Acts 3:26 To you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. I. THE WORK IS NOT DESCRIBED ONLY AS CHRIST'S, BUT RATHER AS GOD'S WORK IN CHRIST. We are too ready to make a difference; to think of God as all justice, and of Christ as all love. In past days men had used a loose and unscriptural language about Christ's calming God's wrath. The language of Scripture is always this: "God so loved the world," etc. What things soever the Son doeth, these also doeth the Father likewise. There is but one will, one work. Never run away from God, but ever seek Him and see Him in the Son. II. CHRIST HAS A MISSION TO US. There is no thought more delightful than that of the mission of Christ as He now is in heaven; of His having an errand, and apostleship still towards us (Hebrews 3:1). We are all called to from heaven: that is the meaning of "partakers of a heavenly calling." We are all like Saul of Tarsus when Jesus Christ spoke to him suddenly from heaven. Christ is calling to us. In His Word, by His minister, in conscience, by His Spirit also. And then, as we recognise this truth, we are told also to fix our thoughts upon Him as "the apostle of our profession" (or confession). God has sent, is sending, Him to us, with a message, addressed to each one of us separately, "every one of you," not a vague, general, promiscuous mission, but a direct and single one to each. You are not lost in a crowd. If this be so, "how shall we escape if we neglect so great," because so minute and so personal, "a salvation?" III. A MISSION OF WHAT SORT? Is it that of One who comes from the dead to appal and to terrify? the apparition of a reprover and a prophet of evil? Hear the text: "to bless you"; to speak well of you; to declare good to you; and in the very act of doing so, to communicate the good of which He tells. Is not this the very notion of a Gospel? It is not a threatening, a reproof, it is not even a condition of acceptance, or a rule of duty: it does not say, like the Law, "Do this, and thou shalt live": its essential character is that of an announcement; tidings of something already done; the good news of some change which God has made in our state and in our prospects. And what is that? Surely that God forgives us, whatsoever we are. God sent Him not to curse, but to bless; not to judge the world, but to save. IV. How is THIS MISSION OF BLESSING MADE EFFECTUAL? 1. Is it a flattering of human vanity, a lulling of human indolence, the intelligence that God has forgiven, and that therefore man may lie asleep in his sins that, where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, and that therefore we may continue in sin if only to swell the triumphs of Divine grace? None of these things. "Sent Him to bless you, in turning away each one of you from his iniquities." 2. Does this description of Christ's work seem to militate against the former? Does any one say, Then, after all, the gospel is a law: it is only the old story once again, You must be holy, and then God will save? Oh the ignorance and the hardness of these hearts of ours! Is there no difference between working for forgiveness and working from forgiveness, between being holy because we are loved, and being holy that we may be loved, between the being commanded to turn ourselves from our sins, and the being blessed by finding ourselves turned from them by another? Your hearts tell you that there is all the difference! Which of us knows not something of the force of gratitude? Which of us has not felt that it is one thing to please a person as a duty, and another to please a person out of love? Which of us has not known the strange effect of a word or an act of affection, from one whom we are conscious that we have injured? how it sometimes rolls away the whole barrier between us, makes us ashamed of our ill-temper, and heaps coals of fire upon our head? Even thus is it with the man whom God has forgiven. How did David begin to inquire, "What reward can I give unto the Lord for all His benefits that He hath done unto me?" and answer himself, saying, "I will receive the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord": yea, I will love much, having been much forgiven! 3. But there may be some here present who cannot understand the connection of the words. They may be saying, I know that my sins are wrong; and I can understand being required to part with them: but how can it be a blessing to give up this pleasant thing which sin is to me? But does your sin make you happy? Have you found the pleasure of sinning as great as its anticipation? Have you found the morning after sinning a bright and pleasant awakening? Have you never known what it was to curse the fetter which bound you, and to long (even without hoping) to be free? Have you not sometimes looked back upon a past and now unattractive sin with bitter remorse, with astonishment at your own infatuation? Then that experience has shown you what it would be to look back upon a life of sin, from a world where it will be too late ever to repent. A thing which has all these marks of misery upon it cannot be happiness. If there is any power or any person, in earth or in heaven, who can set us free from this influence, the coming of that power or that person may indeed be said to be a blessing. Cost us what it may, it will be a blessing if it succeeds. And when that victory is wrought wholly through the power of love; through an assurance of free forgiveness; through the agency of an inward influence as sweet as it is constraining; how much more may it be so regarded! God grant that each one of us may know it for ourselves! (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. |
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