Two passages to begin with.
Firstly, in the Letter to the Romans, chapter 11.
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out!
The Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 3.
Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.
So, with the enablement of the Lord, we are going to move in these deep waters and seek to discover, if possible, something of the unsearchable riches of Christ—the depth of the riches, wisdom, and knowledge.
The apostle who used these words was striving against the limitations of language to give expression to something which he had come to realize as to the Christ, and as to the salvation in Christ into which he had been brought.
He does use these many superlatives, straining to find words: unsearchable, inexhaustible, unfathomable, infinite wealth or riches.
This man was able to speak in this way just for one reason. And you and I will never be able rightly to use such language unless we go the way that he went.
In order to find things which are deep, you have to go into the deep. You never find deep things in the shallows. You have to go down, and down, very low.
And that, in a sense, explains a lot of God’s dealings with His people. It is the answer to the cry of the heart in deep and dark and difficult places and times: “Why?”
If we could but realize it, we should hear the answer coming back: “That you may discover and appropriate spiritual wealth.”
These riches do not lie on the surface. They are the hidden treasures of dark and secret places. And wealthy souls are ever and always those which have touched something, not all, of the depths of God.
Here is a man who, you know, has placed so many things on record—a man who had many otherwise inexplicable experiences. His catalogue of sufferings and adversities is really quite something. It is written for us largely in his second letter to the Corinthians, half a chapter taken up with the things which befell him. And in other places, too, he makes reference to his sufferings in Christ.
And if ever a man had reason to ask why, it was that man. “Why, Lord, are You letting me spend a night and a day in the deep, being again and again and yet again crashed with rocks, imprisoned, dealt treacherously with by mine own brethren, and so on? Why, Lord? I am devoted to You. I have a heart for You. I am seeking Thine own name. I am actually committed to Your interests.”
“There are many who are not so committed, and they do not have to go the way that I am going. Why?”
For such a man, with such a devotion, such an abandon for the interests of his Lord, suffering more than any other man, perhaps, of the whole apostolic company.
Not one of us will measure up to this man’s sufferings, although we may sometimes think that ours are just about the limit. But very few, and I imagine very few in this little company this afternoon, have not had times when they have lost their bearings as to the strangeness of the Lord’s ways with them.
Does it not strike you as possibly very significant that such a man cries out in language to express what he has seen in the Lord’s ways? He says:
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out!
Do you see? Not the greatest of the apostles: “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ.”
A man whom we know because, for two thousand years, the church has been drawing upon the riches which he reached and received through tribulation—riches which are coming to us from that man through today, perhaps now today.
For that reason, it may sound discouraging, but there is no other way.
Some time ago, on one of my visits to India, I came down in a flying boat on the Persian Gulf. As I stood there in the Gulf of Persia, at the confluence of the Euphrates, I looked out and saw the pearl fishers.
They were there in the depths, spending their long, patient hours seeking goodly pearls—a lonely and perilous business. But there, as I saw, just looking out of the water, were sharks looking for prey.
And then that night, after dark, I went into the Persian market, the bazaar, through the narrow aisles between the stalls. And I saw displayed on those stands glorious pearls and other gems, almost priceless, being brought in from the deep, polished and displayed.
And then, as I boarded the flying boat to go on to India, a pearl merchant came on with his cabinets of gems and pearls. These were bound in iron, with strong padlocks on them. And as that sheikh sat at his feet, he kept his eye on those cabinets and would not take his eye off them all the time until we landed and he delivered them to the merchants in India.
Values—precious things—from the depths.
They were costly because they had cost. They were valuable because there were most painful and lonely vigils behind their obtaining.
Pearls have been associated with suffering. Now, this is a parable. This is what pearl is really talking about: peril, loneliness, the long-drawn-out vigils, the sufferings and the afflictions to obtain the riches.
And that not for himself, but for the church. He said:
I fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the church.
I say there is no other way for us to do more than talk about and read about and use the language of these things—no other way for us to possess them than to go into the depths and find them.
The unsearchable—does that sound like a contradiction? You have them, and they are unsearchable. You have them, and yet they are too deep to lay hold of. It sounds like that.
That simply means all the meaning, all the value, all the wealth that is here—only a little of which we may know in this life—all that really is beyond this life, past finding out.
Well, that is where we begin, but we do not end there. We are going to look, as God will help us, at some of these riches, these unsearchable riches.
And if you at any time care to look into your New Testament with that word, “riches,” you will see how it is connected with different things: the riches of this, the riches of that, which is another thing, the riches of His grace, the riches of His glory, the riches of His inheritance in the saints, the riches of full assurance and understanding, and so on.
These are many-sided riches. I do not know how far the Lord will lead us. We can begin where the riches begin, where we have to begin: the riches of His grace.
The riches of His grace. There is another word linked with that: the riches of His grace and goodness. “Despisest thou the riches of His goodness?” asks the apostle. The riches of grace and goodness.
That will always be beyond us. We may as well settle it now, throw up our hands in despair right at the beginning. You and I are never going to fathom that depth, comprehend that fullness, understand that grace.
I do not hope for a moment to be able to plumb the depth of that word. We can only just dip into these depths.
So, the riches of His grace and goodness. And we have a very hackneyed way of defining grace. It has been put into a phrase, and we throw it off, and we do not get very much profit from it.
Ask, “What is the meaning of grace?” The traditional answer is, “Grace is unmerited favour.” Yes, it is. It is unmerited. There you go.
That very definition does introduce us to the basic character of grace. That is, it is a weak definition: unmerited favour. Yes, thank God for that. But what do you mean by that?
You have no merit, and God just comes to you because you have no merit—nothing to merit grace. But I am sorry to tell you, dear friends, that it is more than that. It is worse than that, on one side—on our side.
Grace does not only come to where there is no merit. Grace comes to where there is a great deal of demerit. That is stronger than no merit. No merit may be negative; demerit is positive.
Everything that is not only without merit, but of a nature and character that is positively against God. You and I are not only without worthiness; you and I are worse than that. Everything—everything positive—that we should not be.
You come again to the man who is speaking in this way. Not only does he say, “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints”; he said, “I am the chief of sinners, of whom I am chief.”
There is the positive—not only less than the least, but positively the chief of sinners. “I persecuted the church. I gave my consent to the murder of His beloved servant Stephen.” And he will tell you a great deal more about his demerit—not only his lack.
Everything that was there was an offence to God, and that could, if anything could, stand in the way of grace. It was there. But, you see, grace just moved to that demerit, not only no merit. That demerit does not set grace aside.
Grace is just grace, whatever the conditions, however great the demerit. That is grace.
You and I, as Christians, have got to learn that. All this, as we shall see perhaps as we go on, is something that perhaps the Christian has to reckon with even more than the unsaved. I say that and leave it for the time being.
But if you and I are really moving with God, you and I are coming more and more to the place where we do say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I”—a Christian after all these years, after the grace of God.
I do not know if this is getting through. It takes, as I understand it, and I say it, a great deal more grace for me now as a Christian than it did to save me at the beginning. Now, that may seem strange to say, but I am returning to it again.
Are we not discovering what we did not know even at the beginning—the presence of the demerit in ourselves? But that is just the character of grace. That is what grace means. Grace has no meaning unless that is true.
And then let us note this other thing about grace. Grace never recognizes any debt.
Grace is not a payment of any debt. Grace is not in our debt at all. God is not dealing with us in grace because He owes us something.
It is only another way of speaking about the absence of merit and the presence of demerit. No one has a claim upon the grace of God. God is not a debtor.
Grace does not recognize any such thing as being in debt and having to pay its way with us. Grace—and here is our superficial language again—is free grace, free grace.
There is not something with which God is trying to pay us back for something. Or, the other way round, we are the debtors; God is the creditor. And grace, it is just grace.
You have nothing else to say about it. It is just His free, spontaneous movement, without any obligation, without any merit. That is the basic nature and character of grace.
Then we realize that when we realize that demerit about ourselves, and that God is under no obligation to us, and then we see that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Then we begin to understand the depth of the riches.
Maybe we are introduced into a realm that is beyond us, to be honest. Any soul that does not come to the point of just wondering in amazement at God’s voluntary, spontaneous, free, unmerited grace—the soul who has not come there has not begun to know the meaning of such words as “the riches of His grace.”
That can never be a wealthy soul. So much for the present, at any rate, about the character of grace.
Do you know that grace is always set over against works? And although we are so familiar with this truth, let us just dwell upon it for a moment: works and grace.
You see, this represents a change, a complete change and reversal of position. Grace changes the place of works, or changes the place of works.
Grace does not obliterate works. Grace does not say there are never to be works. Grace will amount to works, and if it is rightly appreciated, we get much more, much better work than ever before. But this does just change the place of works.
You see, well, the works are the law. But the works of the law are the works of the law. They are the works in order to get merit—the idea being to obtain merit, to put God in our debt by our merit.
So look at the scribes and the Pharisees. Oh, how obnoxious was their behaviour, their activity, their pretension, to the Lord Jesus Himself. Merit by works—doing something for His enrichment.
Yes, works of the law to attain merit, with which merit to give, as currency, to pay God—putting God into our debt, making Him our debtor. And we doing all these things, you see, to get ourselves a good credit, and give our credit to God.
Works of the law in order to obtain that, to present to God, honoured.
Well, in that place, for merit, when grace comes in, you see, grace puts the works in another place altogether. It takes them out of the first place and puts them into the last place.
And instead of works being first, it is grace; it is grace. Instead of works for merit, it is just God’s own grace without any works whatsoever to obtain any satisfaction or place.
And then what? Oh, they have not been ruled out of the universe when grace has come in. You and I, if we have really grasped the meaning of grace, will work more than anyone else ever has worked.
But now the works are appreciation of grace, not to obtain it, not to merit it, but works to God for His unspeakable gift. Grace changes the place of things, puts things right round the other way.
Someone has put this into a rather cryptic phrase: “Works do not justify, but a justified person works.” That is quite true.
“I laboured more abundantly than they all,” said the apostle. Yes, “I laboured more abundantly than they all.” And that is true; that was true. But was he taking merit? Then he had no right to talk about grace. But he is the man who does talk about grace, and he laboured more abundantly than all because of the overwhelming grace of God to him.
The position was entirely reversed: not labour and love to obtain favour, but out of love and devotion because of favour obtained, complete, without works.
Now then, what about God’s work of grace? And we will begin this path and leave it for the time being: God’s work of grace.
What is true in the first material, natural creation is true spiritually in the new creation. And you know it so well; it only needs to be mentioned, and at once you will jump to it.
There was chaos. There was darkness. There was the absence of God.
God moved in, dispelled the darkness, and brought the chaos into order, and got to work—got to work step by step and stage by stage, upward, upward all the time: creating, ordering, providing a beautiful earth, a beautiful house, a wonderful place.
That is the Scripture description. And then, when He could look upon all His work and pass His verdict—the verdict of an infinitely perfect God, so meticulous, so exacting, who will never pass anything that is imperfect—when He had finished it all, He put man right into the middle of it.
So there you are. “That is your inheritance. That is your home. Your inheritance is what I have already done. What you can do is something, not that you have got to make, that I have already made; not that you have to do what I have already done.”
Your vocation is gratitude. “Well, I am, my word, on Your behalf. Thank You.”
You can clearly see the corresponding truth in the new creation. It is not working unto something; it is working out everything that has been done.
You and I come into God’s perfect work, because the simple form of preaching the gospel is to speak about the finished work of Christ. Do we understand these good phrases?
All that God has done in and through and by His Son, Jesus Christ, in the perfect work of salvation, of redemption, of His Cross.
So that the reception of His Son back to heaven is simply because God has nothing more to do so far as providing the ground is concerned.
He could never have gone back to heaven unless the work was full and final and perfect. If there had been one further touch or stroke, He would not have gone back. They would not have received Him into heaven if, we may say, they would have said, “Look here, You have left undone something. I have not found Thy works perfect before My God.”
And He had to come back again. But He did not. God had in Him perfected and finished His new creation, and then He began with us to bring us in and say, “Look here, you have not got to work unto this. You have got to inherit it, take possession of it, live in the good of it, learn to understand what you have got, and appreciate it.”
These are the works of God. That is finished, definitely, so far as the Lord Jesus is concerned.
The works of grace. If that garden, that creation, is something grand, beautiful, and glorious from the hand of God, which satisfies His heart, His Son is more than that—more than a symbolic creation. His Son is the final expression of all that.
He gives us His Son. He gives us His Son.
You and I have not grasped this. This is where we are in so much trouble, dear friends; there is no doubt about it. I would dare to say that nine-tenths of our spiritual troubles lie here: that we are listening all the time to the accuser.
And when things go hard, difficult, contrary, and against us, the adversary says, “Because of something about you—your demerit, something wrong with you.”
You go and plead with the Lord, “Lord, what is it that You have got against me?” You spend your hours pleading with God to show you what He has got against you and why it is that He is dealing with you in this way.
And so the enemy is just turning us aside from this. The divine work of grace is going to be done—and we shall come to that presently—to conform us, to change us. We are not now under judgment and condemnation; we are under grace.
And Satan’s voice never ceases in this life trying to undercut grace and bring us back under law, under bondage.
But you and I really do need to see, yes, the unsearchable riches of His grace—the riches of His grace.
God’s work is completed for us to inherit. There is something of battle, a tremendous battle, as there was for Israel in the land after they crossed the Jordan and came through the death of Calvary—a battle in the land to get possession of our inheritance.
But does it not again become so familiar, this forever: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, to you have I given it”? “I have given you.”
It is secured in Christ for us.
Now, there I must leave it for the present. I think, although these are truths with which we are familiar, the great truth remains: you and I are the Lord’s own people. Let us learn more and more, please, the meaning of the first thing—the grace of God.
The grace of God: what grace really is, and what grace really means, and withal how deep, how vast—perhaps the word is—the riches of His grace.