touch me not.” That is, I look for another kind of touch, better for you and in some respects for me: that you touch me by the hand of faith when I have ascended to the Father. Then touch me, and take your fill of touching me. But for the present I have not ascended. I have not done everything; I have not yet fully shown myself to my disciples. When I have ascended, all is done, and then there is room for touching. And that, I take it, is what is meant here: “I am not yet ascended to the Father.”

You think I have done everything that is to be done, but you are mistaken. I must ascend to the Father, and when I am there I expect to be touched in another manner, a gracious, spiritual manner, which is by faith. As Augustine says well, “Send up your faith to heaven, and then you touch Christ.” As he said of the sacrament, “What do you prepare your teeth and stomach for? Believe, and you have eaten.” So the best communion with Christ is to believe, until we come to heaven to have eternal communion with him. This touch will do you little good, and it pleases me just as little. When I have ascended to the Father, then touch me to the full. So you see what Christ means.

The life of a Christian here, and the way Christ is dispensed to us here, is by promise and by his Spirit, so that we should live by faith and not by sense. The life of sight is reserved for another world, when we are fitted for it. She was not fit for a life of sense, but was to wait for the Holy Spirit from heaven: to be filled with him, and then to be filled with faith and love, and then to have a holy communion with Christ in heaven. But “I am not yet ascended.” So you see the meaning of “Touch me not.”

There are two reasons for Christ’s prohibition.

1. Her regard for him was too carnal and ordinary, considering that he was in the state of glory. And then,

2. Because there will be time enough. Do not stand here embracing me; there is a greater work for you to do. Christ preferred the great work of giving his disciples notice of his resurrection to the office of respect and service to himself. Go about a duty that I value a great deal more: “Go, tell my brethren I ascend…” So every part of the text gives a satisfying account of that prohibition.

“Go,” he says, “to my brethren.” I have another work for you to do; “Touch me not.” You cling to me as if you had nothing to do. There is another work to do that pleases me better and is more fitting for you: to comfort those who are in distress, my poor brethren and disciples. And therefore “go to my brethren, and say unto them.” So Christ prefers a work of charity to his poor disciples to a work of ceremony toward his own person. She clings to him, but “this is not what I want.” Those poor souls are mourning and disconsolate for me, as if I were taken away altogether. Go to them, and spare them further sorrow.

God has a wonderful regard for others. It is striking that Christ should say, “Go and be reconciled to thy brethren, and then offer thy sacrifice” (Matt 5:24). It is as if he would rather have his own sacrifice neglected than have us remain unreconciled to others. And so a work of charity and love is preferred to an act of duty and ceremony toward himself. Let us show our love for the first table of the law in the second: our love to God by our love to others. Everything has its measure and its time. Away, therefore, with this excessive embracing and touching. Go your way; you have another work to do: “Go to my brethren.” And so you see, as I take it, the full meaning of the words.

Observe the circumstances. Who must go? Here is a commission and a command. And to whom? To the disciples of Christ. And when does Christ bid her go? When he had risen, and was in the first estate of glory. What is the message? “Tell my brethren I am ascending to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God” (John 20:17). It is worth your considering a little.

1. Who is sent? A woman. A woman is sent to be the apostle of apostles, to be the teacher of the great teachers of the world. Mary Magdalene was sent to instruct the apostles in the great articles of Christ’s resurrection and ascension to heaven. By a woman death came into the world, and by a woman life was preached to the apostles. For indeed she was more affectionate, and affection carries all before it. And that is what makes that sex more inclined to religion, by the advantage of their affection; for religion is wholly a matter of the affections. Though it must have judgment shining before it, yet it lies especially in the heart and affections. And she had shown a great deal of affection. She stood her ground when the rest went away (John 19:25). She was constant, and broke through all difficulties; and then God honored her to be the first preacher of his resurrection.

God’s way is to entrust secrets to earthen vessels, so that earthen vessels should carry heavenly treasure (2 Cor 4:7). Therefore do not stick at the vessel, but look to the treasure. A woman may teach the greatest apostle. Look not to the man, but to the message. Elijah will not refuse the food because the raven brought it (1 Kgs 17:4). And a condemned man will not refuse a pardon because a lowly man brings it. Lay aside pride in spiritual matters. When God honors any man to bring news of reconciliation, stoop to him, whatever his condition may be.

2. To whom must she go? “Go, tell my brethren,” the apostles. Go to the apostles, who are disconsolate men, now orphans, deprived of their Master and Lord. They were disconsolate men, and not in vain, that is, not without cause. For they had reason to be discouraged, not only because they lacked Christ, but because of their own poor conduct toward Christ. One of them denies him, and the rest forsake him; and yet it is “my brethren”: “go tell my brethren.”

3. When did he speak this? After his resurrection, in the state of glory; at the beginning of it, and when he is ascending to heaven. And yet he acknowledges them as brethren, though they were brethren who had dealt most unbrotherly with him.

But how did they come to be his brethren? And how do we come to be Christ’s brothers? Christ is the firstborn of many brethren (Rom 8:29). He is the Son of God by nature; and all others are sons now by grace and adoption (Rom 8:17). Christ is the firstborn among many brethren, and in Christ we have one Father with Christ. We have one honor, and we shall all be kings and heirs of heaven, as he is. “If sons, then heirs” (Gal 4:7); the apostle makes the connection. Now we are all sons of God in Christ, heirs with him. To come to the nature he took: it was our nature, and therefore, having our flesh, he is our brother (Heb 2:14). Even the reprobate may say that much. Yet it is a ground of comfort that he is a man as we are. But that is not the main thing to consider. He is our brother in a spiritual respect, in regard of adoption. He is the first Son of God, and we in him are sons. He is the first heir of God, and we in him are heirs. And therefore, “go to my brethren.”

Beloved, it is a point of marvelous comfort that Christ was not ashamed to call them brethren. “I will declare thy name amongst my brethren,” says Christ (Ps 22:22). Our Savior Christ alluded to that psalm in this passage, and so it is quoted out of that psalm in Hebrews 2:12. Christ has taken upon himself toward us every relation that brings comfort. He is “the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace” (Isa 9:6). He is a second Adam, and therefore a father in that regard. The first Adam is the father of all who perish; the second Adam is the father of all who shall be saved. As he is our brother, so he is our husband. He could not be our husband unless he were our brother. He must take our nature and be one with us before we can be one with him. He is our friend. Before this time he called them friends, as you see in John: “I will call you friends” (John 15:15). But here is a sweeter term: “brethren.” There is no relation that has any comfort in it but Christ has taken it upon himself. He is our head, husband, friend, father, brother, and whatever can convey comfort to us (1 Cor 11:3; 1 Cor 12:27; Eph 5:23; 1 John 2:2 and following; Rev 22:3 and following).

And the truth is, he is these things more truly than any relation is made true on earth. For these relations of husband and wife, brother and sister, and father and child are only shadows of that everlasting relation which Christ has taken upon himself; the reality and the truth itself is in Christ. We think there is no brother but the brother in the flesh, and no father but the father in the flesh. Alas! These are only shadows, and they quickly cease: “the fashion of the world passeth away” (1 Cor 7:31). Brother is another relation, of which these are only shadows. These do but represent the best things that are in heaven. Christ is the father, the brother, the friend, and whatever is comfortable in heaven. Therefore, “go tell my brethren.”

Objection. “Yes,” says the poor soul, “but I have been so sinful, so unworthy a wretch. Shall I take comfort in this, that Christ is my brother, and that I am Christ’s? I cannot do it.”

Answer. I grant that you cannot do it. Flesh and blood must not teach it to you; you must be taught by the Spirit of Christ. But consider how the apostles treated Christ. You cannot call Christ brother, because you have been a sinner and have carried yourself unkindly toward Christ. And did not the disciples do the same? Did they not leave him, and did not one of them deny him, and that with oaths? Therefore, whatever our sins have been, let us not deny our relation to Christ. The poor prodigal said, “I am not worthy to be called a son” (Luke 15:21); I am not worthy to be called a servant.

He did not deny that he was a son, but said he was unworthy of it. And so I am unworthy to be a spouse and a brother of Christ; yet let us not do our unfaithful hearts so great a favor as to deny our relation.

The apostles were so dignified as to be called the pillars of the world (Gal 2:9). But these men left him, and yet for all that, in this very time of their desertion of him, it is “go tell my brethren.” Therefore do not be discouraged. Let us go to Christ in our worst condition and in our greatest temptations, when our hearts misgive us most that we have used God most unkindly, and when Satan plies us hardest with desperate temptations. Even then let us own him as our brother, who owned his disciples when they dealt most unkindly with him. Temptation is an opportunity to go to Christ, so that he may help us. I beseech you, count it a priceless comfort, which no tongue is able to express, that Christ after his resurrection should call them “brethren.”

He might well call them brethren after his resurrection, because then all debts were discharged by his death. He had paid their debts, and now the release was due to them, because Christ as surety had paid all. Now I am risen; “go and tell my brethren so.” If we can make use of the death and resurrection of Christ, and say, “Christ has died for my sins and risen again for my justification; I will lay claim to a share in his death; I will claim the power of his resurrection,” then take the comfort of this.

Under popery they had much comfort in those dark times, when a company of proud, carnal, beastly men ruled the roost according to their own lusts. These clergymen made a great fuss about fraternity and brotherhood. And if people belonged to some fraternity of Dominic or Francis, or were merely in a friar’s cowl, it not only made satisfaction for sin but was meritorious; they could do no wrong. Away with these shadows! Here is the brotherhood that must comfort Christians: that Christ acknowledged us as brethren after his resurrection. He paid dearly for it, alas! Are we worth so much, that God should become man to die for us, to rise again for us, to justify us, and to make us brethren? That infinite love, that God became man and died for us and rose again to own us as his brethren, will satisfy all doubts. Shall we doubt anything about that love? When he, out of his free love, will own us as brethren, shall we not own him?

I confess it is a marvelous thing, and in times of temptation it is difficult to make use of it. Oh, but pray with the good apostle, “Lord, increase our faith” (Luke 17:5), and with the poor man in the Gospel, “I believe; Lord, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). So when any temptation comes because of our unworthiness and our lack of desert, then think: “Christ after his resurrection called his apostles ‘brethren,’ and he will be content to be my brother, if I will believe that he died for me and cast myself upon him.” Therefore away with all doubts.

There are many other observations to be drawn from the words.

(1) Would you have his first words in the state of glory, his first words after death? “Go and tell my brethren.” Think, in a desperate extremity, think of the sweet message he sent by Mary Magdalene to his unworthy “brethren,” for whom he died and to whom he had given his blood to make them his brethren. Think of his free love to you. It is not because of your worthiness or unworthiness, but out of his own free love, that he came from heaven to take your nature. It is out of his own free love that he came to die. Therefore do not think about worthiness or unworthiness, but consider the command of God to believe; and if we perish, let us perish there. Let us cast ourselves on our brother, who will own us in our worst condition. That is the chief use.

(2) Again, if God owns us in his glorious condition, shall we be ashamed of the doctrine of Christ, or ashamed to own the children of God? What does Christ say? It is a terrible thunderbolt: “He that is ashamed of me and of my word before men, I will be ashamed of him before my heavenly Father” (Mark 8:38). Take heed of being ashamed to stand up for a good cause in matters of religion. Christ was not ashamed to call us brethren when we were at our worst and he himself was in a glorious condition. He was in glory, and the disciples were drooping at the thought of their guilt, that they had forsaken him; and yet they were “brethren” still. And shall we not own him, who owns us in his state of glory? How can we expect him to own us hereafter, when he entrusts us with his cause and glory and we betray it all to please this person or that? Can we look Christ in the face with comfort if we neglect his cause, his truth, and his church?

(3) Again, make this use of it: Christ is our brother, and will he not take our part? Absalom was a disobedient son, yet Absalom would not let his sister Tamar be abused; he would have revenge for that. And will Christ suffer his sister, his spouse, his church, to be abused for long? No; will he leave his “dove, his love, his undefiled one” (Song 5:2), in whom he has placed all his joy and contentment, to the malice and fury of the enemy for long? Certainly he will not. Certainly he will be avenged on his enemies. If nature, which he has put into wicked, sinful men, teaches them to avenge indignities offered to their kindred, will Christ suffer his brothers and his sisters to be abused? “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4). Now that he is in heaven, the church’s case is his own.

And therefore let us comfort ourselves with that sweet relation. Christ has undertaken to be our brother in his state of glory. What a comfort it is that we have a brother in heaven! What a comfort it was to the poor patriarchs when they thought to themselves, “We have a brother, Joseph, who is the second man in the kingdom!” And so, what a great comfort it is for poor Christians to think that the second in heaven, who sits at God’s right hand, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, and who rules all, is our brother! Is not this a chief comfort, indeed one beyond all expression, if we could make use of it by a faith answerable to our trouble? Therefore go to Joseph, who has laid up comfort for us. He has comfort enough for us; he has treasures of comfort. Whatever is necessary for us we may have in Christ our elder brother. And therefore, “go to my brethren.”

I beseech you, let us draw an exhortation from this, and be stirred up to labor by faith to be one with Christ. Then he will be our head, our husband, our brother, our friend, our all. Say what you can, Christ will be “all in all” to all who are his. He has enough in him: “Of his fulness we shall receive, and grace for grace” (John 1:16). Oh, labor to be one with Christ. Do not lose such a comfort as is offered. He offers himself first to be our Savior and Redeemer, and then our brother. Therefore never rest until we have a part in Christ.

And then labor to make use of everything that is useful, and in all temptations catch fast hold of it, as it is the nature of faith to do, like Ben-hadad’s servants, who made use of that word “brother.” “He is my brother,” said the king of Israel (1 Kgs 20:32), as a common office makes men kin. He had merely let slip the term “brother,” and they would not let it go, but caught at it: “Thy brother Benhadad” (1 Kgs 20:33). We see what wisdom flesh and blood can teach in making the most of any comfort in the world: by kinship, or office, or any relation in the world, they make use of them. And when we are in Christ, shall we not make use of these things when we are troubled with a sense of sin, or are in desperate conditions? When Christ calls us brother, shall we not answer, “I am your brother”? Blessed be your mercy and love, which descended so low as to make me your brother!

I beseech you, let us not lose the comforts we may have in the disciples’ being called Christ’s brethren when they were in some sort enemies. But he knew their hearts were sound, and that it was only their weakness. Therefore let no weakness discourage you. He will not “quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed” (Matt 12:20). Is your heart right toward Christ? Are you no false hypocrite, no secret traitor to Christ and to his cause and church? Then be of good comfort; you may go to Christ as to your brother. Though Peter denied him with his mouth, yet he confessed him with his heart. And therefore it is “go tell my disciples,” and Peter (Mark 16:7); he has the most guilt, and therefore he has the most need of comfort. However great your guilt may be, if you will come into covenant with God, here is mercy for you; and therefore make this use of it. In the worst condition you can ever be in, never forget to make use of it, since Christ will stoop so low as to own you as brethren, if your hearts are right toward him.

“Go to my brethren.” Now I come to the commission or charge given to her: “Go to my brethren.” Who is the party charged? “Mary.” And what is her charge? To go to the apostles under the sweet term of “brethren.” When does he call them so? After his resurrection, when he was in the state of glory. What is the message? It is very sweet. Go, say to them, “I ascend to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God.” “I ascend”: that is, I am about to ascend; in a very short time I shall ascend. There were only forty days between Easter and Ascension, and all that time Christ appeared now and then. It is the nature of faith, where it is glorious, to present future things as if they were present, especially when they are near. “I ascend”: that is, I shall very shortly ascend, and it is all one as if I were ascending now. To whom do I ascend? “I ascend to my Father.” To “my Father”: that is not comfort enough. Therefore, “to your Father” too. “I ascend to God”: that is not comfort enough. Therefore, “to my God, and your God.” We shall unfold the words as we come to them.

First, Mary Magdalene, a woman, a sinner, is used in the great work of an apostle, to be an apostle to the apostles. I wish there were such love in all men, to teach what they know, and such humility in others, to be instructed in what they do not know. It would be a sweet combination if it were so. She was a lowly person to instruct the great apostles. But, beloved, where there is a great deal of love, people will teach what they know; and where there is humility, people will be taught what they do not know, however great they may be. And God will sometimes humble the greatest to learn from the lowliest. Therefore he sends Mary to the apostles.

I beseech you, in matters of salvation, do not stand on ceremony. Let us take the truth from Christ; let us see God and Christ in it, and see our own comfort in it, and not stand upon persons. Aquila and Priscilla teach great men knowledge (Acts 18:2 and following). And so it is: sometimes lowly persons are honored to be instruments of great comfort to persons greater than themselves.

She is to go to the apostles under the name of brethren: “Go tell my brethren.” And she must go to the apostles, who were Christ’s brethren and were acknowledged to be so now, when he was in glory. He had risen and was exempt from all the abasements of the cross and the grave, where he had been held captive three days under the dominion of sin; he was freed from all the enemies of salvation and had triumphed over them all. “Go tell my brethren.” So you see there is a sweet affinity and nearness between Christ and his own.

Christ took our nature upon himself for this end: he became flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, so that we might spiritually be flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. That Christ was incarnate for us is no comfort at all by itself; it is a comfort that draws us on, but not an actual, present comfort. For all the world might take comfort in that, Turks, Jews, and pagans, who had the nature of man in them. And all do have some comfort in it, in that their nature is dignified, and in that he took upon himself not the nature of angels but the nature of man. Yet it is his spouse, his church, that has the comfort of it. Therefore it is not sufficient that he be bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; we must be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. We must be engrafted and baptized into him by faith, and then the term holds true, and never until then. So there is a sweet nearness between Christ and his own. “Brother” is a most comforting relation.

It is a comfort that he took our nature upon himself, that God would take “dust and ashes,” earth, into the unity of his person. For God to become man is a great dignifying of man’s nature. But to take not only our nature upon himself, but to take our persons particularly near to himself, so that you, and you, are a member of Christ: there is the honor of it. The first draws us to come to Christ, who has loved our nature so much. But the other is an actual, present comfort, when we can say, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (Song 6:3).

Our hearts are far too narrow to embrace the whole comfort that this word affords us: that Christ should own us as his brothers after his resurrection, for that shows a reconciliation. “Brother” is a term of friendship; indeed, it is more than a term of reconciliation, for a man may be reconciled to an enemy. But it is a term of amity, to show that when we believe in Christ and are one with him, our sins are acquitted, death is overcome, and Satan’s head is crushed, when God is reconciled. What do they have to do with us? They only serve our turn, to bring us to heaven and fit us for it.

I beseech you, consider the excellent freedom and dignity of a Christian. Consider his freedom, in that he is the brother of Christ, free from all, being acknowledged by Christ after his resurrection, all being discharged by the death of him who was our surety; otherwise he would be in the grave to this day. And then think of our dignity, to be brother to him who is King of heaven, Lord of lords, ruler of the whole world, who has all things subject to him. Oh, that our hearts were enlarged to conceive the wonderful comfort that every Christian has in this relation! Go tell my apostles, under the sweet term of “brethren.”

“Who are you,” Satan will say, “flesh and blood, a piece of earth, a wretched fool? Will you claim kinship with Christ?”

“Yes,” says the Christian, the believing soul, “it is true. If it depended on my own worthiness, that would be another matter, but I will tell him he lies. When Christ acknowledged me as his brother after his resurrection, shall I deny the relation?” Therefore never believe Satan’s tempting words and your sinful flesh; for Satan comes to us in our own flesh and makes us think God and Christ to be such and such. Yes, but what does Christ himself say? Believe him, and not Satan, who comes to you in your own despairing, dark, doubting flesh. Believe the word of Christ, who calls you brother, if you believe on him and cast yourself upon him.

This shows the dignity of a Christian once he is in Christ: the excellent, superexcellent, transcendent glory of a Christian. When they told our Savior Christ that his mother and brothers wanted to speak with him, he said, “They that hear my word and do it, they are my brother, and sister, and my mother” (Luke 8:21). This is the excellence of a Christian, that he is so near of kin to Christ. When we believe Christ, it is all one as if we had conceived Christ, as if we were brothers to Christ, as if we were of the nearest kindred to him. No, it is more; he prefers mother to mother and brother to brother: mother in the spirit to mother in the flesh, and brother in the spirit to all other brothers. Therefore it is an excellent thing to be a Christian! Once a Christian gives himself to Christ and denies his own doubting, despairing heart, which is the greatest enemy he has:

1. Then what belongs to him? Then God is his, and Christ is his; he must have an inheritance; he is undoubtedly a fellow heir; all are his.

2. What does he carry within him? He carries within him the Spirit of the Father and the Son, and the graces of the Spirit, which make him lovely to God.

3. What comes from him? Having the precious graces of the Holy Spirit in him, what can come from him as a Christian but grace and comfort to others? He is a tree of righteousness; and what can come from a good tree but good fruit? Insofar as he is a Christian, that is what he is.

So if you consider what belongs to Christians, what is in them, the inheritance they will have, or what comes from a Christian (that is, from a brother of Christ), he is an excellent person, more excellent than his neighbor. There is no man in the world, however great, who is not a base person in comparison with a Christian. What will it all amount to before long? If a man is not in Christ, these things will only add to his vexation. It will be a misery to have had happiness, and the misery will be all the greater when he must part with it. And therefore raise your hearts to consider the excellent condition of a Christian once he is the brother of Christ.

I confess it is a hidden dignity. As Paul says, “Our life is hid with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). We have a life, a glorious life, but it is hidden. It is dark: sometimes under melancholy, sometimes under temptations, sometimes under the afflictions of the world and disgrace. And so it is a hidden excellence, but it is a true excellence. The world does not know us any more than it knows God and Christ. But that does not matter; God knows us by name. He knew Mary by name, as it is said in Isaiah, “I have called thee by name” (Isa 43:1). He is a shepherd who knows his sheep by name and is known by them. He knows you, and you, and you, by name; indeed, the hairs of your head are numbered. And therefore it does not matter if your dignities are hidden from the world. God still knows them. He has written all your members in a book, and he keeps a book of remembrance for you. And therefore it does not matter that it is a hidden dignity. It is a true dignity to be a brother of Christ.

Let us set this against the disgrace of the world and against every temptation to discouragement whatever. What are all discouragements compared with this? They all fall before this: that we are the sons of God and brethren of Christ. What can discourage a man who has a well-grounded sense of this excellence? I will enlarge the point no further, but leave it to your own meditations, and may the Spirit of God work with it!

“Go to my brethren.” When does he bid her go? Now, after his resurrection, when he was about to ascend to heaven. The first step of his glory was his resurrection, after his lowest abasement in the grave. You see that honor does not change Christ’s disposition, as it does among men. When men are advanced to great places, they will not look at their old friends and acquaintances. But Christ has no such disposition. He owns his poor disciples in their greatest abasement: “Go tell my brethren.” Now, when he was in a state of glory and ready to go to heaven, he gives them a more comforting title than ever before. In the Gospel he called them “servants,” and “friends,” and “apostles,” and “disciples”; but now “brethren,” a word of all sweetness, and nothing but sweetness.

“Go tell my brethren” at once. Christ would have no delay, for he saw that they had present need. Christ’s love is a quickening love, and its fruits come very speedily. There is more than angelic swiftness in Christ when there is need of him. God helps in time of need, at the most seasonable time, and he knows the time best of all. He had only just risen in the morning, and that very same day it is “Go tell my brethren.” In Song 2:8 you read that Christ comes “leaping upon the mountains.” When he was to help his church, he leaped over the mountains; as the verse has it, “The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.” He comes from heaven to earth, from earth to the grave; and now that he is risen, he is all in haste. He makes no stay, because his way of dispatching his business is to help and comfort by the ministry of others. Go quickly; do not stand here embracing me, but “go and tell my brethren.”

Objection. But then why do we who are afflicted not find comfort sooner?

Answer. Beloved, where is the fault? Is it in Christ? You keep Christ at arm’s length. You will not embrace comforts when they are offered, or else you are not sufficiently humbled. For he is as wise as he is swift; he knows which times are best.

You see, then, that Christ will come as soon as ever it is fit for him to come. If he came sooner, he would come too soon; if later, it would be too late. He is the best discerner of times and seasons there can be, and therefore wait for his time. If you lack comfort, humble soul, whoever you are, wait for his time. He certainly knows the best time, and when the time has come, he will come. “He that will come shall come” (Heb 10:37); there is no question of that.

Now, as he sent her in all haste, putting this before any courtesy to his own person, so his love is a constant love. As the love God bears to his children is a quick love, so it is a constant, invincible love. The disciples had dealt most unbrotherly with him, for every one of them had forsaken him, and Peter had denied him; yet it is “Go tell my brethren.” One would think this water would have quenched this fire, that this unkind and unbrotherly dealing would have quenched this love in Christ’s breast. It is true that if it had been merely the love of a man, that would have been one thing. But it was the love of an infinite person, who took our nature out of love, and therefore it was a constant and invincible love. Nothing could conquer it: not the thought of their unkind dealings, no, not even their denying and forsaking him. Still it is “Go tell my brethren.” “Love is strong as death” (Song 8:6). Death could not hold Christ in the grave, but love held him on the cross. When he came to the work of our redemption, love held him on earth then; but when he was in the grave, love broke through everything there. Indeed, in Christ it was stronger than death.

Question. Why is Christ’s love so constant, so invincible, that nothing can alter it?

Answer. The ground of it is this: it is free love. He draws the ground of his love from his own heart, not from our worthiness or unworthiness, but from his own freedom and God’s eternal purpose. God has purposed to save a certain number, and those, and no more, he gives to Christ to save. God looks to his own purpose and to Christ’s free love, and that is the ground of all. And therefore whom he loves he loves to the end, because he looked on us in his election. The Lord knows those who are his. The foundation is so sure that if we are once God’s, we are God’s forever; the foundations of Zion still stand unshaken. For Christ looks on us in God’s election. Therefore, if he ever shows his love to us, it is once his love and forever his love.

If anything in man could hinder it, it would have hindered it at our first conversion, when we were at our worst, even enemies. If nothing could hinder it then, what can hinder it afterward? So the apostle reasons strongly: if we are reconciled by his death, much more will he save us by his life. “If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, now much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (Rom 5:10). If, when we had no goodness in us, but only opposition and rebellion, we were saved by his death, Christ is much more able to save us now by his life, triumphing over death and glorious in the heavens.

Objection. “Oh, but,” says the poor soul, “I am a poor, weak creature, and ready to fall away every day.”

Answer. Yes, but Christ’s love is constant. “Whom he loveth he loveth to the end.” What does the apostle say? “Neither things present, nor things to come, shall be able to separate us from the love of Christ” (Rom 8:38-39). And therefore be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Do not trust yourselves, and do not trouble yourselves about things to come. If you are freed from the guilt of your former sins, never question the time to come. God is unchangeable in his nature and unchangeable in his love. He is “Jehovah, I am,” always; not “I was” or “I will be,” but “I am always.” If he ever loved you, he will love you forever.

You see the constancy of Christ’s love: “Go tell my brethren.” They had just most deeply offended him. They were renegades, having all left him, and that when he most needed their comfort, being in his greatest extremity. And yet it is “Go tell my brethren.”

Beloved, let us not lose the comfort of the constancy and unchangeableness of Christ’s love. Let us consider that all the sweet links of salvation are held strong on God’s part, not on ours. The firmness is on God’s part, not on ours. Election is firm on God’s part, not on ours. We do indeed choose him as he chooses us, but the firmness lies in his choosing. So he calls us and we answer, but the firmness lies in his action. He justifies and we are made righteous, but the firmness lies in his imputation. Will he forgive our sins today, and then bring us into court and damn us tomorrow? No. The firmness lies in his action. We are ready to run into new debts every day, but whom he justifies he will glorify. The whole chain holds so fast that all the creatures in heaven and earth cannot break one link of it. Whom he calls he will justify and glorify. Therefore never doubt your continuance, for it holds firm on God’s part, not yours.

God embraces us in the arms of his everlasting love; it was not we who embraced him first. When the child does not fall, it is because the mother holds the child, not because the child holds the mother. So it is God’s holding us, knowing us, embracing us and justifying us that makes our state firm, and not ours, for ours is only a reflection and result of his, which never varies. Our sight of the sun varies, but the sun in the sky always keeps its constant course. So God’s love is like the sun: unvarying, and forever the same. I only touch on it here as the foundation of wonderful comfort, a foundation which those who hold the contrary undermine.

The next point is that Christ chose Mary to go and tell his brethren, and under the sweet title of “brethren” to deliver this sweet message: “I am going to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God.” He tells them the sweetest words in the worst times.

This point differs from the former in this way. The former was that Christ’s love is constant and always the same. But now we see that Christ shows his love most when we are most cast down, in the worst times, if our being cast down comes with repentance. He never said “brethren” before, but reserved the term “brethren” for the worst time of all. The sweetest discoveries of Christ to his children come in the worst times of all. In their children’s sickness, mothers will bring out anything that is sweet and comforting to them. Though they frowned on them before, the child’s need now requires it. When there is need, anything comes out that may please the child.

The poor disciples were not only in affliction, being the scorn of the world, the shepherd smitten and the sheep scattered, but their inward grief was greater still. They were inwardly confounded and ashamed to see Christ come to such an end. They were full of unbelief. Though Christ had told them he would rise again, they could not believe it. And so, what with fear, and what with doubt, and what with grief for having used Christ so unkindly and left him, they were certainly in a perplexed and disconsolate condition. Yet now it is “Go and tell my brethren.”

We see, then, that when we who are in a state of grace relapse and deal unkindly with Christ, it cannot but be a matter of grief and shame. Yet if we are humbled for it and cast down, even then Christ has a sweet message for us by his Holy Spirit: “Go, tell my brethren.”

In the Song of Songs the church, the spouse of Christ, had dealt unkindly with Christ by losing him and forsaking him (Song 3:1-4). In the third chapter she had lost him and sought him on her bed, but did not find him. She rose and went to the watchmen, and then went through the city, but did not find him. At length she found him whom her soul loved. Then Christ speaks most sweetly and comfortingly to her at the beginning of the fourth chapter. But he does so especially in the sixth chapter, after she had dealt most unkindly with Christ. He stands at the door knocking and waiting until his locks drip with rain, like a lover who stands at the door and is not allowed to come in. Afterward he leaves her for this unkindness, yet not so completely but that some sweet savor was left upon the door. God always leaves something in his children that makes them long after him. And at length, after much longing, Christ shows himself sweetly to her and breaks out, “Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners; turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me; thy hair is as a flock of goats” (Song 6:4-5). And so he goes on: “My love, my dove, my undefiled one.” He could not satisfy himself in praising his church, being, as it were, overcome with love.

And this shows that after we have dealt unkindly with Christ, and our consciences are ashamed and abashed by it, as it is fitting they should be, yet if we will wait a while and be content, neither despairing nor yielding to temptation, if we will only wait a while, Christ will show himself to us. He will show that he values and prizes the hidden graces we cannot see. He can see gold in the ore. He can see hidden love, and hidden faith and grace, which we cannot see in our temptations; and he will bring it all to light at length, and show his love when we stand most in need of it.

We see it in David, who was deeply humbled for his folly with Bathsheba, for there was not one sin but many, such as murder and adultery, and the rest. Yet once he was humbled, God gave him and Bathsheba wise Solomon to succeed him in his kingdom. God forgets all. And so you see that our Savior Christ forgets all their unkindness. He does not bid her, “Go, tell my renegade disciples, who disowned me: they do not care for me, and I do not care for them. I am above death and everything else, and now I will treat them as they treated me.” Oh no! But “Go, tell my brethren,” without mentioning anything unkind that they have done.

What is the reason? It is enough for a gracious soul that it is so; it is the way God deals. But there are reasons to give satisfaction.

Reason 1. The love of Christ to a poor, disconsolate, afflicted soul is most seasonable. When they have relapsed and dealt unkindly with Christ, then Christ not only forgives but forgets all. More than that, he calls them by the name of “brethren,” which is more than forgiving or forgetting. Oh, now it is seasonable! For there is a wonderful dejection of spirit after unkind treatment of Christ in a soul that knows what Christ means. His love is like a shower of rain after a great drought. It falls with weight upon the soul.

Reason 2. The freedom of Christ’s love appears most at that time, when no deserving of ours can move it. For is that not free love, when we have dealt unkindly with him, and joined with the world and the flesh, and dealt slipperily with him, that he should then speak kindly to us and court us? Lord, if I had had my due, what would have become of me? If he had sent them word according to what they deserved, he might have said, “Go, tell those apostate, base people who have dealt unworthily with me that I will send them to hell.” Oh no! But “tell my brethren.” His free love appears most at such times, when our souls are most dejected.

Reason 3. Satan roars most at that time; he shows his horns most of all when we have relapsed. “Oh,” he says, “if you had never received kindness, that would have been one thing. But you who have had so many favors have dealt unworthily. Do you repay the Lord of glory like this?” Now this love of Christ exceedingly confounds Satan and upsets his plots. He knows that God then leaves men, and he joins with a guilty conscience, and a guilty conscience makes them fear everything they have deserved. “Shall I look God in the face, and Christ in the face, when I have used them like this? Shall I receive the sacrament and join with God’s people?” Satan joins with the guilt of conscience and carries it further. But when God sees them dejected and humbled for this, he speaks more comfort to them than ever before.

There is not one of us, and I can except none, who does not need this. Have we dealt so unkindly with Christ since our conversion? Have we not dealt proudly, and unkindly, and carelessly with him? And if we have the love of Christ in our hearts, it will shame and abash us. Now if we have joined with a temptation, Satan will say, “Will you go to God, and to prayer, when you have served God like this?” Shall I yield to this temptation? If we can shame ourselves and say, “Lord, I take all the shame to myself; I have dealt most unworthily with you,” we shall hear a voice of comfort at once. And therefore, whatever our condition may be, let us be invited to repentance, though you have fallen and fallen again. “I have dealt unkindly.” Did not Peter do so? And yet it is “Go, tell my disciples, and tell Peter” (Mark 16:7). The pope will have Peter be the head of the church. I am sure he was the head in forsaking Christ. And indeed Christ never reproached Peter for forsaking him. He only bids him now feed, feed, feed (John 21:15-17), so that he might take more notice of it; but he was so kind that he never threw it in his teeth.

Objection. But the poor drooping soul says, “If I had never tasted mercy, that would have been one thing.”

Answer. But do not raise that objection. For though Peter’s offense was great, his repentance was great too; and though your sins are great, yet if your repentance and humiliation answer to them, you will have the most comfort of all. And therefore let no one be discouraged.

If people go on in sinful, desperate courses, as is the fashion of the world, then say what we can, though we speak our lungs out, many will not leave off an oath, nor their profane, base courses and filthy ways. Bad they have been already, and bad they will be until they come to hell. There are some such people, but there are better ones we must speak to as well. Whoever you are who are weary of your profane, base, godless courses, be humbled for them. When you are humbled and brokenhearted, then think of Christ as he offers himself; think of nothing but love, nothing but mercy. Satan will paint him in this way and that, but when you are humbled and brokenhearted, Christ is readier to welcome you than you are to fly to him.

And therefore at such times consider how Christ offers himself to you. He who died for his enemies, and seeks those who never sought him, who is found by those who did not seek him: will he refuse those who seek him? If you have a humbled heart and a desire for his favor, will he who receives many in the world refuse you? Therefore do not despair. As the apostle says, we as ambassadors beseech you. You desire God’s favor and Christ’s love. You desire them, and Christ entreats you, and so you are well met. You would gladly have pardon and mercy, and Christ would just as gladly bestow it on you. Therefore do not side with Satan. Beware of temptations in a case like this. Beware of refusing our own mercies. When God offers mercy out of the depths of his compassion, do not refuse it. Christ is ready to show great kindness in our greatest unkindness, if we are humbled for it.

But this belongs to those who are brokenhearted, who can prize and value Christ. Those who go on in presumptuous courses will find Christ in another kind of majesty. They will find him a judge whom they despised as a brother. And those who will not come in and submit themselves to his mercy will find his justice. If they will not come under this scepter, they will find his rod of iron to crush them to pieces. And therefore let no corrupt, careless person who means to go on as before fortify their presumption from this. It belongs only to those who are humbled and abased by the sight of sin and by considering their unkindness and unworthy dealing with Christ.

I know that such people are the most subject to discouragement, and that Satan is readiest of all to close with them in strong temptations. Oh, but never let them despair. Let them consider what the apostle says: “While sin aboundeth, grace aboundeth much more” (Rom 5:20). If there is height, depth and breadth of sin in us, there is now more height, and depth, and breadth of mercy in Christ; indeed, more than we can receive.

“I have fallen from God,” says the soul. What if you have? God has not fallen from you. Peter denied Christ, but did Christ deny Peter? No. Christ has not denied you. What does the Lord say in Jeremiah? “Will the husband take the wife when she hath been naught? no; yet return to me, O Israel” (Jer 3:1). Say you have been false and committed such and such sins. Whatever they are, even adultery, yet return to me.

Question. Oh, but is it possible that God should do it?

Answer. Yes, it is possible with him. “His thoughts are not as thy thoughts; his thoughts are as far above thine as heaven is above earth” (Isa 55:8-9).

Objection. Why, no man would do it.

Answer. Yes, but here is the mercy of a God: “I am God, and not man” (Hos 11:9); therefore his comforts do not fail. If he were a man, he would have no regard for one who has been so unkind; but he is God, and not man.

“Go to my brethren.” I come now to the matter of the commission. Tell them, “I ascend to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God.” All this is included in “brethren,” for if we are God’s in Christ, then God is our Father. But we must not deal in few words with disconsolate souls; we must come again and again with the same words. How many times, for instance, do you find the comfort of the Messiah in Isaiah and the rest of the prophets, again and again? Our hearts are so prone to doubt God’s mercy and Christ’s love, especially after guilt, that all is little enough. And therefore our Savior takes pains to speak sweetly to the heart: “Go, tell my brethren.” What a carnal heart and an over-curious head would count tautology and a waste of words, a gracious heart thinks is too little. “Oh, more of that still; I do not have enough!” This is the pride of men, who will have everything suited to satisfy the curious ear; but a gracious heart never has enough. And therefore Christ adds comfort to comfort: “Go, tell my brethren, I ascend to my Father, and their Father; to my God, and their God.”

The message itself is Christ’s ascension. The place he goes to is the Father, a common Father to him and to them. Every word carries comfort.

“I ascend.”

I ascend to the Father, and to my Father and your Father too. Now I have freed myself from death, and from the sin imputed to me as a surety, and I am going to heaven to finish everything there: “I ascend to God, to my God and to your God.” We all have one common Father and one common God.

First, as for his ascension. He had not yet ascended. Why then does he speak in the present tense? “I ascend”; that is, I am shortly to do so. It was in his mind, and it was certain to happen, and therefore he speaks of it as present. It is the language of faith to speak of things to come as if they were present. Faith makes them so to the soul, for it looks at the word, and at all things as they are in that Word who will make good whatever he says. And therefore it is the evidence of things that are not yet; and yet they are evident to a believing soul.

If we could learn this rightly, to make things to come present, what kind of people we would be! If we could think of our resurrection and ascension and glory to come as present, they would be present to our faith, and the things that are present, the things of sense, could not draw us away. If we could set hell before us, could the pleasures of hell bewitch us? If the time to come were present, could anything in the world draw us away? It could not be. And therefore it is an excellent skill of faith to set things to come before us as present.

He ascends. He implies that he had risen. That was past, and therefore he does not mention it. All Christ’s mind was on ascending. Those who are risen together with Christ have their minds wholly on ascension, wholly on heaven. And this is one main reason: where anything is imperfect, the spirit does not rest until it attains the perfection it is destined for. When anything has a proper element and place where it must rest, it does not rest until it is in its own proper place and element.

The perfection of the soul is in heaven, to see Christ face to face, and God in Christ. Heaven is the element of a Christian. It is his proper region. He is never well until he is there; there is his rest, his solace and contentment, and there all his desires are satisfied to the utmost. Until we are in heaven, we remain under desires, for we remain under imperfections. All the while we are in imperfections we are in an uncomfortable state; and while we are so, we are not as we should be. And therefore wherever any are partakers of Christ’s resurrection, they mind the ascension as present. Where there is any grace, the thoughts are set on heaven at once.

Let us take the measure of our dispositions from this. There are many who think it good to be here always; they never think of ascending. If they could live here forever, they would do so with all their hearts. But it is not so with a Christian. His desire is to be where his happiness is, where his Savior, his God and Father are, where his country and inheritance are; and therefore he minds ascension and things to come. When anything is done, he thinks that what is done is not yet enough.

As your great conquerors in the world forget what they have conquered and remember what they have yet to do, so Christ, having gained the conquest over death, now thinks of ascension, to conquer in the eyes of all. For it is not enough to conquer in the field; he will conquer in the city. He will conquer up into heaven and make a show of his conquest. I ascend to lead captivity captive, “to make a show,” as it is expressed (Col 2:15).

While anything remains to be done or received, our souls should not be satisfied, but should still be stretched out to desire further and further still, more and more still, until we are there where our souls will be filled to the uttermost, and there is no room for further desire; for heaven is the place to satisfy and fill all the corners of the soul.

Question. But how shall we know whether we are risen with Christ or not?

Answer. Partly we may know it by our former courses. When Christ had risen, all the grave clothes were laid together in the grave. He left them behind, and rose with an earthquake. There was a commotion; and after his resurrection he minded heaven. So if you are risen with Christ, your former vile courses lie in the grave. Your oaths are gone; your profaneness and wickedness of life are gone.

Will you tell me you are risen while you carry the bonds of your sins around with you? You profane, wretched, swearing, ungodly people, you filthy talkers who have hearts more filthy still, vile in body and soul: can such people have any part in Christ? Where is the thing that bound you before? You carry it around still. Therefore you are in the bonds of the devil; you are in the grave of sin; there is no rising.

Resurrection comes with commotion. There was an earthquake when Christ arose, and there is a heartquake when the soul rises. Can the soul rise from sin without commotion? Will there be a division between flesh and spirit in the inner man without any stir at all? And therefore, as for those who find nothing going on in their spirits, where is their rising again?

But what properly belongs to the occasion at hand is the third of these. Where grace has begun, there will be an inward progress and ascending with Christ. How then shall I know whether I ascend?

1. By minding things above. The apostle tells us directly, “Mind things above” (Col 3:1): be heavenly-minded in some measure, and live the life that Christ lived after his resurrection. After his resurrection all his talk was of the kingdom of heaven, and his mind was on the place he was going to. And so with a true Christian indeed, one who is truly risen: when he is himself, his thoughts and his talk are heavenly.

Other things he uses as if he did not use them. While we are in the world we must deal with worldly things; but we must deal with them as something that is not our proper element: They used the world, as if they used it not; and they married, as if they did not; for they knew “the fashion of this world passeth away” (1 Cor 7:29–31). And therefore those who are set on earthly glory, carnal affections and delights, cannot think of these things with any comfort. They are moles that grovel in the earth.

Some make a profession, and they rise higher, as kites do, but they look low. They make high professions, but their aims are low. The true eagles that ascend to Christ look upward and upward still as they ascend. They do not mind things below. They do not take a high pitch and still remain earthly-minded; they look high as well as ascend high. Therefore let us not deceive ourselves.

2. Yet more particularly, as for those who ascend with Christ: those who are in heaven and those who are on earth do the same things, though in different degrees and measure. What do they do in heaven? There they have nothing to do with the defilements of the world. And so, though a Christian is on earth, he does not defile himself with the world or with bad company. He will associate with such people, but he will not defile himself with them.

Those in heaven are praising God, and so those here are much in praising God. Those in heaven love to see the face of God; they rejoice in it. And those who are heavenly-minded here rejoice in the presence of God, in the word, the sacraments, and his children. If they have ascended in any degree and measure, they will do this. And then they will rejoice in communion with God all they can, as they do in heaven.

There are some carnal dispositions that are never themselves except in carnal company like themselves. If ever we mean to be in heaven, we must rejoice in heaven on earth; that is, in those who are heavenly in their dispositions. If we cannot endure them here, how shall we ever live with them in heaven?

What did Christ ascend for? What is the end of his ascension?

The end of his ascension was to take possession of heaven in his body, which had never been there before.

1. And he was to take possession of heaven in his body on behalf of his church, that is, his mystical body. So he ascended to heaven and carried with him the blessed body that he took in the virgin’s womb.

2. And likewise he ascended to heaven to take possession of heaven on behalf of his spouse, his church, as a husband takes possession of land in another country on behalf of his wife. For this he ascended.

3. And likewise he ascended to leave his Spirit, that he might send the Comforter. He took himself away, who was the great Comforter while he was below. He was the bridegroom; and while the bridegroom was present, they did not have such a measure of the Spirit. Christ’s presence supplied everything. But Christ ascended to heaven so that his departure from them might not be to their harm, but that they might have comfort through the God of comfort, the Spirit of comfort, the Holy Spirit: “I will send the Comforter” (John 14:16 and following).

And though there was no loss in the ascension of Christ, they might fear that in losing Christ all their comfort was gone. Yes, but Christ tells them, “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). He goes to take possession of heaven for his church, and then to send his Spirit. What a blessed interchange there is now, since Christ’s ascension, between heaven and earth! Our body is in heaven, and the Spirit of God is here on earth. The flesh that he has taken into heaven is a pledge that all our flesh and bodies will be where he is before long. In the meantime we have the Spirit to comfort us, and never to leave us until we are brought to the place where Christ is. This is a great comfort, and this is the main end for which Christ ascended to the Father, that he might send the Comforter.

And comfort might well come now in more abundance than before. For by the death of Christ all enemies were conquered, and by the resurrection of Christ it was revealed that God was appeased. The resurrection of Christ made known to the world what had been done by his death. And now, with all enemies conquered and God appeased, what remains but the sweetest gift next to Christ, the Holy Spirit? And that is the reason the Holy Spirit was more abundant after Christ’s resurrection: God was fully satisfied, and was declared by the rising of Christ to be fully satisfied, and all enemies were declared to be conquered.

4. One end, likewise, of his ascension was to make a show of his conquest. There is a double victory over the enemy. There is a victory in the field, and a triumph together with it. And then there is a triumph in the kingly city. So Christ conquered in his death, and showed his conquest by his resurrection; but he did not lead captivity captive and make a show of it until he ascended. Then he made open show of his victorious triumph in the kingly city.

5. One special end, likewise, for which he would have this message sent, that he was to ascend, was that he might appear there in heaven for us, as in Hebrews 9:11 and following: “He appears for ever in heaven for us, and maketh intercession for us.” When the high priest was to enter into the holy of holies, which was a type of heaven, he carried the names of the twelve tribes engraved in stone upon his breast. Christ, our true high priest, having entered into the holy of holies, carried the names of all his elect in his breast into heaven, and there he appears before God for us. He carries us in his heart.

Christ fulfills what he prays for in John 17, appearing in heaven before his Father by virtue of his shed blood, that blood which speaks better things than the blood of Abel. It speaks mercy and pardon. The blood of Abel cries for vengeance and justice; but the blood of Christ says, “Here is one I shed my blood for.” And when we pray to God, God accepts our prayers. By virtue of Christ’s shed blood, mercy and pardon and favor are obtained, and these are sprinkled by faith upon the soul. God makes known to the soul by his Spirit that Christ died for that soul in particular; and when that soul prays to God in the name of Christ, that blood, not only in heaven but sprinkled upon the soul, speaks peace there.

The Spirit says to the soul what Christ does in heaven. Christ says in heaven, “I died for such a soul”; the Spirit says in the soul, “Christ died for me”; and so the blood of Christ is sprinkled on every particular soul. As Christ in heaven appears and intercedes for me, so the Spirit intercedes in my own guilty heart, which always speaks discomfort until it is satisfied with particular assurance. Christ died for me, and God is mine, and Christ is mine. Thus particular faith sprinkles the blood of Christ upon the soul. So now my sins are pardoned not only in heaven but in my soul. There is intercession not only in heaven but in my soul. My soul goes to God for pardon and for mercy, and rejoices in all the mercies it has and hopes to have. What is done in heaven is done in a man’s soul by the Spirit in some measure.

6. The last end is that he might show that our salvation is fully accomplished, and that God is perfectly satisfied to the full; otherwise he would never have risen, much less ascended to heaven. And therefore, if we once believe in Christ for the forgiveness of sins and yet say, “I doubt of salvation,” it is all one as if you were to set about pulling Christ down from heaven.

The doubtful, distrustful heart, until it is subdued by a spirit of faith, says, “Who shall ascend to heaven, to tell me whether I shall go to heaven?” or, “Who shall enter into the deep, to tell me I am freed from hell?” “I am afraid I shall be damned,” says the guilty heart, until the Spirit of God has brought it under and persuaded it of God’s love in Christ. Say not, “Who shall ascend up to heaven? for that is to bring Christ down from heaven” (Rom 10:6). And what an injurious thing it is to bring Christ down from heaven to suffer on the cross! To doubt of our salvation, and not to cast ourselves on his mercy, is a great indignity, though we do not think of it.

For as surely as he is there, we shall be there. He has gone to take possession of a place for us. He is there in our name, as a husband takes a place for his spouse. And if we doubt whether we shall come there or not, we doubt whether he is there or not. And if we doubt that, we doubt whether he has accomplished salvation or not, and so we bring him down to the cross again. “Who shall descend to the deep?” That is, to bring Christ from the dead again (Rom 10:7). Such is the danger of a distrustful heart.

So by Christ’s ascending into heaven we may know that all is done and accomplished. All our enemies are subdued; God is appeased and fully satisfied; heaven is taken possession of in our stead. And therefore labor for a large heart, answerable to the large, unchangeable grounds we have for faith to settle and ground itself upon.

Therefore make this further use of Christ’s ascension, and of his intercession in heaven for us that follows from it. He is there to plead our cause. He is there as our surety to appear for us; and not only so, but as a counselor to plead for us; and not only so, but as one of us, as if a brother should plead for a brother; and not only so, but as a favorite there too. Not all favorites, perhaps, are so excellent at counseling; but we have one who is a favorite in heaven and is excellent at pleading, who can throw out of court every accusation the devil lays against us (Rev 12:10). He is the Son of God, and he is one of us. He does not appear as a stranger for a stranger, as a counselor perhaps does for his client, but he appears as our brother.

Let us think about the comforts of this. He appears for us to plead our cause, with acceptance of both his person and his cause. For the one before whom he pleads, God the Father, sent him to take our nature, to die, and to ascend into heaven for us, to stand in the place of particular offenders. The one who sent him for that very purpose must surely hear Christ. When the judge appoints the counsel, it is a sign that he favors the cause.

Perhaps we cannot pray; we are disconsolate and vexed with Satan’s temptations. The poor client has a good cause but cannot make a good case of it. But if he gets a skillful lawyer who is favorable to him, before a favorable judge, his comfort is that his advocate can make his cause good. If we would confess our sins, as we must, we must take shame to ourselves in all our distress and desolation of spirit. We must lay open our condition to God and make our complaint, and then ask God to look upon us, and Christ to plead our cause for us and answer Satan.

And when Satan is very malicious and subtle (as he is a very cunning enemy, ready to allege every advantage against us to make us despair), remember this: we have one in heaven who is more skillful than he “that is the accuser of brethren” (Rev 12:10), who accuses us to God and to our own souls, who accuses every man to himself and makes him an enemy to himself. But we have a pleader in heaven who will take our part against the accuser of our brethren, and quiet us in our consciences at length. Perhaps we may be troubled for a while, to humble us; but remember that he is in heaven for the very purpose of pleading our cause.

It is a good plea to make to God: “Lord, I do not know what to say. My sins are more than the hairs of my head. Satan presses hard upon me. I cannot answer one in a thousand. I confess all my sins. Hear me, and hear your Son for my sake. He is now at your right hand, and pleads for me.” And ask Christ to plead for us. We have not only the whole church to pray for us, “Our Father,” but we have Christ himself to plead for us and make our cause good, when Christ says, “I shed my blood for this person, and he appears now by virtue of my redemption.”

And the condition of the covenant is that if we confess our sins, he is merciful to forgive. And if we sin, we have an advocate in heaven, to whom we must lay claim (1 John 2:1). The party has confessed the debt, and therefore the bond must be canceled. He has performed the conditions on his part; therefore make it good on your own part. And seeing that the Spirit has shamed you for your sins, what can the devil say?

What does Paul say? “It is God that justifieth; who shall condemn?” (Rom 8:33). If God, the party offended, justifies, who shall condemn? “It is Christ that died.” That is not enough: “that is risen again.” That is not enough: it is Christ that rose again, “and sitteth at the right hand of God for us,” and makes intercession for us. “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect?” Let the devil accuse as he will; Christ is risen, to show that he has made satisfaction, and is now in heaven, appearing there for us. Oh, that we had hearts large enough for these comforts! Then we would never yield to base temptations.

It is against God’s pleasure that we should be disconsolate. Therefore we wrong our own souls, and sin against our own comfort, when we let loose the reins through inordinate and extreme sorrow. We lose the sweetness we might enjoy by giving way to discomforting thoughts. Indeed, if a man examines his life from the beginning of his conversion to the end of it, he may thank himself for all his trouble. When we will not be comforted, nor embrace grounds of comfort when we have them, this sin against the holy gospel is a kind of rebellion against God, though we do not think so.

The comforts of God ought not to be of small esteem to us. The sweet, large, exceeding, eternal comforts of God we ought to esteem as they deserve; and therefore our Savior Christ sends word to them speedily.

All Scripture is for this end, for consolation, even the Scripture that tends to instruction and direction, so that men may be in a state of comfort; for cordials do no good except where there has been purging first. So all the Scriptures that purge, that tell us our faults, are meant to bring us into a comfortable condition. As for the other Scriptures, which tend to instruct our judgments and settle us in faith, what is the end of them all, if we do not walk comfortably toward God and strongly in our places? Therefore, when we do not aim at comfort and joy in all conditions, we abuse the intentions of God.

But, I beg you, do not make a bad use of this. For suppose you know it to be so, and yet it does not work graciously in you and win you to respect God the more and to love him who is so indulgent and gracious, but you go on offending your conscience and break off your peace; then at length conscience will admit no comfort. Many who have had excellent comforts have made havoc of their consciences, and will go on in spite of ministers, in spite of their own consciences and of God’s Spirit joined with conscience. At length it is just for God to give them up to despair, wicked sinners who trample the blood of Christ under their feet. But for all others, who strive against corruption and would be better, it is a ground of marvelous comfort.

I now come to the message itself. Tell them, “I ascend.” He speaks of what was certainly to be as present. So we should think of our future state as if we were about to go to heaven now. Faith has this power, to make things to come present. If we could keep it in us and exercise it, could we live in any sin? But the distance is the cause of our sinning. We put things off at a distance. If it is at the day of judgment, that is far off; and therefore they will not leave their present pleasure for something that will not come until they know not when. But look on things in the word of a God who is Jehovah, who gives being to all, who has spoken of things to come as if they were present, and then you will be of another mind.

Faith is the privilege of a Christian, which makes things far off present. There is no wicked man who would not leave his swearing and profaneness if he saw the joys of heaven and the pains of hell; and that would be no credit to him. But to believe God on his word, that these things shall be, is what commends a man, and the excellence of a Christian above another man. Another man does everything by sense; but the Christian will trust God on his word. “I ascend,” says Christ.

We must not think of the ascension of Christ as a thing separate from us. If we would have the comfort of it, we must think of it as ourselves ascending with him. Think of Christ as a public person and a surety for us, and then we shall have great comfort in his saying, “I ascend.” God prepared paradise before he made the creature; he would have him come into a place of honor and pleasure. And so God, before we were ever born, provided a place and a paradise for us in heaven, that we might end our days with greater comfort. We may be hard pressed here. Many a good Christian has scarcely anywhere to lay his head; but Christ has gone to prepare a place for them in heaven.

And this may comfort us when we consider all our sins: sin past, corruption present, and sin we may commit in time to come. For anything that is past, if we confess our sins to God, he will forgive them. “The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sins” (1 John 1:7), even from the present corruptions that cling to us. We have one who stands between God and us as a surety; and he will give us his Spirit to subdue our corruptions, and at length make us like himself, a glorious spouse (Eph 5:27).

If we were perfect men, we would not need a mediator; and this may teach us comfort the more, because we are sinners and daily liable to offend God. We have one to make our peace for the time to come: if we sin, we have an advocate (1 John 2:1). When Christ taught us to pray, Forgive us our daily trespasses (Matt 6:12), he supposed that we would fall into sins daily. We have an advocate in heaven every day to stand between God and us, to answer God, and to undertake that at length we shall cease to offend him. And for the present, we are those for whom he shed his precious blood, and he appears for us by virtue of his death, which is a marvelous comfort.

We think that if we commit sin there is no hope. But what is a mediator needed for, except to make peace between parties who disagree? If everything were settled between God and us, what need would there be of an intercessor? But God knows well enough that we fall into daily sins because of a spring of corruption in us that is never idle. And therefore we may go to God daily in the name of our advocate, and ask God to pardon us for Christ’s sake, and ask Christ to intercede for us. Let us therefore take shame to ourselves.

There is not a Christian who does not sense in himself that he is liable to be thrown into hell every day. There is a spring of corruption in him; and if God were to exact the forfeit for his daily rebellions, his conscience tells him it would be just. And therefore we must live every day upon this branch of his priestly office, his mediation. We must live by faith on this branch of Christ’s office and make use of it continually, for this will keep us from hell. And therefore, if we sin every day, go to God in the name of Christ and ask him to pardon us. This is to feed on Christ; and therefore we should come more willingly to the sacrament.

When we are in heaven, we shall need a mediator no longer, for we shall be perfectly holy. We cannot think of these things too much. They are the life of religion and of our comforts, and they may teach us to make a true use of Christ in all our conditions. Poor souls who are not acquainted with the gospel think that God will cast them into hell for every sin, and they live as if they had no high priest in heaven to appear for them.

The matter of the message is that Christ ascended to God, as a common Father and God to him and to them. He does not say, “I ascend to the Father.” That would be no great comfort, for what would that be to them? Nor does he say, “to my Father” only. Neither does he say, “I ascend to our Father.” That is true, but in its order; for God is not in equal respect the God and Father of Christ and the God and Father of us. And therefore he speaks of himself in the first place: “I go to my God and your God.” For he is first and especially Christ’s Father and Christ’s God, and then ours, as we shall see in the particulars. We have a common Father and a common God with Christ. God the Father is Christ’s Father by eternal generation, as he is God and man. We therefore have the nature of Christ, as he is God and man.

There is this difference between God’s being Christ’s Father and his being the Father of anyone else.

First of all, God is Christ’s Father from eternity. God had a being and was a Father from all eternity. No man is of equal standing with his father; he is born after his father has come to be a man. But Christ is of God from all eternity. His generation is eternal, and therefore there is a great difference.

Then, Christ is co-equal with the Father in glory and majesty every way. A son is not equal with his father, but Christ is equal with his Father.

Again, in other generations the son comes from the father and is like the father, taken out of his substance, and yet of a different substance from the father. But Christ and the Father, both the persons, are in one substance, in one essence. The essence of the Father does not differ from the essence of the Son. We must remember this, so as to give Christ his prerogative and preeminence: God is his Father in another manner than he is ours. He is his Father by nature, ours by adoption. What he is by nature, we are by grace.

Though Christ was intent upon his ascension, he does not forget this great difference here, but mentions it: “Go to my brethren.” We must not call him brother in return. We may think of him as our brother; but we say, “My God and my Lord,” as Thomas says (John 20:28). Even if the greatest person should call us brother, it is still most fitting for the inferior to say, “My God, my Lord”: to acknowledge Christ as a great person, and to make use of his love to strengthen our faith, not to lessen our respect for him in any way. It is his infinite mercy to call us brethren. But when we go to him, we must use other terms.

Thus we see how to conceive of Christ after his resurrection. When he has triumphed over all his enemies and reconciled God by his death, then he says, “I go to my Father and your Father.” Then God is a common Father, by virtue of Christ’s satisfaction to divine wrath and justice, and his victory and triumph over all his enemies. So we must not conceive of God as our Father except in reference to Christ’s victory over death. God is our Father by virtue of Christ’s satisfaction to justice and his conquest over all our enemies. “The God of peace,” says the holy apostle Paul in the conclusion of that excellent Epistle to the Hebrews, “that brought you from death to life through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Heb 13:20).

How does he come to be the God of peace to us, the God who brought us from death to life by our Lord Jesus? Why, the resurrection of Christ makes him the God of peace. Who raised Christ? He raised himself. But who raised him together with himself? The Father raised him. And could the Father have raised him if he were not reconciled? But now he is the “God of peace,” for peace is made by the cross and blood of Christ (Col 1:20), the great peacemaker of heaven and earth. Now we may conceive of God under the sweet relation of a Father.

Now this relation of a father teaches us what we may expect from God, and also what we ought to return to God, and how we ought to carry ourselves toward one another.

1. What we may expect from God as a Father.

(1) We may expect whatever a child may expect from a father. God does not take empty names upon himself. He says he will be a Father, not merely be called a Father: “But I will be your Father, and you shall be my sons” (2 Cor 6:18). All the fatherhood and all the kindred in heaven and earth that is spiritual has its comfort from God the Father, reconciled to us in Christ. The word in the original is so strong that we cannot express it in English.

Fathers on earth are but poor fathers; they are only beams of the fatherly affection that is in God. By these beams of compassion that are in a father toward a child, God lets us see what real compassion he bears toward us. The true reality of fatherhood is in God. And therefore, when we hear the word father, think of whatever lies in a father’s heart toward his child; that we may expect from God our Father, and infinitely more.

It is a great indulgence: as a father pities his child, so God will pity us (Mal 3:17). Will a father cast off his child? He will indeed cleanse the child. So God will take away our abominations and purge us when we defile ourselves. It is because of an eternal relation that he does not cast us off. We may expect indulgence from him; and it is an indulgence of indulgence. God needed no son when he made us sons; he already had his Son and the angels to praise him. Can we pity and pardon a child, and will God not pardon and pity us? Why should we think worse of him than of ourselves? Will we grant pity to a father, and not grant it to the Father of all tender mercy and compassion? Therefore do not think that God will cast us off. God pardons us, heals our infirmities, and pities us as a father pities his own child (Ps 103:13).

It is a name under which no one may despair. What! Despair under the name of a father? Despair of mercy when we have a Father to go to? The poor prodigal had spent his inheritance, his body, his good name; he had lost everything and had nothing left; yet he had a father, and said, “I will go to him” (Luke 15:18). And so, when we are at our last extremity and have spent everything, we have a Father. Therefore go to him. What does the church say in Isaiah 63-64? “Doubtless thou art our Father,” when the church was in a poor condition; “Though our righteousness be as a menstruous cloth, and we be defiled, yet thou art our Father; we are the clay, thou art the potter.” So it is a name of his indulgence.

You have his disposition set down in the father of the prodigal. The son says he will go to the father; the father runs to him and meets him while he is still coming. God runs to us and is ready to meet us when we begin to repent of sin and are aware of our faults. He is more ready to pardon than we are to ask pardon.

I touch only on some principal things, so that you may remember them against the evil day and the hour of temptation. He does not take on himself the relation of a Father for nothing; he will fill it up to the utmost. It is no empty relation.

(2) It is also a name of comfort. It is a saying even of the natural man: “A little punishment is enough from a father.” “He knoweth whereof we are made, he remembers we are but dust” (Ps 103:14). He knows we are not iron or steel; he knows how we are made; and therefore he will deal gently with us when he corrects us (Heb 12:6). Gentle correction is as necessary for us as our daily bread, to wean us from the world; yet he does it gently. A little punishment will serve from a gracious father.

(3) It is also a name of provision, which we may expect from God: in all our emergencies and necessities he will provide for us whatever is needful. What does our Savior Christ say to the poor disciples when they feared they would be in want? “It is your Father’s good will to give you the kingdom.” What then? “Fear not, little flock” (Luke 12:32). He who will give you a kingdom, will he not give you daily bread, provision for the journey? He who intends heaven for us will certainly provide for us here. And therefore in the Lord’s Prayer, before all the petitions, as the ground of them all, he puts “our Father”; and so, “Give us our daily bread, our Father.” And therefore he will give us grace to sanctify his name, and do his will, and he will forgive us our sins. Expect everything from our Father; this is the ground of all.

Christ had a hard task persuading his disciples that they would not lack necessities, and therefore he preaches whole sermons to strengthen their faith in this: “Your heavenly Father knoweth what you stand in need of” (Matt 6:8). Even when the son cannot ask, the Father can interpret any sigh, any groan, and knows what we would have. And therefore, being God’s children, we may fetch provision from him in every condition.

(4) And with provision, protection as well; therefore make this use of it. In the temptations of Satan, lie under the wing of our Father. We have a Father to go to. Make use of him; make use of his protection, asking that God would shield us, that he would be a tower, as he is a tower, and the righteous man may fly to him (Prov 18:10). Lie under his wings. He is a gracious Father, and he has taken this sweet relation upon himself for this very purpose, that we may have comfort in every condition. You see, then, what we may expect from God by this sweet relation he has taken on himself in Christ, to be our Father.

2. This word is a word of relation. It binds God to us and us to God. We are to honor him as our Father. This one word is enough to express our duty to a father, and it is a word of reverence, for it includes a mixed affection of fear and love. It is the affection of an inferior toward a superior. He is great, therefore we ought to fear him. He is good, therefore we ought to love him. There are in him beams of majesty and a heart of compassion. As there are beams of majesty, we ought to fear him; as there is a heart of compassion, we ought to love him. So fear and love mixed together is the affection we owe to God as our Father.

If we tremble and are afraid to go to him, we do not know that he is loving. If we go to him overboldly and saucily, we forget that he is great. Therefore we must think of his greatness in such a way that we do not forget his goodness. We must think of his goodness in such a way that we do not forget his greatness. Therefore go boldly to him, with reverence, to the throne of Christ.

In the word “Father” there is more saving power than in ten thousand others. It touches his very heart. When a child lacks anything and is in distress, let it only say “Father” or “Mother,” and the parents’ hearts yearn over it. If God is our Father, go to him boldly; but go with reverence, and with trust in his tender heart. Oh, it is a persuasive word! What can we not look for from that majesty which has condescended to be called “Father,” and to be a Father to us in all our necessities? Either we shall have what we want and lack, or else we shall have something better.

He is a wise Father. He does not always answer according to our wills, but always according to our good. He sees that it is for our good that we are not comforted at once. The physician gives a sharp potion: “Oh, I cannot endure it!” The surgeon lances: “Oh, I cannot endure it!” But the surgeon knows it is not yet time for healing. Even so, we would be taken out from under our crosses at once; but God is a wise Father, and knows how long it is fit for us to remain under the cross.

Come to him boldly, therefore, under the name of a father, so that his heart may be moved; and he will surely hear us. For in Psalm 27:10, when all forsook him, the psalmist says, “My father and mother forsook me, but the Lord took me up.” Fathers and mothers in the flesh die, but the Lord takes us up. He is an eternal Father, and therefore a ground of eternal boldness with God and of everlasting comfort. He was our Father before we had a father in the world, and he will be our Father when we cease to be in the world. Our fathers in the flesh are only instruments under God to bring us into the world. God is our true Father. Our other fathers are only under God, to give us a being, to fit us for heaven. He provides the best inheritance and fatherhood for us in heaven. Therefore never be disconsolate, but remember, “I go to my Father and your Father,” which is a word of eternal comfort.

He was our Father from eternity in election; he will be our Father to eternity in glorification. “Can a mother forget her child? yea, though she should, yet can I not forget thee, thou art written in the palm of my hand” (Isa 49:15-16). God always has us in his eye. A mother cannot always think of her child; she sleeps sometimes. But God is a Father who never sleeps: “The keeper of Israel neither slumbereth nor sleepeth” (Ps 121:4). And this is our comfort at all times and for eternity. Therefore we ought to carry ourselves toward God reverently, and go to him boldly, and always make use of him.

And we should learn this as well: to maintain a sweet relationship between God and us. Shall God open such an advantage to us? Shall God be our Father and bear the gracious, eternal affection of a father, and shall we not, by prayer and faith, fetch from our Father everything we need? As our Savior says, You that are earthly fathers, when your children ask such a thing, will you deny? (Matt 7:9-10). And have we a Father so rich, so loving, and shall we not have dealings with him in our daily necessities? What a trade lies open to us, if we know what comfort is laid up in the sweet relation of a father! “Your Father knoweth what you stand in need of” (Matt 6:8). And he will give you the spring of all graces: not only a broken heart, and a spirit of life and vigor in his service; but go to God, and he will give you his Holy Spirit, which is the best thing, next to Christ, that can be.

And therefore be encouraged to keep up commerce between yourself and God, considering that we have a brother in heaven: our nature is there, and our spirit is here below. We have on earth the best things of heaven, next to Christ, and God has our flesh in heaven through Christ. Why, then, should we not be much in prayer, and much in praises, in all our necessities? Beloved, it is a comfort of such largeness that I cannot express it. I would rather leave it to your wonder, so that you may see what use to make of this sweet relation of a father.

(1) But we must know that not everyone can say “my Father.” There are many people in the world who may say “our Father” in some respects, but in other respects they cannot. As our Savior Christ says flatly, “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44). They boasted of God as their Father, and yet they were of their “father the devil.” Therefore consider who is fit to take this name, “My Father,” into their mouths.

Mark the disposition of the scribes and Pharisees, and then you will see who is fit to boast of God as their Father. They were very formal men who looked to their outward devotion; who was so devout as they? They made a study of it. But what were they on the inside? They were malicious men, satanic men, men opposed to the power of religion, arrant hypocrites, painted sepulchers. Ceremony and formality count for nothing here. A hypocrite may have much of that in the eyes of the world, and yet be a child of the devil for all that, and a Pharisee for all that.

You may be malicious against the truth, as the Pharisees sought Christ’s blood. A man may be like Herod, seeking the blood of Christ in his members, persecuting Christ, as all cruel men do. They seek to devour Christ in those who profess him. Whatever they can do to disparage and dishearten them, they do. They are enemies to the power of religion and to the ordinances of God. They are the children of the devil, and therefore have no reason at all to boast that God is their Father. Indeed, an inward, bitter disposition against the power of religion, under whatever formality, is a mark of a satanic spirit, and such people cannot say “Our Father.” If they do, it is a usurpation, for their true father is the devil.

(2) Who can say “Our Father”? Those who, by the Spirit of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, are grafted into Christ by a spirit of adoption, and have the stamp of the Father upon them: those who bear the likeness of the Father and of Christ, whom God begets into his own likeness; in a word, those who are like Christ. Christ is the first Son, and in him and for his sake we are sons. He is the natural Son, and they may say “Our Father” who labor to express the disposition of Christ, who is the first Son.

See this disposition of Christ in the Gospel: how marvelously patient he was under the hand of his Father, obedient to the death of his cross, humbled, full of love, full of goodness. “He went about doing good” (Acts 10:38). Do we, then, walk as Christ did? Do we carry the image of the second Adam? Do we have the patient, humble, meek disposition of Christ in our measure? Do we love Christ in his members, and God in his image? Do we love the ordinances and the power of religion? This shows what we are. And is our conduct suited to our inward disposition? Do we walk in light? Do we show by our conduct whose children we are? Does our speech reveal the character of the inner man? If this is in us, though in ever so small a measure, we may say with comfort, “Our Father.”

But may not another man, who is not in Christ, come to God under the sweet name of “our Father”? Yes, he may come to him as his father by creation and providence, or as a father sacramentally, or as one brought into the church and having God to create him and provide for him: “Lord, you have shown yourself a gracious Father thus far, though I cannot say ‘My Father’ from any inward persuasion. So far as I can, I say, ‘My Father.’” Let us strive against our spiritual unbelief, believe God, and cast ourselves on his gracious promises in Christ. God will meet us at the same time, and he will send us his Spirit to make us his sons.

Therefore let no one who has lived a wicked life be discouraged from going to God under the name of a father, in that respect in which he is a father: “Lord, you have created me and preserved me, and it is your mercy that I am not in hell. Yet you offer to be my Father in Christ; you have made gracious promises and invited me.” And upon this, when the heart yields to these gracious thoughts of God as a Father, a spirit of faith is immediately worked in the heart. Therefore think of the name of a father, and the very thought of it will bring the spirit of adoption.

Only, it speaks no comfort to the bitter, malicious, satanic enemies of Christ and of the power of religion. They are children of the devil. But as for poor souls who groan under the burden of sin, let them think that God is a Father, and think of the mercies of God, though they do not see that they have a share in them. By the very contemplation of the mercies of God in Christ, and of his inviting them to receive them, the Spirit of God will be worked in the soul, by which they may have confidence to come to God as a Father.

I desire you, therefore, to remember this. It is the first sermon of our Savior Christ after his resurrection; and therefore do not forget to think of God as a Father and of Christ as a Brother. Indeed, whatever comfort there is in any relation, God and Christ have taken it upon themselves. A father is more comprehensive than any other title. Christ is father, and husband, and spouse. And God is our rock and shield. Whatever is comforting, he has taken on himself, and in Christ we may command him to be so.

If we had ten thousand worlds, they could not be compared to the comforts that arise from this, that we can call God “Father.” If we knew how to put it to use in our spiritual trade for heaven, it would be more to us than if we had a thousand worlds, especially in days of affliction and in the hour of death. For it draws on whatever is in the heart of God for poor distressed souls. When nothing else will comfort, this will comfort, if we can say to God, “Father.” Though we cannot make a distinct prayer, yet if we can say “Father,” God can pick the meaning out of our broken language.

Now that Christ has ascended to heaven, he does us more good than he did when he was on earth. The sun in the sky gives us heat and comfort; but if it were nearer it would hurt us, and if it were farther off it would not do us so much good. Since it is a common light for the whole world, God has placed it high, to give light to the lower bodies and to convey its influence into them by means. And so Christ, the Sun of righteousness, having ascended and been advanced to heaven, does more good than he did on earth. And therefore he says, It is for your good that I ascend (John 16:7). It is for our good that we have Christ in heaven, to appear there for us.

“I ascend to my Father, and to your Father.” Here “Father” is taken personally, not essentially, though it is true in that sense: “to my Father” means especially the first person of the Trinity. Christ may well say “I ascend to my Father” now, for he had risen again, and was mightily declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead (Rom 1:4). “Thou art my Son; this day I have begotten thee” (Heb 1:5); that is, this day I have declared you. It is said of things that they are done when they are made open and declared to be done. Christ was the Son of God when he rose again, because by his glorious resurrection he was revealed to be so indeed. And therefore Christ may well say after his resurrection, “I go to my Father, and your Father.”

Observe from this that God in Christ is our Father. We say that relations are little entities, founded upon other things, but they are of great consequence.

I beseech you, before I leave the point, give me leave to go on a little further in this, to show that wonderful mercy, that admirable goodness, which the tongues and hearts of all the people in the world, and of the angels in heaven, are not able to express: that love of God which is contained in the relation he has taken upon himself in Christ, to be our Father.

(1) Consider who, and whom. Who: the great God, who has the Son to delight himself in. He did not adopt us because he lacked sons. He had sons of his own, sons of his love, to delight himself in. What need did he have to take traitors, rebels, enemies, and make them his sons? Oh, it is a marvelous advancement of our nature that God should become our “Father” in Christ! It is said in Psalm 113:6, “God abaseth himself to behold things below”; and indeed he does, be it spoken with reverence to his great majesty. He abases himself in regard of things below, in regard of us worms of the earth, who are enemies, yes, devils by nature. For in many you may see the devil, in their lying and their opposing of goodness. And God will always have some such among men, to show others what they would be if God left them to themselves.

God abases himself to behold things below. Not that it is any diminishing of his majesty to do it; but God in Christ has stooped so low that he could go no lower, and he is advanced as high in our nature as can be. How could God become a man, a curse? God in the second person to be with us; God in the first person to be as near to us as a Father; and God in the second person, to make him a Father, to be as low as Christ was, which is to be as low as hell itself?

(2) Consider to whom this message is sent. He is your Father, even a Father to you, the disciples, now that you are disconsolate. God owns us as his children at our worst. He took our condition, notwithstanding all our infirmities. When we are most prone, by a work of the Spirit, to condemn ourselves, then God is nearest to justify us. When the poor prodigal said, “I am unworthy to be a son, make me a household servant,” you see how the father welcomes him (Luke 15:19). So the poor publican dares not lift up his eyes, and yet he went away justified (Luke 18:13).

So it was with David, when he could not pray but only murmur and rebel, and said in his heart that all men are liars (Ps 116:11): “yet thou heardest the voice of my prayer.” Even then, when he could not pray but only groan and sigh to God: “I said, I am cast out of thy sight, yet thou regardest the voice of my prayers” (Ps 31:22). When he said, out of a murmuring spirit and rebelliousness of nature, “I am cast out of thy sight” (a speech that tended toward despair), yet God heard the voice of his prayer.

When Job said, “I clothed myself in dust and ashes,” God said to him, “I have accepted thee” (Job 42:6, 8). When by the Spirit we think ourselves unworthy to be accepted, or to look up to heaven, or to tread upon the earth, then God looks on us as worthy in his Son; and we are never more worthy than when we acknowledge our own unworthiness. “Go tell my disciples,” at this very time when they had dealt so unworthily, “I go to their Father.”

It is from his own heart, and not from any goodness in us, that he loves us. He loves the work of his own Spirit, his own nature, that which is his own. Though the child has many infirmities, yet the father sees the nature of the child, and therefore loves it. God sees his image of holiness in us in some poor measure, and he loves his own in us. And he loves our love to him, which is there in some measure. Though the disciples had hidden away in corners after their unkind dealing with Christ, he still knew that they loved him. For where there is love, there will be a reflection of his love back again.

And then, God knows that if he did not show mercy to sinners, he would have no one to serve him on earth. That is why the psalmist says, “There is mercy with thee that thou mayest be feared” (Ps 130:4), that is, worshiped. If God were not merciful to sinners, where would he find anyone to worship him? And so God shows himself to be a Father even to sinful creatures. Even in their wickedness he sees his own nature in them. He sees some love in them, some work of reverence, and if he did not love them, he would have no one to fear him.

Beloved, live upon this. I spoke before of the love of Christ. Here is the love of God the Father, who is content to be a Father even in our sinful condition. If God is a Father to us, as he is to Christ, then let our hearts not be discouraged in afflictions, persecutions, or temptations. God was a Father to Christ in his desertion. God sometimes leaves us to ourselves, and we grow fearful about his love. Did he not leave his own Son on the cross? “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46). And yet he did not cease to be a Father.

As for persecution by enemies: was not Christ’s whole life filled with persecution, and yet he was a Son? As for temptations: you are tempted, and you think you are none of God’s children. Satan tempted our blessed Savior so that he might be a merciful Savior and know how to help you in times of temptation. So do not be discouraged. When you are deserted, persecuted, afflicted, or tempted, do not say, “God is not my Father.” By that reasoning you might argue that God was not Christ’s Father. God was Christ’s Father notwithstanding his desertion for a time. Notwithstanding his afflictions in the world, his persecutions by all sorts of people, and his temptations, God was still his Father.

This we must observe: “father” is not a relation for today and none tomorrow. It is an eternal relation. As Augustine says, “While you strike us, you are our Father; while you correct us, you are our Father.” Parents are tender toward their weakest and sick children, and God is most tender of all toward those who are weak: “Go, tell Peter.” And therefore never lose your good opinion of God or of Christ. We can never be in a condition in which we have sound grounds to run from God.

But if this is so, let us learn from God to be gentle. If I were speaking to ministers, I would advise them at length to preach the law and the gospel. Even the law is preached in mercy. The Lord takes a severe course, but it is to set us in order. All God’s severity leads back to mercy and to Christ. All his afflictions, humblings, and abasements: do they come from an unfatherly affection? No, they come to draw us home to him. And therefore never be terrifying to anyone except with a heart of compassion, and with the aim that they may see themselves and see the comforts they have in Christ. We ought to share the affection of the great Pastor and Bishop of the church.

And so for ordinary Christians: they should be gentle with one another. Some are always cutting into sores, always wounding and tearing themselves with harsh treatment and uncharitable constructions, keeping themselves from growing up into a better life by watching the infirmities of those who are better than themselves. Oh, but “go, tell my brethren” that my Father owns them as his children! This may yield us a marvelous comfort.

Must a child always be scraping for itself? We think there is neither father nor mother to take care of it, but your heavenly Father knows what you need. We ought to labor for contentment in every condition, for God is our Father.

And as for others: if God is our Father, let us look to others who are our brethren. Let us own them and carry ourselves toward them as brethren. Let the strong carry themselves humbly toward the weak. It is a sign of the greatest strength to be the most gentle. Many count it a great credit to themselves to be censorious and severe. Yes, but that is the greatest part of their weakness, if they have any goodness in them. For who was more gentle with the disciples than Christ, who saw their weakness? He bore with all their infirmities. Where we see any goodness, let us bear with many weaknesses. We ought to be peaceable people: “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matt 5:9). Those who have been brought to peace in their consciences, with a sense of their own pardon, are ready to show mercy to others. Busy, contentious, quarrelsome dispositions show that such people never found comfort from God himself.

If God is a Father and we are brethren, it is a leveling word. It brings the mountains down and fills up the valleys. All are brethren, take them in whatever condition you will. If they are great in the world, brethren of high degree, still “brother” levels them. If they are of low degree, still it fills them up and raises them to the height in this brotherhood. And therefore, “Go, tell my brethren”: tell them all, for they are all equally brethren.

If I were speaking to people of rank and great gifts, as I am speaking to those of low degree, I would have them put in mind of their condition. Nothing should raise us so high that we forget the everlasting relation of brother. Nor should infirmity prevail with us so far that we forget what the children of God have for eternity. And as for other persons more eminent: if a man is a king, let him not dwell on that so much that he forgets every other relation. For all relations end at death and must be laid in the dust. All must stand on equal ground before the bar of God’s judgment, and those who have the most to answer for have the greatest account of all to give. Therefore it is a ground of humility for everyone. Let those who are in the greatest eminence consider this. Paul, after his conversion, could say, “Henceforth, I know no man after the flesh” (2 Cor 5:16).

There is a great deal of human kindness in the world. Polite compliments are very common, and they are the picture and outward face of human kindness. But Christian love, which is a degree above human kindness (the apostle calls it “brotherly love”), is the scorn of the world. People will own a brother in office. But to own others in the sweet bonds of brotherhood, as they are the sons of God (here is heaven!), and to make much of them on that account: that is a strange thing in the world.

But we must know what it means before we come to heaven. We must respect a Christian, whoever he may be, under all his infirmities, if he has a good spirit in him, which God the Father sees and Christ sees. We must bear love to all saints. Some will make much of an eminent man who has excellent gifts, because there may be some advantage from such persons. But here is sincerity: it bears love to all saints. He wraps them all up in the general term, and “Go, tell Peter” among the rest, Peter who had offended more than the rest.

If you want to know whether you are true brethren or not, sons of God or not, test yourselves by what has already been said. I will enlarge on that point, because everything depends on it. God is the Father of all by creation. He is the Father, in a general covenant, of all who receive the sacrament and are baptized. But if they have no other relation to God than that, they may go to hell, as Judas and others did. Therefore we must know whether we may claim this relation of Father on good grounds or not; otherwise it is a usurpation.

1. As for those who belong to God, the Spirit of God witnesses to them that they are sons. Those who are adopted have the Spirit of adoption in some degree. God sends his Spirit into their hearts, assuring them that they are God’s children. And though this is the first, God still gives some intimation by his Spirit that they look to God in a different, more familiar manner than before, and that he looks on them in a fatherly manner. So there are some intimations, suggestions, and hints, though the Spirit of adoption does not always witness fully and gloriously to the soul, because we are not fitted for it, but only sometimes, in great afflictions and desertions. Where the Spirit of God is, there is communion with God in the Spirit of adoption.

And when the voice of the Spirit of adoption does not speak loudly, there is still a work of the Spirit. There is something in us renewed by the Spirit; there is something of the new creature. When a Christian cannot hear God say to his soul, “I am thy salvation” (Ps 35:3), a man may still see a work of grace. There is a love for God, for the ordinances, for the people of God; a mourning because he cannot mourn; a sighing because he does not have a pliable heart. He is at odds with his own condition when he is without comfort. So there is a work of the Spirit that helps him in his worst condition.

Besides, there is a spirit of supplication in some measure. Though he cannot make set speeches to God, he can still, in a sweet manner, lay open his sorrow and grief to God and leave them in God’s bosom. They may be broken words, perhaps, but God can pluck sense out of them. God knows the meaning of the sighing of his own Spirit, though it comes in broken speeches. So where there is any tongue for God in a man, there is a spirit of prayer. He does not keep a stranger’s distance from God and pass him by altogether; his spirit has a kind of acquaintance with God. It goes to God with familiarity, lays out its grief, and puts forth its petitions, in a different manner than the world does.

Again, as for a Christian in the worst condition, God not only shines on him through the cloud, but there is a spirit in him that sighs to go through all the thick clouds to God. There is a spirit of supplication and of love in some degree, for that is promised: The Spirit shall help our infirmities, when we know not how to pray (Rom 8:26). Fellowship and communion with God are never broken off where there is any Spirit of adoption.

That is why Jonah and David and the rest, though they could not pray, still sighed to God and would not leave him. If they could embrace Christ, they would not leave him; if they could not embrace Christ, they would touch the hem of his garment. They will not yield to the stream altogether, but strive against it. And though they are carried away by the strength of the stream and see no goodness in themselves, those who are with them will see a spirit striving toward a different condition than the one they are in. Something of Christ’s, something of God’s Spirit, will be in them. And take them at their worst, they will appear better than the merely civil man, who thinks himself a glorious man though he has nothing but what is for show and fashion. Who would want to be in such a man’s condition, without some brokenness of heart, some sighs?

2. We may also know it by our sympathy and antipathy: our sympathy with those who are good, and our antipathy to what is evil. There is a love of what is good. So good things are natural to a good man. There is a relish in good company and good things. As there is sweetness in the best things, so there is something in the children of God that answers to the God whom they serve. He is never so out of taste that he does not find his chief comfort in this, and he is never so much himself as when he is occupied with these things, though in different measure: sometimes more and sometimes less. In a proud, carnal man whose heart is not subdued by grace, there is an inward antipathy to God. There is a contrariety to the power of the grace he outwardly professes, and a sympathy with the world and the spirit of the world. Take a good Christian at his worst, and he is better than another at his best.

I beg you, therefore, let us examine our dispositions: how we stand affected toward things of a higher nature than the things of the world, toward spiritual things; how we can relish spiritual things, God’s ordinances, and anything that is holy. Surely if the life of God and Christ is in us, there will be a kind of connaturalness, a suitableness of taste, to the sweetness that is in holy things.

To come to the next point, mark the order here: “Go to my Father, and your Father.” We are the sons of God at second hand. God is the Father of Christ first, and then ours. He is his God first, then our God.

This is a weighty point for directing our devotions, so that we may know in what order to look on God. See God in Christ; see all things in Christ first, and then in us. Look on him as Father to Christ, and then to us. Look on him as a God to Christ first, and in Christ a God to us. Look on him as having elected us, but elected in Christ first. See ourselves justified, but see Christ justified first from our sins, and his justification declared by his resurrection. See our resurrection and ascension and glorification in heaven, not directly, but in Christ our head, who is in heaven and takes up a place for us. See God loving us, but look on it in Christ, who is the seat of love. The next thing to God is his Son, and he loves none but in him. When we consider any spiritual blessing, let us say with the apostle, “Blessed be God, that hath filled us with all spiritual blessings in Christ” (Eph 1:3). Otherwise we know neither ourselves nor God.

Whatever comes from God to us comes through Christ. All the promises are his first. They are made to him, and to our nature in him, and they are performed for his sake. He receives them from God the Father, and they are performed for his sake. He is the true Aaron; we are only the skirts. The oil that is poured on his head runs down to his skirts. It runs down to the humblest Christian, but the ointment of grace is first poured on his head. Of his grace we receive grace for grace, and of his fullness (John 1:16). The first fullness is God himself; the second receptacle of all is Christ, the God-man; the third is ourselves. We have it at third hand. God empties himself into Christ as mediator. In him is the fullness of all riches, the treasures of all wisdom and knowledge. We are made complete in him, and in him we are full. His is not only the fullness of a vessel, as ours is, but the fullness of a fountain.

And it is for our comfort that it is so, that God’s love is toward Christ first. There is a firm foundation when God loves us in his Son, and we are children in his natural Son, in whom we are adopted. Then our state is firm. Our first state, in the first Adam, was not firm; but now that our nature is taken into the unity of the second person, it is firm. So the love and care and fatherly disposition of God toward us is sweet to us because it is tender toward his Son. It is eternal to us because it is eternal to him. He can as soon cease to love his Son as cease to love us. For with the same love he loves the whole mystical Christ, head and members. There is not the least finger of Christ, not the most despised member of Christ, but God looks on him with that sweet, eternal tenderness with which he looks on his Son, preserving the prerogative of the head.

Oh, this is a sweet comfort, that now all the excellent privileges of a Christian are set on Christ, and then on us! And therefore we shall not lose them, for Christ will lose nothing. When a prince’s favor is founded on his son, whom he always loves, the affection is unalterable because it rests on the son, and so the case is good. In the same way God’s favor toward us is founded on his love for his Son, and is therefore unalterable and eternal. We should therefore look up to God in his Son, put up all our petitions to him in his Son, and expect everything from him in his Son. He is in heaven for us, to do whatever concerns us. Expect everything from God through Christ, and do everything toward God through Christ. Love God in Christ and Christ in God; love ourselves in Christ, and ourselves in the love of God. Christ is in God, and God is in Christ. God and Christ are in us.

There is a marvelously sweet relation and communion between God and us, and between Christ and us. It is a sweet communion, and mysterious to us. How sweet is the communion between the soul and the body, the soul being so spiritual and the body a piece of earth! But what is this compared with the mystery of mysteries, when God takes clay and dust into the unity of his person? And all this is for the sake of this union. The great and glorious union of Christ with our nature is so that he may take us into his mystical body, and so make us one with himself and one with the Father. He took our nature so that he might convey his fatherly goodness and love and Spirit to us. The sweet union of the two natures of Christ is to confirm the union between the Father and us, and between Christ and us. And we are never happy until we are assured that we are one with Christ, which is the conclusion of his excellent prayer in John 17.

Our blessed Savior draws the comfort of God being our Father from this: that God is his Father first, and so he joins both together, that God is our God because he is his God first. It is a point well worth considering that whatever comfort we look for from God and in God, we must see it in Christ first before we see it in ourselves, because we are only sons by adoption, and we have all we have from God through Christ.

Whatever we see in Christ, let us think, “This will belong to us.” And whatever we look for as belonging to us, let us see it first in him. As surely as he ascended, we shall ascend; as surely as he rose, we shall rise; as surely as he is at God’s right hand, we shall be there too. For by faith we now sit in heavenly places with Christ, and we shall judge the world, and be for ever with the Lord (1 Cor 6:2; 1 Thess 4:17). Whatever we see in Christ, let us claim our interest in it. And therefore we must not conceive of Christ as a severe person, but conceive of ourselves as in union and communion with Christ our head, and conceive of Christ as our head and surety, the second Adam, and a quickening spirit who communicates everything to us.

And therefore, when we have to deal with God, let us be sure to go through Christ. As we expect everything from God through Christ, so let us give everything back to God through Christ. Let us be sure to take Benjamin with us when we go, and come clothed in the garments of our elder brother. And let us not doubt when we come with Christ, for otherwise we dishonor Christ. Shall I come in the sweet name and mediation of my Savior, who has perfected salvation, and not be accepted by God, when God has ordained him for that very purpose? If we stagger and doubt whether we will receive anything at God’s hand, we wrong not only God’s bounty but Christ the mediator. Therefore let us carry this with us all along. Let us do everything in him, and ask God to pardon everything for his sake, and God will regard us.

Use. Let us therefore make use of it, and add this further: if God is first the Father of Christ before he is our Father, and first the God of Christ before he is our God, and if all our good depends on what God is to Christ first, then does it not follow that we should not only thank God for ourselves, but thank God for whatever he has done to Christ; not only comfort ourselves in it, but let God have the glory of it? The Spirit of God led the holy apostles Peter and Paul to this: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 1:3). What, and nothing more than that? No, with a reduplication: “Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” even because he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; because out of the infinite depth of his wisdom and goodness he has found out a way to save us in Christ, to be a Father to him, and in him a Father to us.

It is said of the Virgin Mary, “All generations shall call her blessed” (Luke 1:48). Why? Because she was the mother of the person who was God. She was the mother of Christ in his human nature, and of God, because we must not sever the persons. And shall we bless the Virgin Mary as the mother of God, and not bless God as the Father of Christ? If she is the mother of Christ as man, then God is the Father of the whole Christ. And therefore blessed be God, not only that he is our Father and our God, but that, so that he might be so with satisfaction to divine justice, he has found out such a way to be the Father of Christ. And Christ, as man, is an object of God’s love and predestination as well as we are. We deserved nothing at God’s hands, but he found out such a way, by taking the nature of man into the unity of his second person, and so became a Father of Christ and of us.

And therefore bless God, who has predestined Christ to be the Lamb of God, who has freed him from sin and set him at his right hand, raised him from the dead, carried him into heaven, and ordained him to be Judge of the living and the dead. Are these things severed from us? No. They are favors that are ours in Christ: his first, then ours. And therefore whenever we think of anything Christ has of his glory in heaven, as he is King of heaven and earth and has all power committed to him, let us glorify God for it and think of it in this way: “This is mine. He is my husband, my head. He has taken up that glory and whatever is in heaven, and enjoys them; he has taken it up for me.” And therefore we should bless God for it.

So the apostle Peter says: “Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that hath begot us again to an inheritance immortal, undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved in the heavens” (1 Pet 1:3-4). He has begotten us to a living hope “through the resurrection of Christ from the dead.” So it is from the resurrection of Christ from the dead that Christ says, God is my Father and your Father. It is as if he said: since God’s justice is satisfied by my resurrection (that is, declared to be satisfied), “I ascend to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God.” I beg you, let us not lose the comfort of these things, since our Savior Christ intended them for comfort.

To come to the words. First, Christ says that God was his God, and our God because his God. In what sense is God Christ’s God? As Mediator and as man, both in regard to his person and in regard to his office, God is Christ’s God in every way. See Psalm 22:10, which is a psalm of Christ, David being only a type of him in it: “Thou art my God from my mother’s womb.” And so God is Christ’s God in his particular person, from his mother’s womb.

(1) God was Christ’s God when by his Holy Spirit he sanctified him in his mother’s womb and brought him out into the world. Let the foolish disputes of friars, and the dreams and dotages of hairsplitting scholastic times, go their way. “But thou art my God from my mother’s womb.”

(2) He is Christ’s God because he saved him from the massacre of the infants. Our Savior Christ makes that prayer of Psalm 22 on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).

(3) God was Christ’s God in protecting him in his young days, and afterward in going along with him all the way to his death; and in death it was still “My God, my God.” He would still own God to be his God. When God had deserted him as far as his sense and feeling went, it was still “My God.” So God was Christ’s God as Christ was man.

Take Christ as Mediator, and God is the God of Christ; for God the Father has by his authority conferred on Christ whatever Christ has. The Father has sent him into the world; the Father “sealed” him; the Father sent him out as a propitiation for our sins; the Father has declared him and “anointed” him. All these are terms of authority by which the Father has shown himself to be Christ’s God, even in his office of mediatorship. So, in regard to the care of his person from his mother’s womb and forever, and in regard to his office as Mediator, he might well say, “I go to my God.” And in regard to the intimate familiarity and acquaintance maintained even on the cross, he might say, “My God.”

But the comfort of it lies in the second clause: that as God is the God of Christ, so he is our God, because he is the God of Christ.

What is it to be a God to anyone? In a word, to be a God is to be all-sufficient to someone: to be sole-sufficient and to be self-sufficient.

To be a God is to be all-sufficient for every creature, to be all-sufficient when nothing else can be sufficient; and to be self-sufficient, sufficient of himself, and therefore to bring all back again to himself. Now God is a God of himself, for himself, and by himself. God is all-sufficient, self-sufficient, sole-sufficient; and whatever the creature has, it has from him. In a word, there is in God a sufficiency for all good and happiness, and an efficiency to apply that sufficiency for the good of the creature.

And in particular, to be a God to anyone is to do for a creature what no creature in the world can do, but only God: to make it out of nothing; to free it from the misery that besets it when no one else can free it; to recover it again. God is Jehovah, who has his being of himself and gives being to the creatures; who can make the creature out of nothing and, when it is something, can make it nothing.

Now, if God is a God to anyone, he does not merely give us being in a certain rank of creatures, as we are advanced above other creatures: to have a being, or a life of growth, or a life of sense; or to raise us to the life of creatures endowed with reason, by which we share that rank in common with the angels and understand God himself. Alas, this would be a poor privilege if it went no further than setting us in that rank of creatures, though it is a great favor. But considering us in our fallen state, it would be a poor favor to leave us there.

And therefore God is said to be our God now in a state of grace, when he advances us to a higher being and life than all this: a life of grace here and of glory hereafter; when out of his sovereignty and power he directs everything to help forward his main end, the salvation of his own in particular. So God is a God in a special way to some whom he takes out of base mankind. There is a world taken out of the world, as Augustine used to say.

And so he is a God not only to bestow a life of grace and a supernatural being here, but a glorious condition hereafter in heaven; and to make all things serviceable to that, so that we may say, “All is ours, because we are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor 3:22-23). So whatever befalls a Christian is serviceable and conducive to the main and last end. And that is for God to be God indeed: to make us his in Christ Jesus, to give us a new creation and a new state, better than the first.

Now, what is the foundation of this, that God is our God in the covenant of grace? We say it is founded on Christ. God is Christ’s God, and then our God. That is the reason Christ is called “Immanuel,” which means, as it is interpreted, “God with us.” This is not only because, when he took our nature on him, there was God and man in one person. The meaning of the name is that Christ is Immanuel, “God with us,” because by being God in our nature, and satisfying divine justice in our nature, he has brought God the Father and us into a sweet covenant. So God may be our God and our Father notwithstanding his justice, because all is satisfied by Christ, who took our nature to die for us. Christ is Immanuel because he has made God and us one. So God is our God, and not only that, but our Father in him.

Thus you see how it comes about that God is our Father by Christ, who came to bring us back to God. His whole office was to bring a few who had been singled out of mankind back to God, from whom they fell. For we all had communion with God in Adam, but we lost it; and now we must be brought back to God, which must be done by Christ, God and man.

Thus much for the foundation of the point: that God is Christ’s God, and God in Christ is our God, to do all things for us, to bring us to a happy condition here and an everlasting happy condition in heaven.

We see that this is brought here as a ground of comfort, and so indeed it is. And we may observe from this that now, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has become not only a Father to us, but a God. This is a ground of many comforts. “Go, tell my disciples”: I am now risen again, and therefore justice is satisfied, and now they may have a living hope of a better condition hereafter. For God is my God, who has raised me up, and who will raise up mine too. So now we are copartners with Christ, sharers with him in the fatherhood of God, and God is God in common to Christ and us.

This may well be brought as a ground of comfort. If there were any comfort in the world of sweeter power than this, our Savior would have sent it to his disciples. Since comfort is his main office and his main end, he would send the best comfort after the best of resurrections. And out of them all he picks this: “Go, tell them, I go to my Father, and their Father; to my God, and their God.” Therefore it is a fruitful comfort; indeed, no heart can conceive the comfort of it, that together with Christ we have an interest in God and in the fatherhood of God. And Scripture joins both of these together: I will be your Father, and your God (2 Cor 6:16, 18).

To unfold the comforts further: God is said to be our God in covenant in Christ. He is the God of Christ, and therefore ours, because he has made himself over to us. A thing is said to be another man’s when the title is passed to that other man. Now God has, as it were, passed himself over to his believing children and the members of Christ. He has made himself over to them to be their God. As he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of all the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, so he is the God of every good, believing Christian to the end of the world.

God makes himself over to be theirs; and, as Scripture expresses it, he is their portion and their inheritance. He is a blessed portion, a blessed inheritance, more to us than if all the world were ours, than if heaven were ours, than if ten thousand worlds were ours; for he who is our God can create millions of worlds more than this one, if it were needed. Whoever has in covenant him who has all things, has all things. And therefore when the Scripture says, “I go to their God,” it implies: I go to him who is all in all to them, who is larger than their hearts can be. For what heart can conceive the fullness of the comforts arising from this, that God is our God? Many know they need comfort of such a transcendent nature. The heart of man is so distrustful, so faithless, and the conscience is such a clamorous thing, that he cannot think this is too much.

I urge you, therefore, do not lose the comfort of this: that in Christ God is our God, though we can say of nothing else that it is ours. Perhaps we cannot say that great houses are ours, or friends are ours, or inheritances are ours. That does not matter. We can say that something is ours which is infinitely more than that. We can say, God is ours in Christ.

Indeed, when the Spirit of faith stirs us up to say that God is ours in Christ, all things in the world are ours. As you have it in that place of Scripture, “All things are yours.” Why? “Because you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” “Whether things present, or things to come, Paul, Apollos, Cephas, life, death, all is yours; you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor 3:21-23). That is, all things must by a command from God conspire to make us happy: affliction, or Satan, or death, or trouble of conscience, or desertion, or anything else, to help us to heaven. The curse is taken away, and there is a blessing hidden in everything that befalls a Christian, to bring him to heaven. Therefore it is a comfort of infinite extent. All is yours, because God is yours.

You may see the extent of these comforts further by going through them one by one, as it were. If God is ours, then all is ours too. What are these things? Scripture tells you, and I would spend too much time unfolding them all.

1. If God is ours, his wisdom must be ours, to find out ways to do us good. For his infinite wisdom has found out a way in Christ, by the satisfaction of his justice, to bring us to heaven. He can make us go beyond all the cunning of our neighbors, for his wisdom is ours.

2. If we are in danger, his power is ours, to bring us out.

3. If we have sinned, his mercy is ours, to forgive us. Since he himself is ours, his mercy must be ours. The whole being ours, it follows by the strength of reason that the parts must also be ours.

4. In any want, his all-sufficiency is ours, to supply it, or to turn it to good and make it up in a better kind.

5. In a word, since God is ours, whatever is in God, whatever God can do, whatever he has, is ours, because he himself is ours.

And therefore, I urge you, make this use of it: get into Christ by faith, to be one with Christ, so that God may be our God. Get faith above all graces, for it is the grace of union and the grace of communion; so that, being one with Christ, we are one with God. God being ours, all is ours; yes, the worst thing in the world is ours.

If God is not ours, it does not matter what else is ours. Alas, all things must be taken from us, we do not know how soon, and we must be taken from all things else. What if we had a kingdom, as Saul had, if we are forsaken by God as he was? What if we had paradise? If we offend God, we shall be cast out. What if we had the dignity of being apostles? If, like Judas, we do not have God, what will it all come to? What if a man enjoys the whole world? If he is out of Christ, it would yield him no comfort! As the emperor said, “I have gone through all varieties of condition, and it has done me no good.” If we had everything, what is it but “vanity of vanities”? And not only so, but “vexation” (Eccl 1:2; Eccl 2:17).

Now, when we have God as our God, he is able to fill the soul. He is larger than the soul, and he is able to quiet the soul. He is the soul’s rest, and there the soul is quiet; in him is its center, its place of quiet. If God is ours, then the soul rests in him; for God fills the soul and quiets the soul, and always has fresh comforts for the soul, infinite still, to all eternity. There is nothing in the world that we do not, as it were, strip of its bloom by use, so that it grows stale. Though a man continued many thousands of years in the world, he would still grow weary of all things in the world, because there is no freshness in them. The world is finite, and the soul is larger than the comforts of the world. But in God there is a spring of fresh comforts to everlasting. Consider the things that enable him to be our God: to fill the soul and to be larger than the soul; to quiet and calm the soul in all its troubles; and then to have fresh springs of comfort. What a comfort this is, to have God for one’s God!

Let it therefore raise up our souls to labor after God, and never to rest until we have some interest in this great portion, God to be our God. When by faith we can go out of ourselves to Christ, and lay a right and just claim to God as our God, this is a comfort that reaches from everlasting to everlasting. It gives us forgiveness of sins when we had lost ourselves; because we are in Christ, he has forgiven us. In all extremities and troubles, when no creature can comfort us, it is his glory to show himself a God.

It reaches to the resurrection of the body. God is Abraham’s, and Isaac’s, and Jacob’s God when they are dead, because he was the God of the whole Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and therefore of soul and body. And it reaches from all the favors of this world, so far as they are for our good, to all eternity. Being our God, he will protect us from all extremities in this world; he will speak comfort to our souls, which nothing but God can do. When we are dead he will raise up our dust, because he is our whole God, the God of our souls and bodies, and we shall be forever with the Lord. It is a comfort of wonderful extent.

Use 1. Let us therefore make this use of it: labor to make him so to us. For as he is a God to us, so by his Spirit God is our Comforter; being satisfied, he gives us his Spirit. We must make God our God, and then he will be a God to us. These are mutual wherever they are. Wherever God is God to anyone, they have grace, by the Spirit obtained by Christ, to make him so to themselves.

What is it for us to make God a God to us? It is this: to set up a throne for God in our hearts; to give him sovereignty over all things in the world, so that we may say in truth of heart, God is our joy, God is our comfort, God is our rock, God is all in all to us. It is when we give him supremacy of affection above all the world, esteem nothing above him, and value him above all esteem; when his loving-kindness is better than life itself. Otherwise we do not make him a God to us, and then it is no comfort to hear all the comforts spoken of before. For in all to whom he is a God in the covenant of grace, and who have hearts to make him so, the Spirit raises up their affections to make him a God to themselves.

As was said of old, “Your love is your god”: what we love most is our god. What we joy in most is our god; what we rely on and trust in most is our god, as it was said of the “wedge of gold” (Job 31:24). And therefore if anything has our affections more than God, or equally with God, we make that our god.

It is a question of the greatest concern in the world to put to our hearts: What do I make my god? David puts the question to himself: “Now, Lord, what is my hope? is it not in thee?” (Ps 39:7). So let us put this question to ourselves: Lord, what is my joy, what is my hope, what is my trust, what is my comfort? Is it not in you? If our hearts cannot answer this with some sincerity, surely we have not yet made God our God. There may come a time when he will be so. But until by the Spirit of God we are brought to see an emptiness and vanity in the creature, and a nothingness in all things compared with God, so that we can say, “Whom have I in heaven but thee?” (Ps 73:25), we have no comfort, because we do not make him ours by a spirit of mutuality. Where there is a covenant of grace, there must be a mutual making of God our God, as he makes himself a God to us.

Alas, we may be ashamed of it; the best often forget themselves. Oh, how men value the favors of a man and the promises of a man, the seal of a man for such and such a benefice! And how it grieves them to have the frowns of flesh and blood, the frowns of the great! But when their consciences tell them they are under the guilt of many sins, and God is not on good terms with them, how much does this affect them? And when their consciences cannot say they have promises sealed in Christ of the favors and mercies of God here and hereafter, alas, it is a dead comfort. “Give me what is present, and you take what is to come” is the language of both. How few can say from sincerity of heart that they make God their God? And therefore it is of greater concern than we take it to be.

Use 2. As it is a ground and foundation of comfort, so it is of all obedience to God, as it is set before the commandments: “I am the Lord your God” (Exod 20:2), “you shall have no other gods but me,” and do everything in obedience to me on this ground. But much more now. Then he was the Lord God who brought them out of Egypt; but now God may set before his commands, “I am your Lord God in Christ, who have brought you from hell and damnation, who intend heaven and happiness for you; and therefore do this and that.” Since this is the spring of all obedience, we ought to labor to make it sure, and often to examine ourselves, as before, what we make our god and what we set our affections on. Alas, is our soul for anything but God? Has not God made us for himself? And will our hearts rest in anything but God? Why then should we love vanity and infatuate ourselves?

When death comes, they may say, as Saul said, “The Philistines are upon me, and God hath forsaken me” (1 Sam 28:15). Death is upon me; trouble, sickness, and vexation of conscience are upon me; and God has forsaken me; I have no God to go to. What a miserable state this is! And therefore, I urge you, let us labor to have an interest in the covenant of grace, to make sure that God is our God in Jesus Christ.

Who gives us a being as Christians, to have a new nature, to have a good being, but God? Who maintains and preserves that being but God? And who keeps and preserves us until we reach a glorious being in heaven but God, who is all-sufficient, self-sufficient, sole-sufficient, only sufficient? This God is our God now in Christ.

God is God to us in a more special, singular manner than to other creatures, because he has raised us to a more excellent being. This is not only as men, since we are in the highest rank of creatures next to the angels; and so he is a God to us more than to inferior creatures that have a more circumscribed and narrow being. Man has a large being, a reasonable soul, and is fitted by nature to have communion with God, who is wisdom itself, and with angels. But all this would be little comfort unless we had higher degrees of being than this. If God is our God in Christ, we have a spiritual being, which is as far above the dignity and prerogative of our ordinary being as our being by nature is above the basest creature in the world.

And so God sets a title on us suited to the excellence of our spiritual being. There is nothing excellent in the world that we are not now called by, to set out the advancement and excellence of the dignity we have from God in a special manner: to be “sons,” “jewels,” his “portion,” his “diadem,” to be whatever you can imagine that is glorious and excellent. It is an excellent condition, though spiritual and concealed from the world. God’s children are concealed men, as you shall see afterward. They are hidden men. The world takes no notice of them, because their excellence is seen with another eye than the world has. “The god of the world blindeth the eyes of worldlings” (2 Cor 4:4). They cannot see into the excellence of God’s children, any more than they know God himself and Christ himself.

So you see what it is to be a God in nature and in grace: to be all in all to us, so that we have our whole substance and dependence in him. “In him we live, move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and our well-being.

Our excellence consists in this: that God is our God in Christ, who was God, that he might bring God and us to good terms together, that he might make God our God. He was Immanuel, God with us, to make God be with us in favor and love. Of all creatures, the human nature of Christ is the one the Godhead is nearest to. It is nearer to Christ than to the angels; for God has not taken the angels into hypostatic union, to be in the same person, but God in Christ is so near our nature that there is a hypostatic union. They make one person, our nature being taken into the second Person.

By reason of this near union of the Godhead to our nature comes that comfort and near union between God and our nature by which God has sweet communion with us in Christ. God by his Spirit, though not hypostatically, yet graciously, is one with us, and has communion with us now as his children. So that sweet fellowship between God and us now is founded on the nearness of the Godhead to our nature in Christ, in whom it is nearest of all, in whom it is advanced above the angelic nature. And therefore our blessed Savior might well say, “I go to my God, and your God”: to his God first, and then to our God.

Now we may say, God is our God, and on good grounds, because God is Christ’s God, and in him our God. This is a point of singular comfort, and therefore I will enlarge on it further.

Doctrine. For God to be our God, especially when this is unfolded in our hearts with regard to our spirits and our best being, is the most fundamental comfort we have. For from this, that God is our God, comes everything good that we have in nature and in grace. Whatever is comforting comes from this spring: that God in Christ is our God, our reconciled God, and that God’s nature and ours are now on good terms.

Beloved, what can we not expect from God, now that he has become our God! What he is, what he is able to do, what he has: all is ours, since he himself is ours. If we have the field, we have the pearl in the field. And therefore the wise merchant in the gospel sold everything for the field in which the treasure was (Matt 13:44). We have the field itself in having God, and we have all that God is or can do for us for our good, just as we have Christ and all that Christ is, has done, has suffered and enjoys. All is ours, because we are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s, as the apostle says (1 Cor 3:22-23). So in having God we have everything, because we have him who possesses all things: the Creator of all, the Preserver of all and the Disposer of all.

But to clear the objection a little: if God is ours, and everything else is ours too, how is it that we lack so many things?

Answer. I answer, it is mostly our own fault. We lack the faith to make use of this comfort and improve it. And then again, we lack nothing that is for our good; even want itself is for our good. And observe this: our God is so powerful a God that he often makes the worst things we suffer a means of conveying the greatest good to us. If God is our God and Father in Christ, why do we have sins? Why are we vexed by the devil? Why persecuted by men? Why frightened in this way, and this, and this? All this is for our good. God is our God by these things and in the midst of them. And he is never more our God than in the greatest extremity of all, for then we come nearest the fountain.

There is a near and sweet communion between this God and us when we draw from the fountain itself. When the means, the conduits that convey his goodness, are drawn away, and we have nothing to go to but God immediately, there is sweet communion; and in heaven there is the sweetest comfort. There we shall have God in Christ, who will be all in all to us. We shall need no magistrates, no ministry, no food, no clothing, no defense against cold or injury. We shall be out of the reach of Satan and all our enemies. God will be all in all immediately. The same God is all in all to us, whether by means or immediately. When means fail, he conveys his sweetness and his power immediately, but ordinarily he works by means.

And what sight does in heaven, faith does now in some proportion. For as sight in heaven sees God in Christ all in all, and enjoys that happy vision, so faith sees God to be all in all, and Christ to be all in all. Though this is in a degree inferior to sight and the clearness of vision, yet, as far as the capacity of this life allows, we enjoy God now as they do in heaven. We have inward comforts when we are most deserted. God was never nearer to our blessed Savior than on the cross, when he cried, “My God, my God…” (Matt 27:46), for then he found invincible strength supporting him in the great work he had undertaken under the wrath of his Father. And so God is never nearer than in extremity: in strength, though not in sense and feeling, and often in feeling itself. We never have sweeter comforts than when we lack all outward comforts whatsoever, when nothing else can comfort us but the presence of God.

And we must know besides that the state of a Christian in this world is a hidden condition, for it is open to the eye of faith, not of sense. And therefore God is a God to his own, though the world does not see it. There is a secret, hidden influence, a secret passage between heaven and earth, that no one sees. Who observes the influence of the sun, or the sweet influence of the stars upon the earth? Light we see, but there is a secret influence that pierces deeper than the light, to the very bowels of the earth, where metals come from. Where no light comes, there is an influence, though it is not discerned. Much more can there be an influence of strength and power and hidden comfort, though there is no sight. Can God not be our God in regard to strength, supporting and supplying us, though there is no visible and felt comfort, though we do not see it ourselves? Certainly the soul is upheld by an invincible strength in the worst condition there can be. Therefore this is true: God is our God in all conditions.

Use. Let us make use of this. What use are riches and friends if we do not use them? What use are God and Christ if we do not use them? He is ours; let us use him for our special good on every occasion. Oh, that we had faith to match our privilege! It is a privilege greater than heaven and earth that God is ours. If we had faith to suit it, what kind of people would we be in grace and comfort and in whatever is good? Therefore labor to make use of it.

But more of this after we have spoken of some rules of trial, because whatever I may say along this line may be misapplied. These are excellent comforts. “But perhaps they do not belong to me,” says the distressed soul, to whom they do belong. “Perhaps they belong to me,” says another, who is a stranger and a carnal man, to whom they do not belong. Therefore our Savior gives some marks of distinction, so that we may know whether God is our God or not. I will not dwell long on the argument, yet I will be plain in it.

(1) God is their God in the special sense I am speaking of, that is, in the covenant of grace, and not otherwise. I am not speaking of what God is by the creation of man, for in that sense the devil is God’s, and so is every creature. But the question is, to whom is God a God in the nearest bond, the bond of the covenant of grace? That is the only comfortable relation there can be. For if God is not our God in that, all other comforts will be nothing. It would be better for us to be no creatures at all than not to be creatures in the covenant of grace. It is therefore worth commending to you, especially considering that our wicked hearts are prone to deceive us. Satan, melancholy, and temptations make some refuse the comfort, and make some presumptuous persons snatch at it when it does not belong to them.

To those for whom God is a God indeed, in the sweet relation of the covenant of grace, as he was to the patriarchs, the prophets, Christ and the apostles, he gives his Holy Spirit to witness as much to them. Though the voice of the Spirit is not always heard even in the best children of God, yet he gives them the Holy Spirit, so that, though the Spirit does not always witness, he always works something in them which may be evidence that they are God’s.

(2) Now the spirit of adoption and sonship is known especially by a spirit of supplication. To those to whom God is a God, he grants a spirit of prayer, to go to him in all their needs, which is an issue or branch of their faith. He gives them faith to believe it and prayer to make use of it. For God will not give this great privilege without giving hearts to make use of it, which is done by faith and prayer; and prayer is nothing but the frame of faith. As soon as Paul was a good man, immediately after his conversion, “behold, he prayeth” (Acts 9:11). The child cries as soon as it is born, and the child of God is known by his praying. As soon as he is converted, a line of communication is opened between God and the soul, which a Christian soul will never neglect. If they are placed in the worst condition, they will pray to God, or at least sigh and groan, which is a prayer God can make sense of.

Those who have any strong places of defense will be sure to flee to them in trouble; in times of war they will betake themselves to their castle and their stronghold. And so those who are God’s run at once to God in time of danger. He is their rock, their refuge and their place of defense. They repair to him by faith and prayer. “The name of the Lord is a tower of defense: the righteous in trouble fly thither, and they are safe” (Prov 18:10).

A man may know what his god is by where he retreats in times of extremity. Your carnal man, if he has any place to retreat to, goes to his friends, to his purse, to bring him out. He will go to whatever his instinct especially leads him to in times of trouble. Every creature, together with its nature, has received from God an instinct to go to the place of refuge where it is safe. The weakest creature has the strongest refuge: the conies, poor weak creatures, hide themselves most securely, out of the instinct they have of their own weakness. Even so God’s child, being aware of his weakness and of his need of support and strength, has the strongest support there can be, and runs to his God. Worldly men have many tricks, as the wily fox has; but a Christian has only one, and that is a great one: he goes to his God in time of need. And therefore you may know who is in covenant with God in times of extremity, especially by a spirit of faith, a spirit of prayer.

In times of extremity, no one but a Christian can pray with any comfort, with any sweet familiarity, “Abba, Father.” Others are like Pharaoh: Go, Moses, pray to your God (Exod 9:28). He had no such familiarity with God as to pray for himself. And so carnal men will say, “Pray to your God.” And many, like devils, will have no communion with God in their prosperity; their whole life provokes God to enmity by swearing and by loose, debauched, disorderly conduct, hateful even to moral men. Their hearts tell them that they are just like Satan: “What! dost thou come to torment us before our time?” (Matt 8:29). What do you have to do with me? What do they have to do with God?

They scarcely have a Bible in their rooms; if they have one, it is for fashion’s sake. And so that they may not appear to be wicked, they will keep up conformity in public assemblies; but as for private familiarity with God, they have nothing to do with it. The show of religion goes under a reproachful name; but if they would put off the show, it would be nothing, and they would not be making a display of what they are not. But they have no communion with God in prayer. They will pass for God’s people and own him as their God, when they have no dealings with him so much as by prayer. I beg you, let us take heed that we do not deceive ourselves; salvation depends on it.

(3) We may further test whether our claim that God is our God is a good claim, on good grounds, by our siding, by the part we take; for those to whom God is a God in a special manner will be sure to side with God. God has two things in the world that he prizes more than all the world: his children and church, and his cause and religion. Those who are God’s will be sure to side with the church; they will stand and fall with the church. And as for the cause of religion, they will live and die with it.

But a carnal politician, who perhaps has great natural abilities, is, as the Greek calls him, “one thing to some and another to others.” Such men are for every turn. They can bring themselves into any shape, like water, which will take any shape. Put it into a square vessel, and it will be square; put it into a round vessel, and it will be round. How can they own God as their God when they will not seek him, and have yet to choose their God and their religion? And because they want to be sure to be safe in all times, they will own no religion at any time. And, beloved, is it possible that any such person should say with confidence that God is his God? Will God own those who will not own him, nor his church, nor his cause?

You know how Jehu cries out, “Who is on my side, who?” (2 Kgs 9:32), and then, Cast her out. And so God, in doubtful times of danger, cries out, “Who is on my side, who?” Stand out; show yourselves, if you are on my side. If you are on my side, own my cause. If you are not on my side, if you have no degree of goodness, it will appear.

Christian wisdom is one thing; carnal policy is another. “The wisdom of the flesh is enmity with God” (Rom 8:7). Many applaud this and think themselves somebody in this line; but this wisdom is enmity itself against God. When a man will be wise with a kind of wisdom distinct from God’s, when he will have a cause separated from God and will not side with God, he must expect that God will count him his enemy, and make him so. But especially in the hour of death and deep extremity, he will not be able to look God in the face, having been a traitor to him in the church and in the cause of religion. And therefore, if we want to be able to own God as our God, especially in doubtful and dangerous times, let us side with the church and side with religion. This was the challenge put to that good Jehoshaphat, a good man: Have we anything to do with God’s enemies? (2 Chr 19:2).

Now there are two sorts of enemies that we especially must have nothing to do with if we side with God: enemies within us and enemies without us. Sin within us: we must take part against our sins; we must take God’s part and the Spirit’s part against corrupt motions and affections. Religion must begin from within; otherwise it is faction without. It is not religion but faction if religion does not begin in our hearts and if we do not hate sin in ourselves. Where there is true antipathy, the nearer something opposite to our nature is, the more hateful it is. He who hates a toad hates it most of all in his own bosom. And he who hates sin as sin hates it most of all in his own heart. And therefore when people make a show of religion and are wicked in their own personal lives, it does not come from a true principle; for those who will side with God side with God in their own hearts and are good men in their own personal lives. Therefore, I beg you, test yourselves by this.

Likewise, when men esteem as God’s enemy whatever is his enemy, wherever they see it, then, as far as their authority and power reach, they will take God’s part in themselves against themselves, and in the world too. I will not enlarge on the point, because it comes in by way of trial, and I cannot but touch on it as a trial. So you see how we may know whether we are God’s or not: by owning his cause and siding with him.

You have some expressions in Scripture to this purpose, as in Micah 4:5: “All people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.” Every man will walk and conduct himself in the name of his god; they will own their god and take part with him. And we will walk in the name of our God for ever and ever, and own his cause at all times, and constantly, for ever and ever.

And likewise in Isaiah 44:5, speaking of gracious times there, when men will be bold for the Lord, as some men will be in all times: “One shall say, I am the Lord’s, and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall subscribe with his hand to the Lord, and term himself Israel.” God will have his tongue, his hand and everything. He will say, “I am the Lord’s”; he will call himself “by the name of Jacob”; he will subscribe to it and own the cause.

(4) Again, if we want to know whether God is our God, we must know whether we may lay just claim to our God as a God special to us, or not, and the way in which God shows himself to be a God to us in special respects.

Question. Now how does God show himself a God in a special respect to his children?

Answer. He shows himself to have a special regard for them:

[1] By special gifts, when he gives them what he gives to no one else. Shall we imagine that God is our God because of common gifts and common graces? No. For you come to hear the word; so did Herod. You receive the sacrament; so did Judas, and so did Simon Magus. You hear the truth with some joy; so did the second ground (Matt 13:20). You have excellent abilities; so does the devil himself.

But you hold such a place in the church, and teach others; so did Judas. Are these evidences by which to test whether we are God’s or not? What then is the special gift and love token that God bestows on his favorites? They are the graces of his Spirit. Toward God especially, there is a humble, broken heart, a believing heart and a lowly heart, which goes out of itself and goes to God by faith; and toward man, a heart full of love, which shows a great deal of self-denial, when a man can love others at the cost of his own profit and ease. He who has a humble, believing, lowly heart has more than all the world besides, for he has God’s special gift. Many poor souls complain as if God had no regard for them, and yet all the while they have humble, broken hearts. That is more than if they had all the wealth and worth that the world has, whose people have proud hearts that were never broken.

The return of these favors will be comfort in death and glory in heaven. What will the fruit of a believing heart be? He has God and Christ. If he has a lowly, large heart to do good, he does what in the end will further his account at the day of judgment. And there is the love of God shown in his special favor.

[2] So, in particular, the love of God will be a special comfort that the world knows nothing of, especially in times of extremity. Inward peace of conscience, inward joy and inward comforts are signs of love that God bestows on a man when he will own him in the worst times, and speak peace to his soul when nothing in the world will speak peace. When the lions roar, when the great lions of the world roar in extremity, he has inward peace and joy, and the comforts of the Holy Spirit. That inward fellowship of God with the soul is a sign of God’s special love. When God speaks peace to the soul, when he shows the light of his countenance, which David in Psalm 4:7 prefers to all outward comforts whatsoever (God’s revealing of himself, as the Scripture calls it), when God reveals himself to his own as theirs, with peace and joy and comfort accompanying it, this is special.

[3] Again, a special favor and love token from God is to have timely and sanctifying correction. To have corrections when they are timely: when we are going astray, and God will bring us home by correction. And when we have sanctified correction, we find by experience that all is turned to our good. If I find anything turning me to my God, I know I am his. If my cross is timely and sanctified, he is my God, for he takes the same course with me that he takes with his own people. These are singular signs of God’s love: when he bestows the graces of his Spirit, his comforts, peace and joy, though not abundantly, yet as much as will sustain the soul; and then, when he meets us in good time and will not allow us to prosper in an evil course. Oh, it is a judgment of judgments to be hardened in sinful courses of life! How can it but end in despair at last? And therefore it is a great favor to be chastised; it shows we are sons, and not bastards (Heb 12:8). So we see how we may lay just claim to this, that God is our God in a special manner.

(5) To name only one more mark, to distinguish a spirit of presumption from a spirit of faith and truth that God is our God, it is this:

[1] If we have grace to answer his dealings toward us, when we can echo God’s dealings. God has chosen us if we have grace to choose him for our God. We may know he has called us effectually when we answer God’s call. When he bids us believe, he gives an influence of power enabling us to say, “I believe; Lord, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). We may know he loves us when we reflect love back again and love him. We may know he embraces us when we embrace him. We may know he delights in us when we delight in him and in his servants.

Where does the strength of this argument come from? From this: all the good things we do come from God by reflection. God shines on us first. God owns us as his first, and God must do so in the order of causes. God, being the spring of all goodness, must begin. “We love him because he loved us first” (1 John 4:19); otherwise we could never love him. Therefore if we love him and the truth, he loves us. That is sure. “What have I in heaven but thee, and in earth in comparison of thee?” (Ps 73:25). Surely he owns us, because in the order of causes we can have nothing except from him first.

[2] And then again, out of the nature of conscience: if we can go boldly to him as a reconciled God, notwithstanding the guilt of conscience, it is a sign that such a person has obtained peace of conscience. For it is the nature of conscience, if it does not have peace from God, not to dare to appear in God’s presence.

So then, when there is inward peace, and love answering to God’s love, choice answering to God’s choice, and our laying hold of him answering to his laying hold of us, this reflection, this return and rebounding back to God, is an invincible argument that God has first shone upon that soul. God sometimes lets us see things in the effect and hides them in the cause. Perhaps he will not persuade us by his Spirit that he loves us, has chosen us and that we are his; but he will work something in our hearts, because he wants us to search our spirits for what good thing he has worked there, what love, what choice of the best side there is in any of these. Surely then God is theirs. Though there is no open voice, yet they may know that God has loved this soul and spoken peace to that soul, because we can return nothing to God unless he shines on us first.

Therefore, beloved, let us make use of this, and let us beware of sacrilegious usurpations, so that we do not usurp upon God’s house, or upon God in a special respect. Indeed, we may come to God as his creatures (“We are the workmanship of your hands”) and speak the truth, even though we are in a wicked course of life. But consider what it is to say, “You are my God in Christ; I am yours; you have chosen me for yours,” when we have not chosen him for our God, nor loved him or his cause, nor sided with him, nor have any stamp of him on the soul. We have nothing but common favor, which castaways have as well as we, and the devils as well as we (for the devils go beyond all men in abilities). And yet to usurp the privilege of being God’s in a special manner, and to be bold with the holy things of God as if we were of his family: this is a dangerous usurpation. Beware of it.

And therefore those who live in courses of rebellion, and are resolved not to mend, take the holy things of God; and to them the psalmist speaks in holy indignation in Psalm 50:16-17: “What art thou, that takest my word in thy mouth, since thou hatest to be reformed?” You are an enemy to God and goodness, and you mean to remain so. You are in a course of rebellion, and you mean to remain in it. The devil’s works you do and will do. If we may not take the word of the covenant into our mouths, shall we take the seal of the covenant? Therefore resolve to amend; otherwise have nothing to do with God. Do not add one sin to another. It is the children’s food, and not for dogs (Matt 15:26); it belongs to those of the family. If you are not one of the family, what business do you have with them? If you are of the family, whatever your infirmities are, you may come boldly, for the seals are given to strengthen our weak faith. When a father is the father of a child, he will not cast the child away for breaking out in some deformity or lameness. When God has taken us into his family, infirmities cannot discard us. But I am speaking of those who, by a willful course of sin set against him, show that they never had anything to do with God in close and familiar fellowship. God never gave them a spirit to change their natures.

Ownership, proportion, and suitableness of disposition go together; ownership joins with suitableness. Where God owns any man, he makes him like himself by his word and Spirit, so that his nature becomes even and agreeable to holy things and has a taste for holy things. And where there is no suitableness to holy things, there is no ownership. Will God own a man and not make him suitable? Will God take a friend and not give him a friendly nature? He will not, for he first fits our natures for communion with himself; otherwise there can be no ownership.

Let us not deceive ourselves. But suppose we find some beginnings of grace, and can say without arrogance or presumption, “Doubtless thou art our Father, our God” (Isa 63:16); suppose we can say, “We are not worthy to be yours, but we are yours”; suppose we find something that castaways cannot have, some grief of heart for sin, some faith, some little measure of love, some love of the truth and inclination to the best things. Then we may come boldly to increase our familiarity and communion with God. Otherwise it is dangerous to come to God. We approach “a consuming fire” (Heb 12:29). “Who shall dwell in everlasting burnings?” (Isa 33:14), say the people in Isaiah. And if God is not in covenant with us, oh, he will be “a consuming fire,” everlasting burnings, and we are but stubble. Our coming will increase spiritual judgment in us: hardness of heart, and going on from sin to sin, until we are accursed for sin. Therefore it is a fearful thing to be given up to hardness of heart. Those who continue in sin, God gives up to hardness of heart, so that they become insensible of his dealings with them.

Use 3. If we can in any degree make good that God is our God and we are his people, then let us use it for our comfort at all times, that we have a God to go to. Though we have no friend in the world, yet we have him in whom all friends meet. If we have no comfort here, yet we have him in whom all comforts meet, for they all center in him. Whoever has him has father and friends, worth and grace, peace and comfort in him; all is in him. If we go to him, we will find a meeting together of everything that is good, suited to any need of ours.

And therefore let us learn to single out from God whatever may help us to be in covenant with him. Since he has made himself over to be ours, let us learn this wisdom: to single out from God whatever fits our present condition. For since he has made himself a God to us, he is all-sufficient for every turn. Therefore, out of his all-sufficiency, take whatever is fit for any particular need. “Lord, I am in a strait, and I lack wisdom. You in Christ have abundance of wisdom. Christ has all treasures in him. I lack friends now; I lack counsel, I lack help, I lack strength.” God has a fullness of all this for his children. He has it not only to content himself and look on his own happiness, but for his friends who are in covenant with him, who are so near to him that he will own himself to be their God. If you ask, “What is religion?” it is to know God, to have all-sufficiency in him for every good, and then to make use of him by depending on him for that good, and by exalting him in giving him the honor and thanks due for it. And therefore we do not deserve the name of religious people if we do not study what he is to his creatures in the covenant of grace, and then make use of it by a spirit of dependence and by always giving him praise and thanks. This is our whole man, and what is all the rest? Nothing but trouble and vanity. Let us get our bonds sealed, that he is our God, and then we may break with all the world besides. Come what may, or what will, we are sure to be safe. It is a comfort of wonderfully large extent.

The use of the sacrament is to seal that God is our God in particular, and that Christ is ours as truly as the bread and wine are ours. And let us ask the Lord to seal to each of our souls that are to have communion with him this: that he, in Christ, is ours in particular: Christ with all his merits and their fruits, the forgiveness of sin and life everlasting, as truly as the outward man partakes of the outward seals. Then we will come and go away with comfort, and share in that end and use of the sacrament for which our blessed Savior instituted it.

Having spoken before of common favors, which devils and castaways may have as well as we, I will enlarge a little on this, because it is a point of real concern. As in other sins we are like the devil, so in this sin a man is worse than the devil himself, if he will be a common swearer and an opposer, malicious against goodness, in love only with some idle notion of his own, to which he will have God himself stoop or else he will not go to heaven. He will not be saved except by his own folly. When a man who has a bitter spirit against the power of grace, who is a common blasphemer, who carries a spite against religion, says, “God is my God,” the devil may as well say so. The devil will say of Paul and Silas, These are the people of God (Acts 16:17), but he will not say that he himself is. For a man to live in sins against conscience, to defend them, to oppose everything that opposes his sins, and yet to claim an interest in God while that disposition remains in him, is worse than satanic impudence. It is an extreme hardening of the heart against all goodness. How many thousands in the church perish and sink to hell under this presumptuous notion, “I am God’s, and God is mine,” when the title is false and the evidence is false! And therefore it is a point that deserves to be examined thoroughly and continually: what are those evidences of grace on which we venture our souls and our salvation?

I will not stay long to press the point, but you see how necessary it is. Consider, therefore, I beg you, what I have said. If God is ours, there will be a separation. Where people own God as their God, there will be a separation from everything that is not his, as well as a gathering to those who are his. The work of God’s Spirit in his children is like fire, which has two properties: it separates all foreign and strange matter, the dross and the like, and it gathers together all the matter that is of one nature. So the work of the Spirit gathers to the soul whatever is good and refines it, and separates whatever is contrary. The Spirit of God, who tells them that they are God’s, is a separating Spirit and a uniting Spirit. He separates contraries, and he unites things of the same nature. There is a joining to what is good and a separating from what is evil.

I will add this further: wherever we can say on good title, “I am God’s,” the soul reflects back and says, “God is mine.” God has put a light of reason and friendship into man. Now, friendship consists in a mutual exchange of duty and gift. Where this is lacking, there is no friendship, no reconciliation, no owning on good terms. The end for which God saves a company of men and brings them to heaven (the body of Christ, which we call the church) is that he may have eternal communion with them in the heavens, as he has with the blessed angels, and, in Christ, a nearer communion than he has with the angels. Now how can this communion be, unless we turn to God, unless we have something to answer God’s love?

Again, note: God is ours because Christ is ours. The covenant is made first with Christ, and then with us. Here we see a ground for the particular application of what we call particular faith: a ground for applying God to us, and Christ to us, by a Spirit of faith, so that God in Christ is my God and your God.

The ground of this is that as God offers himself, we must lay hold of him. But Christ offers God, and he knows how to offer him. He teaches us how God is to be presented, and he presents him as our God and our Father; and therefore let us welcome him as ours. Thus you see a good ground for applying God the Father, and Christ, to us in particular, in two respects. It is not only that each person in particular ought to have a particular faith, and not think a general faith is enough, to believe as the church believes. It is also that he must have a particular faith as to the object, not only as to the subject: that what is offered is his in particular. “I go to my Father and your Father.”

God is the Father and the God of all the elect, and only the elect, and of every one of the elect wholly and entirely, as we say. A thing is said to belong to people wholly and entirely when each one applies the whole of it to himself, without diminishing any part. The sun belongs wholly and entirely to everyone who will make use of it; it shines to enlighten every creature that does not shut its eyes. A common fountain is no one’s in particular, for no one can say, “This is my fountain,” and yet everyone can say, “This is mine.” So every saint can say of God, “He is wholly mine.” Though he were alone, he may say, “God is mine.” If ten thousand have him, yet God is his God. God cares for all as if there were only one, and for one as if there were none but him. God offers himself not only to his whole church, but to every one in particular, and therefore he ought to be laid hold of by every one.

This is founded in all the great points and mysteries of religion. For instance, what is the ground of all the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer? “Our Father.” What interest do we have in all the petitions, and in every article of the Creed? If there is no particular application (“I believe God the Father to be my God, Jesus Christ my Savior, the Holy Spirit my sanctifier; the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting are mine”), we do no more than the devils. Now every truth in Scripture is written for our comfort, and will it be no more comfort to us than to the devils? Does Scripture intend us no more comfort than the devils? Yes, it intends us more. The devil may say, “For the church there is forgiveness of sins, and a God and Savior, but not for me”; and that is his torment, that he cannot come to particulars. So the sacraments are given to seal a particular faith. As each one in particular takes the bread and wine, so by a particular faith each one may say, “Christ is mine; his death is mine; his bloodshed is mine; the forgiveness of sins and an interest in Christ are mine.” The sacrament does not seal a general faith up in the clouds, but a particular assurance that it belongs to each one. And so in the words of the catechism, the minister’s questioning of sinners is intended so that everyone who believes should apply it: “If you believe, you will be saved, and your sins will be forgiven you.” So whether we consider prayer and faith, or the sacraments, or the use of the catechism, they all enforce a particular faith. If we do not have a particular faith, we lose the power of them all.

So it is with the commandments. Suppose no one is named in particular; yet everyone ought to apply them in particular, that he must abstain from such a sin and perform such a duty. If they do so, they will be glorified; if not, they will be punished. And the same reasoning holds in faith as in obedience. A man is condemned by the law, though he is not named in the law, because the general rule is set down there and every man ought to apply it particularly to himself: “I ought not to have done such and such.” So it overturns the purpose of everything if a man does not labor for a particular faith.

To go further: now if I discredit this interest that particular faith has in God’s love and Christ’s love, I lose the comfort of a weak faith where it is true. What condition were the disciples in at this time, when Christ bids Mary go? Had not some of them denied Christ, and had they not all forsaken him? And yet, notwithstanding, “Go tell Peter,” and tell them all, “I go to their Father and their God.” So the interest a soul has in Christ, if it has true faith, though a weak faith joined with many infirmities, is not broken off, as you see by the example of the apostles. And therefore, I beg you, let us comfort ourselves in this. Let us labor for a particular faith, and then labor to maintain our interest, notwithstanding our infirmities and faults, notwithstanding our past sins. Do not let Satan rob us of our claim that God is our God and Father in Christ.

Let us learn from Christ; we cannot have a better pattern. What does Christ do on the cross? He had the sins of all the believing world upon him (and had there been ten thousand times more, it would have been all the same to so infinite a person, the God-man), and he made full satisfaction to God’s justice. But with so much upon him, did that take away his claim to God as his God? It did not; he still said, “My God, my God.” Was it a claim that did him any good? Was it a useful claim? Yes. For it was made good by his resurrection and ascension, and therefore he might well say, “I go to my God and your God.” It is as if he said, “I have overcome the wrath of God due for sin. And therefore, since I, who had all the sins of the world upon me, acknowledged God to be my God, and underwent the burden of God’s wrath, and satisfied for all sin, you may well say, ‘My God.’” We may say it not only from the pattern of Christ, because he did so, but because his doing so is the cause. I may say so now because Christ said so then, for he has fully satisfied his Father, who had laid that burden on him. You, then, who carry the particular burdens of your own sins, and do not carry that other burden, but have a conscience that troubles you: it is for your good, because if you believe, that burden is taken away. But suppose you had the guilt of your own sins and many sins besides, what is that compared with this of Christ, who had the guilt of all sin? And therefore let no guilt keep you from a spirit of faith that says, “My Father, and my God.”

Has Christ ascended to heaven to be a mediator of intercession, to appear before God? For whom? Is it not for sinners? What work would there be in heaven for a mediator if we were not daily sinners? Christ, who has satisfied for sin, bids us, after that satisfaction, to think of God as a Father and to think of his ascension, which was for this very end: to appear before God for us as our High Priest, to make daily peace for us. His blood is of everlasting power. And if Abel’s blood cried for vengeance, the blood of Christ cries for mercy (Heb 12:24). As the appearing of Abel’s blood spoke for vengeance, so the very appearing of Christ speaks enough for mercy to the sinner.

It is a comforting clause in Hosea 2:19, where God says he will marry them in everlasting mercy. So mercy is part of the church’s marriage settlement. God will marry them in mercy. In what mercy? In pardoning mercy, just as the husband is to bear with the wife, the weaker vessel, and not put her away for her infirmities. Will we attribute mercy to men and not to God? Can a friend bear with the infirmities of a friend, and a husband with those of a wife, and cannot Christ bear the infirmities of his spouse? And therefore never think that our infirmities can hinder our claim. You see it did not here: “Go to my Father, and your Father.” We will be driven to make use of this comfort at some time or other, and therefore make use of it now.

But you will say, “This is not comfort for the common sort of Christians.” It is not, and I do not intend it for them. It is the children’s bread, and it must not be thrown to dogs. Therefore those who do not have God for their God, and live in any sin, can lay no claim to him, for they serve another god in their hearts. Their vile courses stand in place of their God, and in their affections are above their God. Therefore let them not think that any promise belongs to them while they continue in that course. Let them think of God as “a consuming fire,” as “everlasting burnings,” while they remain such. Let them think that their peace is like the peace the soul has when the strong man holds everything in possession, when the conscience is speechless and God has given them up to hardness of heart, which is a desperate peace. This comfort belongs to those who are resolved not to live in any sin, who have given themselves up to God, and yet, because of the corruption that remains, are driven to make use of that petition which Christ bids them pray, Forgive us our daily sins.

Use. From this comes this truth: that a Christian may be assured of his salvation in this world. For, first of all, grant that we ought to apply God to ourselves in particular, as he offers himself to us, and that no infirmities or sins hinder this claim. Then what follows, but that a Christian who believes and repents of his sins daily may be assured that he is in a state of grace, because there are grounds for particular application? What seems to weaken that interest, then, does not hinder it at all. And therefore labor by every means to maintain that comforting state of assurance. Its ground is particular application, notwithstanding any sins and infirmities whatsoever. Labor for it because Satan envies it most, and because it is a state in which we honor God most.

I will not go at length into the point, because I have spoken of it on other texts. But as far as concerns the present occasion, we must labor for that without which we cannot go through what God calls us to.

(1) There are many duties and dispositions that God requires which we cannot be in without assurance of salvation on good grounds. What are they? God bids us be thankful in all things. How can I do that unless I know that God is mine and Christ is mine? Can I be thankful for what I doubt and think I ought to doubt? Therefore assurance is a state without which I cannot perform other duties, and in particular the great duty of thankfulness. And what a pitiful state this is, that a man should not be thankful for Christ, or heaven, or the state of another world; that there should be such great matters, and yet people cannot thank God for them.

(2) Again, God commands us to rejoice: “Rejoice, and again I say, rejoice” (Phil 4:4). Can a man rejoice that his name is written in heaven, and not know that his name is written there? The disciples were very weak now; and yet, for all their weaknesses, they loved Christ. They cast themselves on him and had not chosen another Savior. Therefore “rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). But how can a man rejoice who does not know it to be so? By God’s writing of the law in a man’s heart, he may know that his name is written in heaven. Can a man rejoice always if he has no grounds for it?

(3) Again, God requires cheerfulness. “God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9:7), and a cheerful doer. It is the disposition required in everything. “Give me thy heart” (Prov 23:26) in everything you do. Alas! How can I perform cheerful service to God when I doubt whether he is my God and Father or not? Shall I not labor for a heart that yields cheerful obedience? Otherwise does it not come off dead and lifeless? Surely it does.

We ought to comfort ourselves, and how can a man comfort himself in a condition full of uncertainties? No comforts are comfortable without this: that God is our God and our Father. Unless we know this, comforts themselves are not comfortable to us. None of the comforts we have, the comforts of this life, are comforts to us when the soul says, “Perhaps God is feeding me for the slaughter; and perhaps I have these mercies as my portion in this world.” How can a man be comforted when he does not grasp that they flow from a spring of love? Alas! Comforts themselves become uncomfortable. And therefore shall I not labor for that without which I cannot be comforted? Especially since it is for our own good to be of a thankful, cheerful, joyful, and large-hearted disposition.

(4) God requires a disposition in us that we should be full of encouragement and strong in the Lord, and that we should be courageous for his cause in withstanding his enemies and ours. How can there be courage in resisting our corruptions and Satan’s temptations? How can there be courage in suffering persecution and crosses in the world, if we do not have some particular claim of our own on Christ and on God? It cannot be. Unless we mean to refuse obedience to every duty enjoined on us, we must have this assurance, which enters into everything and is the spirit that quickens and enlivens all. Therefore labor for it.

Use 2. Otherwise we shall take away the grounds from which God enforces good duties in Scripture. For he enforces duty from this ground: As elect, see that you put on bowels of compassion (Col 3:12). I beseech you, by the mercies of God, offer yourselves a sacrifice to God (Rom 12:1). “Alas!” you say, “I do not know whether I shall have mercy or not.” Why take away your ground and overthrow your principles? And therefore shall we not labor for that state of soul in which we are fitted to be in that disposition, and to perform duty as God would have us? I therefore beg you, labor for assurance of salvation.

That we may maintain it better, look at its grounds. It does not rest on our perfection, for then where would the poor disciples have been? Alas! They had dealt unfaithfully with Christ. But the ground of firmness is on God’s side; the certainty is on God’s part, not ours. Tell them, “I go to my Father, and my God; and their Father and their God.” Though we make breaches every day, yet God does not break, as in Malachi 3:6: “Verily, I the Lord am not changeable; and therefore you are not consumed.” We change, ebb and flow, go to and fro, up and down every day, varying in our dispositions. Though there is always some root and seed of grace in us, yet there is a change in our dispositions every day; but it holds on God’s part.

And therefore Christ names no qualification in them to build comfort on. Rather, “my God and your God” will still maintain the relation of a Father to you who have not dealt as you should, and maintain the relation of a God notwithstanding your fall. So we do not rest our assurance on anything on our part, but on God’s love. “Whom he loveth, he loveth to the end” (John 13:1). Our God loves us unchangeably, and in him there is not so much as a shadow of change. And therefore in the last chapter of Hebrews it is called an “everlasting covenant”: “The God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant” (Heb 13:20). By the blood of Christ there is an everlasting covenant. God will be our God to death, and in death, and forever. For this relationship, being on God’s part, extends from forgiveness of sins to life everlasting. It lasts always. The blood of Christ is the blood of an everlasting covenant. “I will marry thee to me for ever” (Hos 2:19). It holds sure on God’s part.

Let us labor to maintain this assurance of salvation from God’s love.

Use 3. But for our comfort, we must do our parts too, though it begins with God. It begins on God’s part. He loves us first and embraces us first, and we must love him in return and embrace him in return. We must ask God for grace to answer the relationship. Therefore I will prescribe some rules for how we may say with comfort, “God is our God.” We may have the comfort of it by making good our claim on him: by making it good that we are sons, as well as calling him Father; that we are his people, as well as calling him our God; that we are his spouse, as well as calling him our husband. And because this comes from God, join this prayer with all our endeavors: “Lord, you must begin. I desire to show myself as a spouse to you, but you must reveal yourself to me. I desire to love you, but reveal your love first; all I can do is only a reflection. You must shine on me first.” So ask God to reveal himself more and more in Christ Jesus, and then we cannot help but carry ourselves toward him as we should in our relationship.

This day we must perform the relationship on our side. There are two words that go into this heavenly bargain; the covenant consists of two parts. Now ask God, by his grace, to enable us to do our part, for he does both. And ask him, according to his promise, to teach us to love him, and “to write his law in our hearts” (Jer 31:33), to do what is good, to circumcise our hearts, and to give his Holy Spirit. We ask no more than he has promised, and so we may go to him boldly: “Lord, you have made a covenant with us; we cannot keep it without you. You have not only promised grace and gifts; the grace to perform the covenant on our part must also come from you.” And this God will do. Therefore wait on him in the use of the means; and as we look to him, we shall have grace to do our part, and then to maintain this assurance, without which we cannot live as Christians should live.

That we may further maintain this relationship, that God is our God, let us labor to get into Christ, for it is in him that God is our Father; and let us labor to grow up in Christ, to grow more and more, to grow up in faith and in all grace.

A gracious Christian never lacks proofs of his assurance of salvation. It is the dead-hearted Christian, the careless Christian, who lacks them. Therefore labor not only to be in Christ, but also to grow up in the knowledge of Christ.

And so, to know God in Christ, labor to see the face of God in Christ; for in him are all the beams of his love. As the beams of the sun are gathered in a glass, so the beams of all God’s love meet in Christ. So lovely is God in Christ! Whatever we have in Christ is from God in Christ, and whatever we have from God comes through Christ. Therefore grow in the knowledge of Christ and in faith in Christ. To this end are the sacraments given, that we might grow up in him and be fed into Christ. And then we may make right use of the sacrament as the ordinance God has sanctified for this end.

And as God takes us out and sets a stamp on us, so labor to make choice of God more and more, and choice of God in Christ, for these are the two objects of our faith and love. Choose God for our God: esteem him above all, renounce all others, and resign ourselves wholly to him; for all is ours when God is ours. He sets us apart from other men (taking us out) and appropriates us to himself, choosing us for his jewels. I beg you, labor daily to choose God to be your God. If we say we are God’s, let us make choice of him at the same time and appropriate him by our choice: “He is mine in particular.” There is a renunciation of all others: “I have served other gods before now; the world, and the flesh, and the favor of man have been my god, but they shall be my god no more.” If we do not choose him and appropriate him as ours, renounce all others, and give ourselves to him, we cannot say he is “our God.” This we should practice every day.

When sin solicits us, or when we are tempted to despair because of sin, make use of this choice, appropriation, and resignation. If we are tempted to any sin, let us say: “Why, I am not my own; I am God’s. I have chosen him to be my God; I have appropriated myself to him; I have renounced all others; I have offered myself to him. Therefore what do I have to do with sin, with this temptation? I have taken the sacrament on it, that God is mine and Christ is mine, with all his benefits.” Therefore if there is any solicitation to sin, make this use of it; and so we shall grow in assurance of our claim on God, when we can make use of it on all occasions.

If we are moved to any sin, by Satan or by our own flesh, which is a devil within us, we can say: “This is contrary to my covenant; this is contrary to the renewing of the covenant, so often renewed in the sacrament; and therefore I will not commit it. It is contrary to the state I am advanced to, and contrary to my relationship. God is my Father and my God, and therefore I must be his; and what do I have to do with sin?” What has pride to do with a heart bequeathed to God? What have lust and filthiness to do with it? What has injustice, or anything else that is sinful, to do in a heart that has dedicated and consecrated itself to God, who has given up himself and all he can do, and to whom we have given up all we have? And shall we give our strength to sin and Satan, his enemies?

Thus we should grow in assurance, exercising and increasing the knowledge of our claim. I beg you, therefore, let us use these and similar means to make God our God. And if temptation to sin is joined with temptation to despair (for as Satan cannot help soliciting us to sin, so when we have sinned he labors to tempt us to despair because of sin, and these are the two ways by which Satan prevails), then fetch comfort against both from this: “God is my God and my Father.” Christ teaches them to call him so; and therefore, notwithstanding sin, I may go to God and call him Father. The disciples, though their sin was great, were still, upon their humbling, to acknowledge God to be their Father and their God. And therefore answer Satan: “I ought not to abuse, break off, and deny my claim on God as my Father and my God for any sin, because the disciples did not do so; and Christ has taught how to make use of God, and to acknowledge him for my comfort.” We cannot have a better guide than God; and therefore never think of God except as “our God and our Father,” and labor to answer all Satan’s temptations of that kind from this.

Use 4. Again, this assurance that God is our God in Christ, and our Father, is wrought by the sealing of the Spirit and his sanctifying of us; therefore take heed that we do not grieve the Spirit of God. God’s Spirit often moves our hearts in hearing the word, or reading, or praying, when we have any good stirrings, or when we welcome them. And therefore do not grieve the Spirit of God, whose office is “to seal us to the day of redemption” (Eph 4:30), to assure us that God is our God and our Father in Christ. Do not grieve him, lest he grieve us by racking and tormenting our consciences. That is the way to maintain our claim. Take heed of crossing the Spirit, especially by any sin against conscience. Conscience is God’s deputy. Do not grieve the Spirit. Do not grieve conscience, for conscience is God’s representative; it is a little god within us. And therefore, if we would not drive away from us God, to whom we have given ourselves if we are true believers, let us do nothing against his deputy and agent, the Spirit that sanctifies us and seals us to the day of redemption.

This is the way to maintain assurance that God is our God. For men may be led by a spirit of presumption and say, “God is my God.” But if conscience tells them that they live in sin against conscience and against the stirrings of the Spirit, and that they suppress them and kill them, like births they would not let grow in their hearts, then they cannot say, “God is my God”; conscience tells them they lie. And therefore, I beg you, labor for a holy life. The faith that makes this claim, that God is my Father and my God, is a purifying faith (1 John 3:3). It is a faith that quickens the soul, a purifying faith, a cleansing faith. Faith is wonderfully active, especially when it has these promises. What promises? I will be your God and your Father. “Having such promises, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, and grow up in all holiness in the fear of the Lord” (2 Cor 7:1). And therefore labor for the faith that lays hold on this privilege, that God is our Father and our God. Make it good by this: that it is a purifying faith, an active faith, a faith that works by love and shows itself in our way of life. The more we labor and grow in this way, the more we grow in assurance of salvation.

Beloved, favor with great persons cannot be maintained without much effort, respect, and keeping one’s proper distance. A man who would keep the favor of great persons must know their dispositions well, must know how to please them, and must pay them every deference and respect. And shall we think, then, to preserve our standing with God without much effort and holiness? It cannot be. “And therefore give all diligence” (not a little) “to make your calling and election sure” (2 Pet 1:10). It requires all diligence; it is worth your pains. We live on this, that he is our God and will be our God to death and in death, forever and ever. That God is our God to everlasting means that he is of equal extent with the soul: he lives to fill it and make it happy, our souls being of eternal existence. Therefore it greatly concerns us “to give all diligence to make our calling and election sure,” or else it will not be maintained.

Why do Christians not enjoy the comfort of this, that God is their God in Christ, more than they do? The reason is that they are negligent in maintaining fellowship between God and themselves. We must know our distances; there must be reverent behavior toward God (Ps 2:11). A loose Christian can never enjoy the comforts of God. He is so great and we so lowly that we ought to reverence him; we ought to “love him with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Ps 2:11). Humble yourself to walk with your God. Where there is a great deal of humility, it maintains friendship. Otherwise we cannot walk with God as a friend, as Abraham is said to have been God’s friend. We must acknowledge ourselves to be “dust and ashes,” knowing him in his greatness and ourselves in our lowliness, if he is to keep this assured to our hearts, that God is our God. If we are careful to maintain this, surely he who delights in the prosperity of his servants will delight to make himself more and more known to us, so that we may be assured of our salvation.

All who hear me are either such as have not yet made choice of God to be their God, or such as have made that choice. Let me speak a word to both. For there are many who still have their choice to make, who have other lords and other gods to rule over them. Let them consider what a fearful state it is not to be able to say, with respect to life everlasting, “God is my God and my Father.” They can say they are God’s creatures; but what a fearful condition it is not to be able to say, “God is my Father.” Do they not know that to whomever he is not a God in favor, he will be a God in vengeance? He must be a friend or an enemy. There is no third way with God. God and the devil divide all mankind; they share it all. If you are not God’s, and cannot say so on good title, you are the devil’s.

Yet God is daily pulling men out of the kingdom of the devil by opening their eyes to see their miserable condition; yet all come under these two grand titles, God’s and the devil’s. If you cannot say that God is your God, then the devil is your god. And what a fearful condition it is to be under the god of the world through a worldly, carnal disposition! And perhaps you may die so, if you are not careful to get out of it. If God is not our God, he is our enemy; and then creatures, angels, and devils are against us, conscience is against us, the word is against us. If he is for us, who is against us? If he is against us, who is for us? It is a terrible condition; and therefore get out of it, I beg you.

“But what shall I do? Is there mercy for such a wretch?” Yes, he offers himself to be your God if you will come in. What does our ministry, the word of grace, serve for, but to preach life to all repentant sinners? “He that confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall have mercy” (Prov 28:13). And therefore God has ordained ambassadors of peace to proclaim peace if you will come in. He entreats you to come in, and he charges and commands you. You are rebels, not only against him, but enemies to your own souls, if you do not. And therefore I beg you to come in, if you have not yet come in.

Add this further: you are sacrilegious persons if you are not Christians in earnest. Have you not given yourselves to God in baptism? And have you not in your lives given yourselves to lusts that you renounced at your baptism? Now you have alienated yourselves from God, to whom you were dedicated. Did you not bind yourselves to God in your baptism? And is he not willing to receive you? He thought of you when you could not think of yourselves. And therefore, as this binds you over to greater punishment if you will not come in but continue as sacrilegious persons, withholding yourselves from God, to whom you have dedicated yourselves, so God goes before you with mercy.

He encourages you, by the seal of election in baptism, to make it good by faith, without which it will do no good, being only a seal set to a blank. How many encouragements, then, do you have to come in? Take God’s gracious offer. He gives you time. Make your peace. It is nothing but willful rebellion to stand out against God.

As for those who have given themselves to God and have now renewed their claim on him by the sacraments, let them consider what a word of comfort they have in this, that Christ is theirs and God is theirs. What an ocean of comforts it is, when all things leave you (as all things will), that we still have God, who will be a God forevermore! At the time of death, what comfort it will be to say, “God is mine; Christ is mine. Life is mine no longer; the world is mine no longer; friends forsake me; but I have a claim on God, and have made a covenant with God, who is a God forever. The covenant I have made is an ‘everlasting covenant.’” The comfort is of such largeness that the angels themselves wonder at it, the devils envy it, and it is a matter of glory and praise in heaven forever.

Therefore make much of such a privilege, which is the envy of devils, the wonder of angels, the joy of a Christian’s heart here, and matter for glorifying God forever, world without end. That God in Christ has become his God here and forever is a ravishing thought. It is larger than our hearts. Here are comforts larger than the capacity of our hearts. Our hearts ought all to lie open to divine things, for they have more in them than the heart can contain. If we will shut our hearts, let us shut them to worldly things. Oh, the comfort of a Christian who has made his state sure! Let him glory in the Lord.

There are three degrees of glorying in all. Let him glory in hope of glory, glory in afflictions, and glory in God; that is, we glory in God as being our God. In the sharing and dividing of all things, God has given himself to us. And what an offer this is! When God divides this world among the children of men, it is, “You shall have this and that, but you shall not have me.” But to his children he has given himself, and he has nothing better to give; and indeed nothing else is needed, for there is more in it than we can speak. But that, when God divides all things, he should give such a share as himself: is not this a glory, that a poor creature should have God to be his, and all that God has to be his, to make use of in life and in death? It is worth all the world. It is worth our endeavors “to make our calling and election sure” (2 Pet 1:10), when we may have this comfort from it.