The sermon preached by Mr G.D. Buss, a vice-president of the Society at the 192nd Annual General Meeting held on Saturday 16 September 2023.

Edited for publication.

'The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen' (2 Corinthians 13.14).

These words are probably the most repeated words from Holy Scripture in the worship of God’s great and Holy Name. We read these words as we end worship, and they contain all that we would wish both for ourselves and for our hearers. We could desire nothing better than this.

Solomon wrote, ‘The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it’ (Proverbs 10.22). Here then is the blessing of the Lord, in a sense a counterpart to that which Aaron was commanded to pronounce in Old Testament times: ‘The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: the LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace’ (Numbers 6.24–26). Here in the benediction we have the fulness of the Gospel of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ set before us in these desires: this great desire that the Apostle Paul was inspired by the Holy Ghost to write.

The Church in Corinth

It might surprise us that it was to the church at Corinth that this blessing was first pronounced. Had it been Philippi, where we read their names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, ‘He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ’ (Philippians 1.6), or perhaps had it been Ephesus, ‘You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins’ (Ephesians 2.1), we might not be so surprised. But the history of Corinth, certainly when Paul wrote, was not a very happy one. Yet it was to this church in its low, perplexed, and difficult estate that this blessing was pronounced. What else can put matters right in the church of Christ than these three things: the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost? Perhaps someone reading this has the affairs of the church weighing heavy upon their spirit at the minute and wondering how, or what, or when, matters will be put right. Here is the answer; this matter can be referred back to the great Head of the church: ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you’. That would put matters right; bless God for it.

Corinth was known as the city in which every sin the Word of God condemns ran freely down its streets. It was a very wicked city where Satan ruled and seemed to hold supreme power, but it was of this city God said to Paul—even before his ministry had really taken root there—‘I have much people in this city’ (Acts 18.10), and those people were rushing along the broad road that leads to destruction. They were without God, they were without Christ, they were without hope; and yet Paul was sent. What was he to preach?

It’s very instructive what Paul says about his preaching to Corinth because it’s an example to us all. ‘I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified’ (1 Corinthians 2.2). Paul went to that wicked city. He planted the Cross of Christ right in the centre of it, and kept preaching Christ crucified. We know the wonderful effects of this preaching: sinners were called by grace and the Holy Ghost worked mightily. A vibrant church was formed of members of Christ’s mystical body, who loved the truths that Paul was preaching. They followed his example in setting before them the order of the church, what they should be to each other, and most of all, to their right Head of the church.

Satan Causing Trouble in the Church

Satan has never been pleased to see the church prosper, and whenever we have a little prosperity in our churches be on your guard because Satan will seek an opportunity, if he could, to mar it or even destroy it. However, he could never destroy the church of Christ or the Word of God’s Truth. But we know through sad experience in the history of the church what havoc he can cause, as he did in Corinth.

First of all, Satan brought a party spirit. ‘I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 1.12). He also brought in heresy; there were those who denied the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Immorality was not dealt with, and many other things afflicted this church. What did Paul say when he began to deal with this matter? He went right back to the Cross of Christ, and here is the standard before you, ‘Christ, and him crucified’. Paul wrote these two precious epistles with much instruction and teaching. Looking on this church with all its defects and deformities he says he desires for them to have ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost’. Could we desire anything better for either ourselves or for our churches?

The Apostle James wrote, ‘From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God’ (James 4.1–4).

If you were the Apostle James writing that chapter what would you have written next? James wrote, ‘But he giveth more grace’ (James 4.6). In other words, the answer to all those terrible things that James records which are so true about fallen nature is grace; that was the answer to it. This is the hope of every God-sent minister, that as they preach the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ those very ills might be dealt with in a way consistent with the justice of God, but also with His mercy.

The Trinity

We gather today in the interest of the Trinitarian Bible Society, a noble society that God has done much good through, and we bless God for it to this generation. We know its history, that on the very foundation of a Triune God it was founded, separating from what was then the British and Foreign Bible Society because they were countenancing unitarians on their committee and even hindering people pleading the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in prayer and committee meetings. It was the right thing to do to come out from among them and establish a society built on the foundation of the one true and only Triune God. Let us pause for a moment and just examine what we mean by the Trinity. There is only one God. There is only room for one God; He fills time, He fills eternity, and He is the one true and living God. We believe this, not only because it says so in Scripture, but because all true believers understand that there are three Persons in the Godhead: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. There is an eternal relationship between those three Persons. God the Father has an eternally begotten Son. This is a great mystery; you cannot explain it and you are not called to, but the Word of God says it is true.

There is God the Son. Sometimes Jehovah’s Witnesses come knocking on your door and you ask them a question: ‘Do you believe in the Son of God?’ ‘Oh we believe that’ they say. ‘Do you believe in God the Son?’ you then ask, and they reply, ‘Oh no, we don’t believe that’. They deny the Godhead of God’s Son. He is as much God as the Father and as the Holy Ghost.

From those two glorious Persons, God the Father and God the Son, proceeds that equally important Person, the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is a person, not just an influence. He is a blessed person; nothing can ever be communicated from the Throne of God without the power of the Holy Ghost. He is that third Person, that co-equal, co-eternal, triune God.

All those with living faith in the salvation taught in the Word of God will be thankful for the love of God, for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and for the communion of the Holy Ghost. ‘A threefold cord is not quickly broken’ (Ecclesiastes 4.12), and this relationship can never be broken. Satan has attacked this truth throughout the history of this world because he hates it. He knows it is the truth and he hates the one true and living God.

There are many other witnesses in Scripture we could speak of. There’s a plurality of persons speaking in the Trinity; for example we read, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ (Isaiah 6.8). You go to the baptism of our dear Saviour at Jordan, and there is the voice of the Father, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3.17). God the Son is there, and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove upon Him. We read in John’s first epistle, ‘For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one’ (1 John 5.7–8). If it’s not true, then there is no Saviour, and there’s no Gospel to preach. Cleave to it, cling to it, whatever men may say against it.

The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ What is grace? It has several meanings. One of course is that it is God’s favour. Every child of God can say, ‘Remember me, O LORD, with the favour that thou bearest unto thy people: O visit me with thy salvation’ (Psalm 106.4). And if you have grace, you’ll want more of that favour to be displayed in your heart. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord in that terrible day in which he lived. May we find the same favour in this terrible day in which we’re living

What is grace? It is God giving what we do not deserve. You say, ‘What is mercy then?’ Mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve.

Listen to Paul: ‘And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.’ (1 Timothy 1.14–16). Paul brings the two together: the one thing he does not deserve is grace, and he marvels that what he did deserve he has not had to endure. That is what grace is then; it is God’s riches at Christ’s expense.

When God created the world it cost Him nothing. ‘He spake, and it was done’ (Psalm 33.9). He didn’t have to borrow the materials or buy them from another being—indeed, there is no other being to buy them from. God commanded and it stood fast. However, when it comes to the giving of grace, what it cost the Trinity! ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life’ (John 3.16). See that dear Saviour, bearing His cross from the judgment hall to Golgotha. It was not just the wooden cross on His bleeding shoulders—that was heavy enough—but it was all the unseen burden of the guilt of a people that ‘no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people’ (Revelation 7.9). See Him hanging on that cross between two thieves in ignominy and shame, and hear His sorrowful cry, ‘My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27.46). There you see the cost of redemption, the cost of mercy, the cost of grace, in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in laying down that perfect, pure, holy, and guiltless life. Oh, we thank God for it.

I like to think of what Paul has to tell us in 2 Corinthians 12 and 13 where he speaks about his thorn in the flesh. The poor man felt so weakened by it that he could not bear it and he asked the Lord three times to remove it. The Lord answered in a better way than Paul could have imagined: ‘My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Corinthians 12.9). Paul went on to say that since ‘the power of Christ may rest upon me’, he could live with his thorn. Child of God, you can live with your burden, that crook in the lot, that thorn in the flesh, that weighty cross, that deep disappointment. The power of Christ, ‘the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ’ will be sufficient for you.

In James we read, ‘But he giveth more grace’ (James 4.6). These are blessed words because the Lord never wearies of giving. He is not like the man in the parable who had a friend knock on his door at midnight requesting ‘Friend, lend me three loaves’ (Luke 11.5) when the man replied no, ‘the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed’ (Luke 11.7). The Lord is not like that; the door of His mercy is open always and He never fails, He gives grace according to the day.

That grace isn’t limited; there is always more to follow. The grace is in Christ, and you can’t exhaust that. The barrel of meal and the cruise of oil that the widow woman enjoyed did not run out.

Perhaps you have come to the end of your patience today, the end of your wisdom, the end of your strength. Perhaps you’ve told the Lord like Elijah himself did, ‘It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life’ (1 Kings 19.4). Did Elijah die? No, the Lord gave him more grace, ‘Because the journey is too great for thee’ (1 Kings 19.7). So if you have come to the end of your strength the Lord says, ‘Go on’. You say, ‘How?’ and He replies, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee’. He doesn’t weary of you knocking at His door and asking for more grace. If a beggar knocked at our door, perhaps the first time we might give him something and perhaps also the next day. But if he continued knocking, we’d get a bit weary and wish he would go somewhere else. Our God is not like that; He never wearies of giving more grace.

The Love of God

It might surprise you why the ‘grace of our Lord Jesus Christ’ comes first in the benediction. Why doesn’t the love of God come first? We speak of God the Father as the first Person of the Trinity. But the word ‘grace’ comes first. It is grace that opens our heart to receive the love of God. Our old nature is not fit to receive grace. It’s at enmity so we need a vessel to receive the love of God. That vessel is the new birth, the new nature, in which God gives grace. The old nature is still there, which is one of the greatest battles that a child of God faces and why he needs more grace and yet more grace. But blessed be God, wherever the Lord has given the new birth, grace is working; and in that new birth you begin to experience that love of God which actually preceded the giving of grace.

Does God love a child of God because he is quickened? Or does He quicken him because He loved him? God quickened him because He loved him. Grace sent forth that blessed work of the Spirit flowing from the love of God.

Can we measure the love of God? The prophet Ezekiel was taken to a river. He was told to enter the river and while he was just ankle deep he could move quite freely in it. Then he went a little further at God’s command, and it came to his knees, and then to his loins, and eventually he was out of his depth. Here was a river to swim in, and that is what the love of God is. You will never plumb its depths; you are out of your depth trying to do so because it is a river to swim in.

I like to think of this in another sense. The love of God is the centre of this benediction, as if God has stretched out two hands in giving. In one hand is the unspeakable gift of His dearly beloved Son, ‘Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift’ (2 Corinthians 9.15). In the other hand is the gift of His Holy Spirit. Therefore we have two blessed gifts flowing from the love of God through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Thanks be unto God for these two unspeakably precious gifts, both of them flowing from the love of God.

God was not bound by you or me to provide a substitute. We had no claim on Him so to do, and the fact that He was willing to accept a substitute for sinners is a great mercy. And a yet greater mercy is that He Himself was willing to provide that substitute, and a greater mercy even yet that His dear Son should be that substitute. What love, ‘He that spared not his own Son’ (Romans 8.32). He spared not His own Son: no person has ever endured more than the Son of God endured on Calvary’s cross. He drank the very dregs of the hell that were due to His church, right to the last drop. As one good minister put it, ‘He drained the cup of the curse and filled it with the blessing’, the blessing of this text. The ‘cup of blessing’ Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 10.16 is because there’s One who’s drained it of the curse—all the blessed work of God Himself in doing that for His dear people. We see the willingness of God the Father to provide the substitute, and that it is His dear Son.

Many years ago in the eighteenth century there was a Justice of the Peace who had a very unruly son. This son caused havoc, and in the end he had to come before the bench. It happened that his father was the judge appointed for that day. The whole village gathered to see how he would deal with his son. His numerous crimes were read out and the people waited for the judge to pronounce the sentence. Would he be lenient? Would he try to get his son off the hook? No, he pronounced the severest sentence he could possibly have given. The villagers gasped; is the father dealing with his son like that? Then the father laid aside his judge’s robes, went and stood by his son, and said, ‘I will pay it’.

That is what Christ has done: when He hung on the cross He laid aside His own robes and said concerning His church what Paul said to Philemon, if he owe ought ‘I will repay it’. All your tears and prayers—good though they are and God forbid we should cease to pray and weep—do not atone. Only one thing atones: the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and this atonement flows from the love of God. This love is infinite. No wonder that the hymn says:

O Christ, He is the fountain,
The deep, sweet well of love!
The streams on earth I’ve tasted;
More deep I’ll drink above:
There to an ocean fullness
His mercy doth expand,
And glory, glory dwelleth In Emmanuel’s land.¹

Heaven will be the enjoying the fulness of the love of God, through Christ Jesus, by His Spirit.

There is love in all God’s dealings with you. You may not understand them all; a child doesn’t always understand what his parents are about. Sometimes there is the frown rather than the smile, but it’s always in love. ‘Too wise to be mistaken, He, too good to be unkind’,² or as someone else put it, ‘He gives and He takes, He makes no mistakes whatever may be the amount. Nor have we a right, wherever He smite, to ask Him to give an account?’, but it’s always, always in love.

The Communion of the Holy Ghost

And now we come to ‘the communion of the Holy Ghost’. Salvation is a communication: it is God communing with poor sinners through His dearly beloved Son by the Holy Spirit. I like to think of this in the likeness of the smiting of the rock when the children of Israel murmured and grumbled because they had no water. Poor Moses did what he did again and again: he cried unto the Lord. The Lord says ‘Thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it’ (Exodus 17.6). Notice the Lord didn’t tell him to smite those murmuring Israelites, and here the Gospel was preached in a very wonderful way in the wilderness. Christ is that Rock; Divine justice smote it that the Holy Ghost might flow out freely, fully to sinners. What a mercy! They were in the desert sand, but this water was so abundant that it ran in the dry places like a river. Do not we sometimes feel dried up if the Holy Spirit withholds? Oh may the river flow again!

‘There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God’ (Psalm 46.4). And what river is this? It is the dear Spirit coming in that blessed fulness into the hearts of His dear people. Oh, we should thank God for the communication with the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God, the uncorrupted, infallible Word of God as His sword or as His mouth. It has been said, ‘the Spirit without the Word is dumb, and the Word without the Spirit is dead’. That is why the Trinitarian Bible Society doesn’t spread man’s opinions. Instead it sends forth the uncorrupted Word of God, knowing the blessed dence that this is the Sword of the Spirit, the hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. This is the dew that descends, the rain, and the snow that comes down to water the earth.

We distribute the Word with the desire that the Holy Ghost will communicate through it to awaken sinners to their perilous state, and open their eyes to see the danger of the broad road that leads to the destruction, to open their eyes to see their need of the precious Christ, and the dear Spirit to fulfil His office in bringing sinners to Christ. That is His office, He delights to do it; and it is a mercy. He awakens sinners to a sense of their need in conviction. He delights to point that sinner to the one and only way of salvation: the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son that cleanseth us from all sin. Oh what a mercy!

We cast this bread, the Word of God, upon the waters in the humble confidence that it is God’s Word that cannot return to Him void. However, we need the Holy Ghost to use it. Every page of God’s Holy Scripture is inspired, but while it remains just a printed letter on a page it does us no good. We need the Spirit of the Word to take the Word and do what He did for the Psalmist, ‘Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee’ (Psalm 119.11).

Perhaps you are just beginning to be concerned about your soul and its eternal welfare. This is the Book to come to, these are the pages to read. As you open the Bible beg the Holy Spirit to communicate to you the life, blessing, love, mercy, and grace that is in it.

‘The communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all’: that must have put matters right at Corinth, it must have driven that party spirit away, healed that heresy, resolved that matter concerning the immorality, and restored order. That is what is needed, and that’s why we should be so careful lest we grieve the Spirit and He withhold His sacred power and influence.

We read in the prophecy of Ezekiel how the Spirit was on the threshold of the door of the Temple, ready to depart. It is a solemn judgment if the Lord take His Holy Spirit from us personally or from His church; we are utterly helpless and ruined. No wonder David prayed, ‘Take not thy holy spirit from me’ (Psalm 51.11).

Be With You All. Amen.

The Apostle then says two more things. Firstly, ‘Be with you all’. He knew there were some of Apollos, some were of Christ, and some were of him, but he wasn’t partial: he said ‘Be with you all’. God is no respecter of persons, and those of us who stand in office in the church will remember that the wisdom from above is without partiality, and that the Holy Ghost operates without partiality.

Finally, Paul ends with, ‘Amen’. Now when some of us were younger, we would look forward to the Amen, but there comes a time in the life of a true seeker when they don’t want the Amen to come too quickly. They want to hear and receive something for themselves.

What does the word Amen mean? If God says it—and blessed be if He does say it— He says ‘it is true: so be it.’ His dear Son is called the Amen, one of His many names—it means ‘It shall be so’. When our Lord lifted up His once wounded hands over the little gathering at Bethany and blessed them as He was parted from them, He was saying the Amen to them, ‘The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: the LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace’ (Numbers 6.24–26). That’s what He was saying, if not in words certainly in spirit. He was in a way repeating our text.

When we say Amen, it is a prayer, and when we pronounce it at the end of a service—and it’s a wonderful way to close a service—we are saying ‘Lord, let it be so’. Despite all the infirmities of our preaching and hearing, and there are many, ‘Lord, let this be so’; for where this is so, then there is that prosperity we so much long for. Charles Hodge said this, ‘The distinct personality and divinity of the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, to each whom prayer is addressed, is here taken for granted. And therefore this passage is a clear recognition of the doctrine of the Trinity, which is the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, for the Christian is one who seeks and enjoys the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost’.³ That’s his definition as to what a Christian is.

Some years ago I was privileged to go to the United States and viewed the Niagara Falls. It is a marvellous sight, thousands and thousands of tonnes of water pouring over and going right down hundreds of feet. As I looked at it, I thought that this is a faint picture of our text: the love of God in Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit. What struck me was that the falls went right down to the bottom. This is how it will reach those whom God is calling. It changes hearts, renews wills, and turns the feet to Zion’s Hill.

So dear friends, whenever you enter the House of God, enter with this prayer: ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all’, and when you leave it, ‘Lord, let it be so’. Amen.

Endnotes

1. A. R. Cousin, ‘The sands of time are sinking’, hymnary.org/text/the_sands_of_time_are_sinking

2. S. Medley, ‘God shall alone the refuge be’, Gadsby’s Hymns, No. 7.

3. C. Hodges, An exposition of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/ AJH0319.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext, p 315.