Sovereign Grace Church

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.

(1 John 5:21)

Beloved,—Labour to grow in the sound knowledge of God and of Christ, and of their all-sufficiency. Mark St Paul’s method, Colossians chapter 1, and in other places, when he would draw us from all outward things, he speaks gloriously of the fulness of Christ, “In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” Colossians 2:9; and, “In Him you are complete.” When he would draw them from “touch not, taste not, handle not, worshipping of angels, and from counterfeit humility,” Colossians 2:21, etc, he labours to dispossess them of these idolatrous conceits, and to possess them of the fulness of Christ. If in Him we have fulness, why should we look for any thing out of Him? If we be complete in Him, if all fulness be in Him, why do we seek any thing out of that fulness? Thus the holy apostle shutteth up his first epistle, “Babes, keep you from idols,” 1st John 5:21. What is promised there? Christ is eternal life, all is in Him; whereupon presently comes this, Babes, keep you from idols? If life and happiness, and all be in Christ, if we be complete in Him, and the fulness of all be in Him, why should we go out of Him for anything? When God would persuade Abraham to leave all idolatry, Genesis 15:1, and all things else, to depend wholly upon Him, what doth He first possess him with? “I am God all-sufficient,” etc. Know God in covenant all-sufficient, and Christ in the fulness of His high perfections as Mediator, in whom is all fulness and life eternal, in whom we are complete; we shall then be so far from going out of Him for any thing, as we shall be of the same mind with Ephraim, “What have I now any more to do with other intercessors and mediators?” [Hosea 14:8], what have I to do with will-worship? what need I go to other cursed means, when God is all-sufficient? It is the scope of the new covenant of grace, that we should glory in God only, who hath made Christ unto us “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,” 1st Corinthians 1:30. And all this, because that whosoever glorieth in Him, should not go out of Him for any thing. The more we know therefore the fulness of Christ, and God’s mercy in Him, the more we shall abhor all idolatry, with the kinds and degrees of it.