A Sermon by Rev Donald MacLean
2 Corinthians 11:2. For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
False apostles had crept into the Corinthian Church; they were exhibiting another spirit and preaching another gospel. The Apostle was jealous over the Church with godly jealousy – a jealousy such as might be seen in God Himself. We all know that jealousy has a bad aspect, when one is jealous of another because they have better possessions or a better position than oneself. But there is jealousy that springs from the love of God; He Himself declares He will not suffer His people to have idols of any kind; and that is the jealousy that Paul was speaking of here. It was the jealousy, the zeal, that springs from love to God, and from love to the Church in Corinth. We see how he emphasises this very principle when he speaks of spiritual espousal to one husband: no one can share it but Christ and the soul who is espoused to the Divine Redeemer.
I would like to make a few remarks about (1) the espousal between Christ and His people, and it is a spiritual espousal; (2) the place the Apostle had in connection with this espousal, “I have espoused you”; (3) the purpose of this espousal and how it comes about that there should be godly jealousy in the heart of the Apostle; their espousal leads to them being presented as a chaste virgin to Christ.
1. The espousal between Christ and His people. Christ is brought before us here as the bridegroom, or husband, of the Church of God. John the Baptist saw the Saviour in this light: “He that hath the bride is the bridegroom”. Surely it should be a great wonder to us, if we have any understanding of who God is – of the three persons within the Godhead: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; of their complete, eternal satisfaction in their communion with one another – to think that the Son of God could possibly have a bride. Yet the Scriptures reveal that the Son of God will have a bride throughout eternity.
This bride is the choice of God the everlasting Father. He is the One who, in the covenant of grace, chose a bride for His beloved Son, for Him who is the brightness of His glory, the express image of His person, the same in substance with Himself and equal in power and glory. Where will a bride be found who is worthy of such a glorious Person, who is loved by the everlasting Father in such a glorious way? We would expect the bride to be of
1A sermon preached in Glasgow on 21 March 1982.
great beauty, altogether worthy of Him, and to be able to share the fullness of His divine love. Yet the Scriptures reveal that the angels were passed over; the bride of Christ is not to be found among these great powers and principalities who serve God in love. The bride was not found there; the choice of the Father did not fall upon any angel; His choice fell on the lost, ruined, hell-deserving, children of men.
If ever a ray of light has entered your mind to show you the love of the Father to the Son – if you have ever understood, even in a little measure, the words on the Mount of transfiguration, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” – it must be a great wonder to you that the Father would choose a bride that had no beauty, one that did not bear the image of God but bore the image of that old serpent the devil, one laden with iniquity, defiled by sin, a child of wrath even as others.
The second wonder is that the Son of God accepted such a bride. There was a kinsmen nearer to Ruth than Boaz, and the matter of who was to marry Ruth was brought up at the gate of the city. What did the nearer kinsman say? He rejected Ruth! Why? Because his inheritance would be defiled by a Moabite. What about the Son of God? Will His inheritance, who is heir of all things, not be defiled by taking such a bride to Himself? Will He not turn away? Here is the wonder: He said, “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me”. He loved her and chose her to be His bride, sinful, lost, ruined and hell-deserving though she was. He could say of her: “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love”. Thus the will of the Father and of the Son are united in choosing this bride. She had no spiritual beauty. She was altogether as an unclean thing, and she came to learn that all her righteousnesses were as filthy rags, that her iniquities like the wind had carried her away. Yet He loved her as His bride. He did not spurn her in spite of all her sins. It was to be said: “This Man receiveth sinners and eateth with them”.
Then, although this bride was the gift of the Father to His beloved Son, there was a sense in which He would need to pay the purchase price before this gift could become His possession. Those loved with an everlasting love were in the prison of divine justice. That is where you are this Sabbath morning, Christless soul. Very few will tell you that, but the Word of God says, “The Scripture hath concluded all under sin” – that is, Scripture has shut up the whole human family in the prison of divine justice. Therefore, before this bride could become Christ’s, it was absolutely necessary that He pay the ransom that divine justice required Him to pay. This was further evidence of His love to her: His willingness to pay the ransom. That ransom price was paid in the only coin that divine justice could receive; it was a blood-shedding death. This Person must die in the place of the guilty.
But how could the Son of God die? In Him is the fountain of life; He must therefore take to Himself what could die. That was the holy humanity conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, which He took into union with His Divine Person, becoming Immanuel – God with us – the great Bridegroom of the Church, who is fairer than the sons of men. Of Him the Church said, “My Beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand”. This is the person brought before us here, the Lord Jesus Christ.
He undertook in love to His bride, and to the glory of His Father, to pay the ransom price. Calvary points to the death of the Bridegroom, in the place of the guilty, for the redemption of His people. All the sufferings and anguish bound up with Calvary’s tree are all bound up also with the sword of divine justice dealing with the humanity of the Saviour. One of the striking, solemn things about Calvary’s tree is: never did death come nearer the divine nature than when it pierced the humanity of the Son of God, when “He was wounded for our transgressions”, when “He was bruised for our iniquities, [and] the chastisement of our peace was upon Him”. Concerning this solemn occasion, Christ said, “Father, the hour is come”.
“Walk in love”, says Paul to the Church in Ephesus, “as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling saviour.” This divine sacrifice of this divine Person, in His holy humanity on the tree, was what satisfied the claims of law and justice. The way was now opened, consistently with the glory of God, for Christ to claim His bride.
2. How this is done. Surely this should be a question of great importance to you here this Sabbath day: Has Christ claimed you, so that you became His spouse? Or are you under the gospel and Christ has never come to claim you? Has Christ never come to lay hold on your soul, so that you might be espoused to Him? Surely that should be a matter of great concern when this glorious, divine Bridegroom – who died and rose again and is now at God’s right hand – is the One who claims His bride. And He knows every member that belongs to His bride.
The Apostle brings before us the fact that he had his own part in the espousal of the souls in Corinth who belonged to the bride of Christ. In fact, he uses quite strong language: “I have espoused you to one husband”. In every generation, when Christ claims His bride, He sends forth the friends of the bridegroom. Paul was a friend of Christ in this sense: he was one who was to prepare the bride, to bring her to the place of espousal. These friends of the bridegroom are in the true apostolic succession – not the apostolic succession of the Church of Rome, which is a figment of the imagination – but the apostolic succession of those who are called at Christ’s command
into the ministry of the everlasting gospel. They have in view souls being espoused to Christ through preaching the gospel.
This points to the fact that, when Christ has a purpose to espouse souls to Himself, He sets up the ministry of the gospel in the world. In that sense it would be true to say that Christ has indeed sent for every one of you. He has sent for you by the call of the everlasting gospel, as Abraham’s servant said to Rebekah: “Wilt thou go with this man?” Wilt thou have Christ as thy bridegroom? Wilt thou go with the Son of man, who is the Son of God and the Bridegroom of the Church of God? That is what Paul was doing. He uses another expression: “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God”.
It is clear that the preaching of the gospel by the friends of Christ is not in itself sufficient to bring the soul to a spiritual espousal; the gospel must be accompanied by the power of the Holy Ghost so that, as was said to the Church in Thessalonica, the “gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance”. Thus when Christ is to espouse a soul to Himself, there will be no meeting between the soul and Christ apart from the Holy Spirit – although the gospel is the meeting place. Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit there will be no union to Christ; there will be no espousal to Him. Therefore, when Paul says, “I have espoused you”, he also remembers that he may plant and Apollos may water, but it is God that gives the increase. It is beyond the power of man to espouse a soul to Christ; it is the power of the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Godhead, that alone is able to apply the redemption purchased by Christ in the spiritual espousal.
A leper came to the Saviour and said, “Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean”; Christ’s answer was, “I will; be thou clean”. The Saviour’s willingness to be espoused is revealed in the gospel of the grace of God, and what is needed is that the will of the sinner should be made willing to be espoused to Christ. That is what the Saviour said: “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life”. But what else? “And ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life”. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” He said, “how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.”
There can be no espousal without the sinner being made willing in a day of God’s power. Christ will not have an unwilling bride. Even if your sins are more than can be numbered – more than those of Manasseh, King of Judah, who made the streets of Jerusalem run with the blood of saints – that will not prevent Christ receiving you, but He will not have an unwilling soul. If the soul is to be made willing, the Holy Spirit must convince him of his
sins. By nature we are dead in trespasses and sins; even under the sound of the gospel we have a very high opinion of ourselves. We think it would be quite wrong for God to send us to hell with the devil and his angels – to number us with the drug dealers and the immoral. Because we have not been convinced of sin we think it would be quite wrong.
In making the soul willing, there must be what we read in Hosea: “I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness”. To be made conscious of sin – my sins, mine iniquities – is part of being brought to Christ. It is to say with David, from the very heart: “My sin I ever see”. And this will make this world a wilderness to that soul. This will be before his conscience day and night: my sin and the impossibility of removing my sin from before the presence of God and my conscience.
Generally speaking, when a sinner is awakened to a sense of his sins, he tries to remove his sins by weeping over them and by turning over a new leaf. The man who did not read his Bible now begins to do so; he who did not go to church on Sabbath now does so; he who did not keep the Sabbath Day holy now does so. This reformation is taking place under the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. What is behind it all? O if I could remove my sins by works of righteousness; if I could make myself more acceptable to Christ; then Christ will have me. It is all a delusion! The Holy Spirit will not leave the soul that is to be espoused to Christ without bringing him to see his sin.
Now he comes to see something else: to behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. This truth is brought into his soul by the preaching of the everlasting gospel. He understands that Christ is the Son of God, the Saviour of the lost and the undone, the One who died in order that sinners might live – whose blood was shed in order that they might be cleansed, that they might be saved with an everlasting salvation. The soul that is conscious of this now desires Christ, longs for salvation, and is praying for it. He is saying, “Upon the name of God the Lord then did I call and say, Deliver Thou my soul, O Lord, I do Thee humbly pray”.
But they come to believe very firmly that Christ will never receive them because they discover that they are such great sinners, so vile and hell-deserving. Is that your question here this morning: Will Christ have me? Who are you? I am a sinner, vile, hell-deserving, undone. Will Christ have such a sinner? Here is His answer: “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out”. Put down every reason why Christ should not receive you, and to every such reason Christ says, “I will in no wise cast out”. Therefore the sinner comes to see that Christ is for sinners; that Christ is altogether suitable as a Saviour for sinners; that He is the One whom the soul desires. And in the everlasting gospel, the soul embraces Christ in the exercise of faith.
That is what faith is: an embracing of Christ. Or, since we have been speaking about the will, faith is the willingness of the will to have Christ. We may explain faith here Sabbath after Sabbath; yet the unregenerate man will never understand it. But do not get confused over what faith is; it is a warm receiving of Christ; it is the willingness of the will to have Christ on His terms. What happens is this: the will of the Saviour is willing to receive the sinner, and the will of the sinner is willing to receive Christ.
There you have the spiritual espousal in connection with the preaching of the everlasting gospel, the reading of the Word of God, and meditating on it. The soul is espoused to Christ for time and for eternity. The soul is asked, “Wilt thou go with this man?” And the soul says, “I will go”. Isaac was far away in the tents of Abraham but, as far as Rebekah was concerned, she was espoused to Isaac in her heart the moment she said, “I will go”. Thus when the gospel says to the soul, Wilt thou have Christ as thy bridegroom? and the soul says, I will, then that soul is espoused to Christ for time and for eternity. Their sins, which are many, are forgiven them; they are clothed in the righteousness of Christ; they are brought to have peace with God; and now they are journeying on from the place of espousal, through the wilderness of this world, to be presented at last before the throne of God.
3. What the Apostle has in view. He knew that if sinners were espoused to Christ, they would be kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation. But it was his duty as a friend of the Bridegroom to present the bride eventually to the Husband. It was his duty to ensure that, as she journeyed through the wilderness of this world, with all its dangers, she would not be caught in its snares. “I am jealous over you with godly jealousy”. In the day of her espousal her language about her Husband was:
“Whom have I in the heavens high but Thee, O Lord, alone?
And in the earth whom I desire besides Thee there is none.”
There was but one Husband, one who was the object of the love of the soul thus espoused to Him. Paul was concerned that she would be kept. That is the meaning of chaste virgin here; the virgin that turns aside becomes unchaste. He used this strong expression: “present you as a chaste virgin to Christ”.
Paul uses an example which ought to impress us: “as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety”. He refers to Eve in all her beauty, created by God without sin and espoused to Adam, married to Adam. She had all the beauty of innocence, of holiness, of righteousness, and of the knowledge she had from God, and yet she was beguiled. Her heart was taken away from God and from the word of God by the subtlety of that old serpent the devil, even when she was in the garden of Eden, married to a man who was holy. She herself was holy; the whole bias of her soul was towards holiness; she knew God
as the God of consummate holiness and of love. She had all that knowledge; yet she was beguiled.
Now what about the soul espoused to Christ, in whom there is grace but also a great lump of corruption – indwelling sin – in the heart? That sin will never depart until the soul is made perfect in holiness at death. Surely, if we are espoused to Christ, we must be careful not to be beguiled by the same devil who beguiled Eve, when we have in our hearts so much that Satan can work upon: the body of sin and death. That is what Paul is concerned about here: lest they should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Paul was jealous for Christ’s honour and glory, and he was jealous for those in Corinth who were in danger of being beguiled. This was not because he was narrow-minded and bigoted but because of godly jealousy, which is almost unknown in our generation. They do not even begin to understand the principle involved in the protection of the Church, as shown in Paul’s godly jealousy. He was concerned about the beguiling activities of false apostles, “deceitful workers transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ”. “No marvel,” he says, “for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness.” He is concerned that, just as Eve was beguiled from the simplicity of the word of God, so the people in Corinth might be beguiled from the simplicity that is in Christ. “By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.”
Christ is the bridegroom and, as such, He demands, and ought to have, the love of the heart. Where that is, there is love to the truth. The danger they were exposed to was that they might receive another spirit or another gospel through someone preaching another Jesus; that was the method being taken to beguile them away from the simplicity that is in Christ. And Paul was jealous over them with a godly jealousy because of this. How could he present them as chaste virgins to Christ if they were unfaithful to Him, if they were going to swallow another gospel or another Spirit or another Jesus set forth by these men who were claiming to be apostles and claiming to preach the gospel better than Paul did? At the back of it all was a desire to bring people away from the simplicity that is in Christ. Paul was concerned; he had a godly jealousy; and his warnings are repeated by everyone in the true apostolic succession. His warnings about the dangers confronting souls that profess to be espoused to Christ are most necessary.
For a simple example of the simplicity that is in Christ, take salvation by faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit and people living a life of faith upon the Son of God; and contrast that with all the ceremonial in the Church of Rome and the ideas they have about the mass and confessing to priests, all
these abominations which are an insult to Christ and to His glory. Yet people are beguiled by them.
Our Queen is going to meet a man who rules over the 110 acres of the Vatican. The Church of Scotland has been beguiled; the Moderator is going to meet the Pope under John Knox’s statue. People do not see very much wrong with it because they are beguiled; that is why they are deceived. They are beguiled from the simplicity in Christ; so they cannot distinguish between light and darkness and between worship according to the mind of the Spirit of God and worship riddled with paganism. The Church of Rome has these altars, candles, incense and temples, but there is no worshipping of God there. People are beguiled by it, yet altars, temples and priests are 2000 years out of date; they all belong to the immaturity of the Church.
Paul had this godly jealousy because he knew that, at the end of the journey, the Church was to be presented to Christ. He says, “That I may present you” – ministerially. But of course Christ Himself is the One who pre-eminently presents the Church to Himself, as we read in the Epistle to the Ephesians. Christ, by the Holy Spirit, presents “it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing but . . . holy and without blemish”. That is what the Church is going to be at the end of the journey, and Paul says that it is to be presented as a chaste virgin, one that has been faithful to her Lord in the midst of many difficulties, trials, and backslidings of heart that needed the washing of the blood of the covenant. Nevertheless there has been a faithfulness to the Saviour, a faithfulness to His worship, a faithfulness to all that belongs to Him.
John Knox, whose statue stands at the entrance to what was the old Free Church College in Edinburgh, had the same spirit of godly jealousy. Was there ever a man who exercised more godly jealousy towards this land? But look at the unworthy descendants of such faithful people, who imagine that they have Christianity. The ex-Moderator of the Church of Scotland said that it is better to have Christian charity than Christian separation. What strange confusion of thought! Christian separation involves faithfulness to Christ and faithfulness to Christ involves Christian love.
This is what we need to be praying over: we need to be watchful that we are not beguiled by error from men who appear as angels of light when, in actual fact, they are serving the devil and his kingdom. We ought to seek grace and wisdom to understand these things and, above all, to be espoused to Christ. We ought to seek to be kept faithful to Him in our generation and be numbered among those of whom we are going to sing in conclusion:
“They shall be brought with gladness great, and mirth on every side,
Into the palace of the King, and there they shall abide”.