2nd Corinthians chapter 13 and
verse 14. So 2nd Corinthians chapter 13
and verse 14. And it simply says this, the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion
of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen. And as I mentioned
last week, I wanted to pause in the conclusion of this very
interesting well, chapter and very interesting letter to the
church at Corinth to allow us to contemplate the last few sentences
without being rushed or hurried in our thoughts. And my reason
for doing this is because while we have become familiar with
these phrases as a benediction at the close of our sermons.
There's truth bound up in these words, which I feel sure encouraged
the Corinthians from the first hearing or the first reading
of this letter from the Apostle Paul to have the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ spoken to them, written to them in that form. The phrase, the love of God and
the phrase, the communion of the Holy Spirit, written to them
in that form. We, I trust, don't become in
any way, what is it they say? Familiarity breeds contempt.
I trust we never take the familiar passages of scripture, often
familiar because of their weightiness, because of their sweetness, because
of their peculiar beauties, and in our familiarity give them
less weightiness and significance than we ought to. And I just
really wanted to pause on this verse rather than simply say
it once again as a benediction, rather to give us the opportunity
to dwell upon these things. just to remind ourselves that
we are speaking about the triune God and we're speaking about
these attributes, these characteristics of God that the Apostle Paul
would desire to be the portion of the Corinthians and indeed
to be with you all, he says. And I'm going to, just in the
next few minutes, I trust enlarge some of these blessings and benefits,
not only to the Corinthians, but to all the Church of Christ.
and in the context of our little gathering here today to each
one of us. And I think in beginning this,
we should just see how delightful it is that the apostle in departing
from the Corinthians and leaving this letter, he's about to sort
of, well I guess you don't stick it down and put a stamp on it
in those days, but he was about to send this letter off to the
Corinthians And as he did so, as he came to the end of it,
this is how he ended this letter. And there have been a variety
of themes in this letter. There have been doctrinal themes. There have been discipline themes. There have been practical themes. The apostle has done a lot of
explanation. He's contended for the truth
of the gospel over the false teachers that were amongst the
Corinthians. He has laid bare a number of intensely personal
revelations and experiences that he had had from the Lord. And
he also spoke about the challenges that he had personally in his
own soul with respect to thorns. But in coming to the end of all
of this that has encapsulated this letter of 2nd Corinthians,
it is this parting message that he would leave with them. And
it's a delightful, strong statement of the three persons of the Godhead,
our triune God. And let me just say something
very fundamental about this little verse here. Fundamental to our
faith. We have here presented to us
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And
each one is a separate and individual person. And yet, there is only
one true God. And this is, in some respects,
difficult for us to explain. And yet, it is the clear testimony
of scripture. God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit. Three persons and one God. And sometimes we tend to think
of God the Father and we can conceive of the personhood of
God the Father. And of course in the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-Man, we can think about the person
of Christ. But let us also remember the
personality of the Holy Spirit. We believe there is but one only
living and true God, and that there are three persons in the
Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are
equal in nature, power, and glory, and that the Son and the Holy
Spirit are as truly and as properly God as the Father. And on this matter of the equality
of the persons of the Godhead, it's interesting to see how the
Apostle orders the different persons in this verse when he
is speaking of each of them separately. We usually say, do we not, and
it's become very familiar to us, another one of these familiar
statements, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the
names of the three persons of the Godhead trip off our tongue
with some ease, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and
maybe If we are not aware of it, or we don't think about it,
we imply that there is a priority within the Godhead, simply by
repeating the persons in that familiar order. So I think it's
perhaps appropriate for us to note that the apostle here lists
the persons of the Godhead slightly differently. He lists them as
the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. And we could, if
we wanted to enlarge that point, which we won't, we could also
refer to 1 Peter 1 and verse 2 where the apostle there speaks
of the Father, the Holy Spirit and the Son. So that the point
that is being made is simply that in Scripture there is no
implied priority. by the ordering of the names
within the Godhead. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Son,
Father, Holy Spirit, Father, Holy Spirit, Son. It doesn't
matter the order in which we see them. There is this equality
in the persons of the Godhead and one true and living God. And I think, as well, that we
can relish in the way in which the apostle is writing these
things for us, the value of the scripture's usage of Father,
Son and Holy Spirit to show us that there is a multiplicity
of blessedness for the people of God. We ought to admire the
scripture writers and ultimately the Holy Spirit for giving us,
as it were, layer upon layer upon layer of good perfect gifts
and blessings. This is a large part of the blessedness
of our inheritance in Christ. The Church is called into union
with Christ in the joint names of the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit. And indeed when we are baptised
into the body of Christ, into the church of Christ. It is in
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so that
there are peculiar gifts and peculiar graces that are supplied
by each of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, predominantly
we should perhaps say, but not exclusively by each person. And what I mean by that is that
while we talk about the love of the Father, that is not exclusive
of the love of the Son and the love of the Holy Spirit. Or if
we speak about the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, that is not
exclusive to the fellowship of the Son and of the Father. So
that each of the persons of the Godhead give us graces and bestow
upon us multi-dimensions of relationships in our union together with the
Godhead. And that's an area of rich, rewarding
contemplation, even if we just were to pause and think about
that. And it's the intention of scripture
that we do so. It speaks of the richness of
God's gifts and the breadth of his goodness. We have the grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have the love of the Father.
We have the communion of the Holy Spirit. But we also have
the grace of the Father and the Holy Spirit and the communion
of the Father and the Son and the love of the Son and the Holy
Spirit. So that all of these gifts and
graces flow to us in Christ. and each divine person multiplies
the blessings and each divine person multiplies the gifts. So Paul, in going back to our
verse, reminds the Corinthians of Christ's grace. And he had spoken to the Corinthians
about Christ's grace before in 2nd Corinthians chapter 8 and
verse 9. He wrote there, For ye know the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet
for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might
be rich. It was the grace of Christ that
brought the Saviour to earth to redeem his people from their
sins. And in that sense, grace is close
to love. For we know that it was the love
of Christ for his church that moved the Son of God to volunteer
and to stand as the substitute and surety for his people. And so the love of God or the
grace of God is, sorry, the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is here in view. in this grace
that is spoken of by the Apostle. But of course the word grace
has different aspects and we might think rather of the graces
that were inherent to the God-man. So that when the Apostle Paul
speaks about the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we remember
that the Lord Jesus Christ evidenced much of grace in his own life
and in his own dealings in this world, qualities and attributes
of his person. We might think of his humility,
we might think of his pity, his long-suffering and his patience
or his strength. his wisdom, his care, his dedication,
his commitment, all of the virtues of God the Son in his human soul. And so when the apostle says
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, there's again
a breadth of those divine attributes that the Lord Jesus Christ exemplified
that we should model our lives after and that we should seek
to know and to discover and to emulate. He wishes these graces
upon the Corinthians. And there's another aspect of
grace as well that we can think about with respect to Christ.
And that is, we think about the divine grace that forged God's
covenant purpose and established the ground of all our hope and
all our peace with God. the grace that brought the Lord
Jesus Christ to this world in order that we might be cleansed
by his blood, that we might know the forgiveness of sin, that
we might experience regeneration and conversion and ultimately
our glorification. That is all often encapsulated
in this word grace. So that we speak of the doctrines
of grace, sometimes people say it should just be singular, it
should be the doctrine of grace, and there's some legitimacy to
that, so that's a point for another day perhaps. But this is the
grace, the grace which is the foundation of the whole work
of salvation. So that we see this grace, the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, as being the various parts of
our salvation. Our election is a function of
grace. Our justification, our sanctification
flows from grace, the redemption that we enjoy, the glory that
we look forward to. And we may all pray for an even
greater view of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in this
respect that we might see those great works in clearer light
and deeper meaning. And then the Apostle goes on
to speak about not only the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ but
the love of the Father and As we've said, this is not exclusive
to the love of the Son of the Holy Spirit, but it is the Father's
everlasting love that is viewed as the ground of our election. And that love of God for his
people is a free love. By that we mean that it is unconditional. It's not dependent on anything
that he finds or discovers in us. There's nothing desirable
in us. There is nothing that we can
contribute to engender or to obtain or to enlarge the love
of God towards us. It is free and everlasting love,
unconditional and undeserved. It's a special love. It's a distinguishing
love. It is a particular love. It is a discriminating love.
And it is bestowed by God sovereignly upon his people. It is unchangeable. It abides forever. Once given
it is never withdrawn. God does not love us one day
and hate us the next because God in himself is unchangeable
and God is love and therefore his love is unchangeable. I'm
sure you've all heard the phrase about the tulip and how that
little word, tulip, is sometimes used to describe, once again,
the doctrines of grace, the T-U-L-I-P, total depravity, unconditional
election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance
of the saints. When I was young and discovering
about the doctrines of grace, I also heard about not only the
tulip, but the daisy. And so a tulip is a flower and
a daisy is a flower. And there was the tulip gospel
and there was the daisy gospel. And the daisy gospel was the
gospel that said that there were some days that God loved us and
there were some days that he didn't. So that there were days
he did and days he didn't. Well of course that's hardly
any view of God's everlasting love. God's love is the source
and fountain of all the blessings of grace. Now in this world and
in glory to come. And we shall never plumb or sound
or reach the length and the breadth and the height and the depth
of the love of God, that love that he has for his people. And
it is right and appropriate that we should remind ourselves regularly,
we should live in awe of the wonder of God's love every day. to comfort and strengthen our
hearts. Let it be in our mind, let it
be in our thoughts, God loves me. God loves me. What a statement, what a truth,
what a foundation to be able to hold onto in this world with
all its variableness and all its confusion. God loves me with
an everlasting love. And finally he speaks about the
communion of the Holy Spirit and perhaps This communion of
the Holy Spirit is the grace that we should call more for
in our prayers and in our requests and for one another. It's the
one that we should seek more earnestly because it is this
communion of the Holy Spirit, or to use another word, this
communication of the Holy Spirit, This engagement with the Holy
Spirit that leads us more particularly into a daily experience of God's
love and Christ's grace. Because the communion of the
Holy Spirit is the believer's source of comfort from the divine
persons in this world. As it were, that's the tap that
leads us into the experience of the graces of God. It is the
Holy Spirit that conveys these things to us. The Holy Spirit
who brings us into fellowship with the Father and with the
Son. And the Holy Spirit communicates the gifts and the fruits of the
Spirit to believers. He equips us for God's service. He enables us to resist the devil. He supplies us with portions
of strength and wisdom and longing after spiritual things. He sharpens
our views of divine things and our desire for heaven. And he
grows our appetite for the world to come. And that communion of
the Holy Spirit is when God the Spirit witnesses to our spirits
that we are the children of God and he becomes the earnest of
the inheritance in our hearts for those things that are laid
up for us in heaven. and he seals us unto the day
of redemption. So it is the Holy Spirit that
has this practical, engaging role in the believer's life to
preserve and to protect and to deliver us in our times of trouble. So the Apostle has desired for
these Corinthians that they might know something of the grace of
Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit.
And all of these things are desired and requested by the Apostle
for the Corinthians and we may assume them to be our portion
just as much as theirs. Because the Apostle says, be
with you all. be with you all. It was for them
all. It was for the children, it was
for the widows, it was for the young men, it was for the elders,
it was for the young women, it was for all who were weak and
all who were strong, all who were mature and all who were
immature. And Paul wishes these blessings
upon us all. And then finally he rounds off
this prayer, this intercession on their behalf with an Amen. Let it be so, he says. I think that's just the Apostle's
way of reinforcing and confirming his prayer and it expresses the
faith that he had in the appropriateness of these petitions on behalf
of the Corinthians and upon our behalf. and it expresses his
genuine desire to have those prayers fulfilled in the lives
of the Lord's people. And on that vein, I think it
is not inappropriate for us all to add our assent to Paul's prayer
for all the Lord's people, so that we may pray for ourselves,
as Paul prayed for the Corinthians and we may pray for one another
that we all might know ever more largely, ever more deeply the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion
or fellowship of the Holy Ghost. May it be so. Amen.