2 Corinthians 13:14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen. 1. If a man has been to visit his friend, and you see him leaving the gate, it is pleasant to notice in his hand a basket of fruit or a bunch of flowers. It would be very embarrassing, however, if the proof of friendship were always an outward gift. If a friend visits us, we place ourselves at his disposal; and if we visit a friend, we are delighted to receive the overflow of his life into our own. Now suppose under the old law a man had offered a lamb in sacrifice to God, and had found that his flocks did not increase according to his hope, and had then said, "I will offer Him no more lambs." Might we not next suppose a wise friend saying to him, "God has done this to try your love. If you loved God, you would offer Him even the last lamb, feeling that it is better to have the heavenly Friend than to have only His property." God invites us to His presence, and desires that we should have great pleasure in coming to see Him; and it is very certain that if we have come in the true friendly temper, we shall go away, taking something in our hearts, though nothing in our hands. No man that rejoices in God's grace complains much of God's providence. 2. Now, when we come to church God entertains us and sends us sway with a benediction. It is the benediction of the Church also; i.e., the Church desires that God may grant its members His blessing, and expresses its faith that He will. We will render the text, "May your faith, hope, and love be replenished." We come in different states. (1). There are persons who come in quest of truth. Suppose, then, in the sacred service something is said which the heart feels is sure. The heart cries out to itself gladly, "Whatever is doubtful, that is true." Then the man has received a gift. (2) There are others that believe, and yet are confounded. Well, suppose a person very tired in body and soul, almost hopeless, and something is said that excites hope. In the springtime the effect of the shower is perceived within a few minutes of its fall; and there is that in the soul a thirst for God that causes the season of drought to be indeed a springtime when once the shower descends. Hope enters this weary breast, and is not hope a gift? (3) Then there are persons, not without belief or hope, that still yearn for sympathy. Now if the spirit of truth breathe itself forth as love, and the heart is comforted by love, then, too, it has received a gift. (4) Faith, hope, love! Need we so distinguish them? No. You can never believe a little more, without beginning to hope too, and without feeling the glow of affection. When either of these three become prominent the two others are seen beside it as in shadow; and sometimes they take sisterly hands, and with a common brightness appear as equals. These three states of our spirit are an equivalent expression for the blessing uttered in the words of our text. Let me show this. I. "THE GRACE OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST." 1. Recollect instances in which our Lord showed grace. When He had been speaking amongst His own townspeople "they wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth"; such sincere and kind words no one had ever heard before. A leper said to Him, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." Jesus touched him; what nature loathes grace can love. On another occasion the only son of his mother was being carried forth to the grave. Jesus laid His hand upon the bier. Was this presumptuous handling? No; this was the hand of grace. The young man arose, and his mother received him by the hand of God's grace. We remember how our Saviour said, "Sin no more," and yet pronounced no word of doom for the sin that had been committed. His life abounded with gracious words, cures, and pardons, that showed the tender, compassionate favour with which He regarded us all in our weakness, sorrow, and sins. This is grace. Through such grace love makes us believe in it. 2. Now we might say, why not place the love of God first? Which is first, the door or the house? If God has a great mansion of love, He must provide a door to it, or we shall never get in. Grace is the door into love. Love is greater than any one of its own acts. There is more in a mother's love than there is in her gentle touch. There is more in the father's love than there is in his gift to his child on its birthday. In like manner, the love of God is more than any of His acts, more even than His grace — its own chief and most expressive instance; and why are we introduced through the grace into the love, but that we may trust that love and trust it always. So we may apply the Baptist's words, "He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for He was before me." Grace wins our faith, and then through its trust we have a love of our own which responds to the great general love of God. That which "comes after" our faith, then, is love, which, though coming after it, is "preferred before it," for "it was before it." II. THE LOVE OF GOD. Assume, now, that we have faith; what is our state? I have seen a little child perplexed at losing on Hampstead Heath — not a very great and terrible wilderness — her sister, and crying because sister was a few paces off concealed by a bush. So it may be with our feeble heart; for in our times of loneliness we are all children, and we cry out for God, "Where is He?" Now, "the grace of God" is His answer to our cry. God says to the lost world, "Here I am." When we have found Christ, then we have found God; we have found our Father; we now rest in our faith. But what have we found our Father for? If the child has found its sister or its mother, they will go away together home, and there will be many a happy work of affection then. If a man has found God as his Father through Jesus Christ, then that man is introduced into all the length and breadth of human participation in Divine benefits. The love of God will be bountifully manifested in all that he learns and all that he does. Out of this faith, then, will spring a hope. He cannot be received into union with God without continuing united in such a sense that he will constantly look onward with hope, feeling that all is right, that here and hereafter all necessary instructions and blessings will be given. III. "THE COMMUNION OF THE HOLY GHOST." If God's grace in Christ is trusted, and God's love, so broadly revealed in Christ, is hoped in, then we receive into ourselves a life which leads us on by progression towards all the fulness that is in God. God, through Christ, breathes into us His Spirit; this we receive, not alone, but conjointly one with another. God, through Christ, begins by imparting to our heart faith in His grace, and hope through His grace in all His goodness; and knowing and hoping in that; we abide in His love. Christ gives us His gracious Spirit, and all the onward motions of the leading Spirit are in harmony with the "grace of God." The communion of the Holy Ghost is, in other words, the sharing of a common life of sacred love by which we feel brotherhood with one another, and by which we progress onward led by our purified inward motives, and traversing according to our ability the length and breadth of that kingdom of affairs which God has given to exercise and to enrich us. Such is the communion of the Holy Ghost; the fellowship of love, in a hope reposed on God, through faith created and nourished by His grace. (T. T. Lynch.) Parallel Verses KJV: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen. |
    |