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A Book For The Anxious
Horatius Bonar
"To him that worketh not, but believeth." Rom. iv.2
Preface
T
here seem to be many, in our day, who are seeking God.
Yet they appear to be but “feeling after him, in order to find
Him,” as if He were either a distant or an “unknown” God.
They forget that “he is not far from every one of us” (Acts
17:27); for “in him we live, and move, and have our being.”
That He is not far; that He has come down; that He has come
near; this is the “Beginning of the gospel.” It sets aside
the vain thoughts of those who think that they must bring
Him near, by their prayers and devout performances. He has shown himself to us,
that we may know Him, and, in knowing
Him, find the life of our souls.
With some, who call themselves Christians, religion is a very
unfinished thing. It drags heavily, and is not satisfactory,
either to the religious performers of it, or to the onlookers. There
is no substance in it, and no comfort. There is earnestness
perhaps; but there is not “peace with God;” and so there is not
even the root or foundation of that which God call “religion.”
It needs to begin over again.
Acceptance with God lies at the foundation of all religion;
for their must be an accepted worshipper, before there can be
acceptable worship. Religion is, with many, merely the means of
averting God’s displeasure, and securing His favour. It is
often irksome, but they do not feel easy in neglecting it; and
they hope that by it they may obtain forgiveness before they
die.
This, however, is the inversion of God’s order, and is in
reality the worship of an unknown God. it terminates in forgiveness;
whereas God’s religions begins with it. All false
religions, though outwardly differing very widely, are made up
of earnest efforts to secure for the religionists the divine favour
now, and eternal life at last. The one true religion is seen in
the holy life of those who, having found for themselves forgiveness
and favour, in believing the record which God has
given of His Son, are walking with the happy earnestness fo those
whose reward is His constant smile of love; who, having been
much forgiveness, love much, and show, by daily sacrifice and
service, how much they feel themselves debtors to the work in which
they live (Rom. 1:14).
But if this be true religion, how much is there of the false?
It is not good that men should be all their life seeing God,
and never finding him; that they should be ever learning, and
never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. It is not
good to be always doubting; and, when challenged, to make
the untrue excuse that they are only doubting themselves, not
God; that they are only dissatisfied with their own faith, but
not with its glorious object. It is not good to believe in our
own faith, still less in our own doubts, as some seem to do,
making the best doubter to be the best believer. As if it were
the gold of the cup, no the living water which it contains,
that was to quench our thirst; and as if it unlawful to
take that precious water from the poor earthen vessel, such
as our imperfect faith must ever be! In this momentous
thing, surely it is with the water, and not with the vessel,
that the thirsty soul has to do! It is not the quality of the vessel,
but the quality of the water, that the thirsty soul thinks of;
and he, whose pride will not allow him to drink out of a soiled
or broken pitcher, must die of thirst. So he who puts away the
sure reconciliation of the cross, because of an imperfect faith,
must die the death. He who says, “I believe the right thing,
but I don’t believe in the right way, and therefore I can’t
have peace;” is the man whose pride is such, that he is determined
no to quench his thirst save out of a cup of gold.
Some have tried to give directions to sinners on “how to get
converted,” multiplying words without wisdom, leading the
sinner away from the cross, by setting him upon doing, not
upon believing. Our business is not to give such directions,
but, as the apostles did, to preach Christ crucified, a present
Saviour, and a present salvation. Then it is that sinners are
converted, as the Lord Himself said, “I, if I be lifted up, will
draw all men unto me” (John 12:32).
In the following chapters there are some things which may
appear repetitious. But this could not easily be avoided, as
there were certain truths as well as certain errors that necessarily
came up at different points, and under different aspects.
I need not apologise for these, as they were, in a great
measure, unavoidable. They take up very little space, and I
do not think they will seem at all superfluous to any one who
reads for profit and not for criticism.
CHAPTER I
God’s Testimony Concerning Man
G
od knows us. He knows what we are; he knows
also what he meant us to be; and upon the difference between these two states
he founds his testimony concerning us.
He is too loving to say anything needlessly
severe; too true to say anything untrue; nor can he have any motive to
misrepresent us; for he loves to tell of the good, not of the evil, that may be
found in any of the works of his hands. He declares, them "good", "very good",
at first; and if he does not do so now, it is not because he would not, but
because he cannot; for "all flesh has corrupted its way upon the earth."
God's testimony concerning man is, that he is a
sinner. He bears witness against him, not for him, and testifies that "there
is none righteous, no, not one;" that there is "none that doeth good;" none
"that understandeth;" none that even seeketh after God, and still more none
that loveth him. God speaks of man kindly, but severely; as one yearning over
a lost child, yet as one who will make no terms with sin, and will "by no means
clear the guilty." He declares man to be a lost one, a stray one, a rebel, nay
a "hater of God;" not a sinner occasionally, but a sinner always; not a sinner
in part, with many good things about him; but wholly a sinner, with no
compensating goodness; evil in heart as well as life, "dead in trespasses and
sins;" an evil doer, and therefore under condemnation; an enemy of God, and
therefore "under wrath;" a breaker of the righteous law, and therefore under
"the curse of the law."
Man has fallen! Not this man or that man, but
the whole race. In Adam all have sinned; in Adam all have died. It is not
that a few leaves have faded or been shaken down, but the tree has become
corrupt, root and branch. The "flesh," or "old man" - that is, each man as he
is born into the world, a son of man, a fragment of humanity, a unit in Adam's
fallen body, - is "corrupt." He not merely brings forth sin, but he carries it
about with him, as his second self; nay, he is a "body" or mass of sin, a "body
of death," subject not to the law of God, but to "the law of sin." The Jew,
educated under the most perfect of laws, and in the most favorable
circumstances, was the best type of humanity, - of civilized, polished,
educated humanity; the best specimen of the first Adam's sons; yet God's
testimony concerning him is that he is "under sin," that he has gone astray,
and that he has "come short of the glory of God."
The outer life of a man is not the man, just as
the paint on a piece of timber is not the timber, and as the green moss upon
the hard rock is not the rock itself. The picture of a man is not the man; it
is but a skillful arrangement of colors which look like the man. The man that
loves God with all his heart is in a right state; the man that does not love
him thus is in a wrong one. He is a sinner; because his heart is not right
with God. He may think his life a good one, and others may think the same; but
God counts him guilty, worthy of death and hell. The outward good cannot make
up for the inward evil. The good deeds done to his fellow man cannot be set
off against his bad thoughts of God. And he must be full of these bad thoughts
so long as he does not love this infinitely lovable and infinitely glorious
Being with all his strength.
God's testimony then concerning man is, that he
does not love God with all his heart; nay, that he does not love him at all.
Not to love our neighbor is sin; not to love a parent is greater sin; but not
to love God, our divine parent, is greater sin still.
Man need not try to say a good word for himself,
or to plead "not guilty," unless he can show that he loves, and has always
loved God with his whole heart and soul. If he can truly say this, he is all
right, he is not a sinner, and does not need pardon. He will find his way to
the kingdom without the cross and without a Saviour. But, if he cannot say
this, "his mouth is stopped," and he is "guilty before God." However favorably
a good outward life may dispose himself and others to look upon his case just
now, the verdict will go against him hereafter. This is man's day, when man's
judgments prevail; but God's day is coming, when the case shall be strictly
tried upon its real merits. Then the Judge of all the earth shall do right,
and the sinner be put to shame.
There is another and yet worse charge against
him. He does not believe on the name of the Son of God, nor love the Christ of
God. This is his sin of sins. That his heart is not right with God is the
first charge against him. That his heart is not right with the Son of God is
the second. And it is this second that is the crowning crushing sin, carrying
with it more terrible damnation than all other sins together. "He that
believeth not is condemned already; because he he hath not believed in the name
of the only begotten Son of God." "He that believeth not God, hath made him a
liar; because he believeth not the record which God gave of his Son." "He that
believeth not shall be damned." Hence it was that the apostles preached
"repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." And hence it
is that the first sin which the Holy Spirit brings home to a man is unbelief;
"when he is come he will reprove the world of sin, because they believe not on
me."
Such is God's condemnation of man. Of this the
whole Bible is full. That great love of God which his word reveals is based on
this condemnation. It is love to the condemned. God's testimony to his own
grace has no meaning, save as resting on or taking for granted his testimony to
man's guilt and ruin. Nor is it against man as merely a being morally diseased
or sadly unfortunate that he testifies; but as guilty of death, under wrath,
sentenced to the eternal curse; for that crime of crimes, a heart not right
with God, and not true to his Incarnate Son.
This is a divine verdict, not a human one. It is
God, not man, who condemns, and God is not a man that he should lie. This is
God's testimony concerning man, and we know that this witness is true.
CHAPTER II
Man’s Own Character No Ground of Peace
I
f God testify against us, who can testify
for us? If God's opinion of man's sinfulness, his judgment of man's guilt, and
his declaration of sin's evil be so very decided, there can be no hope of
acquittal for us on the ground of personal character of goodness, either of
heart or life. That which God sees in us furnishes only matter for
condemnation, not for pardon.
It is vain to struggle or murmur against God's
judgment. He is the Judge of all the earth; and he is right as well as
sovereign in his judgment. He must be obeyed; his law in inexorable; it cannot
be broken without making the breaker of it (even in one jot or tittle) worthy
of death.
When the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of the soul
it sees this. Conviction of sin is just the sinner seeing himself as he is,
and as God has all along seen him. Then every fond idea of self-goodness,
either in whole or in part, vanishes away. The things in him that once seemed
good appear so bad, and the bad things so very bad, that every self-prop falls
from beneath him, and all hope of being saved, in consequence of something in
his own character, is then taken away. He sees that he cannot save himself;
nor help God to save him. He is lost, and he is helpless. Doings, feelings,
strivings, prayings, givings, abstainings, and the life, are found to be no
relief from a sense of guilt, and, therefore, no resting-place for a troubled
heart. If sin were but a disease or a misfortune, these apparent good things
might relieve him, as being favorable symptoms of returning health; but when
sin is guilt even more than disease; and when the sinner is not merely sick,
but condemned by the righteous Judge; then none of these goodnesses in himself
can reach his case, for they cannot assure him of a complete and righteous
pardon, and, therefore, cannot pacify his roused and wounded conscience.
He sees God's unchangeable hatred of sin, and the
coming revelation of his wrath against the sinner; and he cannot but tremble.
An old writer thus describes his own case; "I had a deep impression of the
things of God; a natural condition and sin appeared worse than hell itself; the
world and vanities thereof terrible and exceeding dangerous; it was fearful to
have ado with it, or to be rich; I saw its day coming; Scripture expressions
were weighty; a Saviour was a big thing in mine eyes; Christ's agonies were
earnest with me; I thought that all my days I was in a dream till now, or like
a child in jest; and I thought the world was sleeping."
The question, "Wherewith shall I come before the
Lord?" is not one which can be decided by an appeal to personal character, or
goodness of life, or prayers, or performances of religion. The way of approach
is not for us to settle. God has settled it; and it only remains for us to
avail ourselves of it. He has fixed it on grounds altogether irrespective of
our character; or rather on grounds which take for granted simply that we are
sinners, and that therefore the element of goodness in us, as a title, or
warrant, or recommendation, is altogether inadmissible, either in whole or
in part.
To say, as some inquiring ones do at the outset
of their anxiety, I will set myself to pray, and after I have prayed a
sufficient length of time, and with tolerable earnestness, I may approach and
count upon acceptance, is not only to build upon the quality and quantity of
our prayers, but is to overlook the real question before the sinner, "How am I
to approach God in order to pray?" All prayers are approaches to God, and the
sinner's anxious question is, "How may I approach God?" God's explicit
testimony to man is, "You are unfit to approach me;" and it is a denial of the
testimony to say, "I will pray myself out of this unfitness into fitness; I
will work myself into a right state of mind and character for drawing near to
God." Anxious spirit! Were you from this moment to cease from sin, and do
nothing but good all the rest of your life, it would not do. Were you to begin
praying now, and do nothing else but pray all your days, it would not do! Your
own character cannot be your way of approach, nor your ground of confidence
toward God. No amount of praying, or working, or feeling, can satisfy the
righteous law, or pacify a guilty conscience, or quench the flaming sword that
guards the access into the presence of the infinitely Holy One.
That which makes it safe for you to draw near to
God, and right for God to receive you, must be something altogether away from
and independent of yourself; for, yourself and everything pertaining to
yourself God has already condemned; and no condemned thing can give you any
warrant for going to him, or hoping for acceptance. Your liberty of entrance
must come from something which he has accepted; not from something which
he has condemned.
I knew an awakened soul who, in the bitterness of
his spirit, thus set himself to work and pray in order to get peace. He
doubled the amount of his devotions, saying to himself, "Surely God will give
me peace." But the peace did not come. He set up family worship, saying,
"Surely God will give me peace." But the peace came not. At last he bethought
himself of having a prayer meeting in his house as a certain remedy. He fixed
the night; called his neighbors; and prepared himself for conducting the
meeting, by writing a prayer and learning it by heart. As he finished the
operation of learning it, preparatory to the meeting, he threw it down on the
table saying, "Surely that will do, God will give me peace now." In that
moment, a still small voice seemed to speak in his ear, saying, "No, that will
not do; but Christ will do." Straightway the scales fell from his eyes, and
the burden from his shoulders. Peace poured in like a river. "Christ will
do," was his watchword for life.
Very clear is God's testimony against man, and
man's doings, in this great matter of approach and acceptance. "Not by works
of righteousness which we have done," says Paul in one place,[1] and "to him that worketh not," says he in a second; [2] "not justified by the works of the law," say he
in a third.[3]
The sinner's peace with God is not to come from
his own character. No grounds of peace or elements of reconciliation can be
extracted from himself, either directly or indirectly. His one qualification
for peace is, that he needs it. It is not what he has, but what he lacks of
good that draws him to God; and it is the conscienceness of his lack that bids
him look elsewhere, for something both to invite and embolden him to approach.
It is our sickness, not our health, that fits us for the physician, and casts
us upon his skill.
No guilty conscience can be pacified with
anything short of that which will make pardon a present, a sure, and a
righteous thing. Can our best doings, our best feelings, our best prayers, our
best sacrifices, bring this about? Nay; having accumulated these to the
utmost, does not the sinner feel that pardon is just as far off and uncertain
as before? and that all his earnestness cannot persuade God to admit him to
favor, or bride his own conscience into true quiet even for an hour?
In all false religion, the worshipper rests his
hope of divine favor upon something in his own character, or life, or religious
duties. The Pharisee did this when he came into the temple, "thanking God that
he was not as other men."[4] So do those in our
day who think to get peace by doing, feeling, and praying more than others, or
than they themselves have done in time past; and who refuse to take the peace
of the free gospel till they have amassed such an amount of this doing and
feeling as will ease their consciences, and make them conclude that it would
not be fair in God to reject the application of men so earnest and devout as
they. The Galatians did this also when they insisted on adding the law of
Moses to the gospel of Christ as the ground of confidence toward God. Thus do
many act among ourselves. They will not take confidence from God's character
or Christ's work, but from their own character and work; though in reference to
all this it is written, "The Lord hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt
not prosper in them."[5] They object to a
present confidence, for that assumes that a sinner's resting place is wholly
out of himself, - ready-made, as it were, by God. They would have this
confidence to be a very gradual thing, in order that they may gain time, and,
by a little diligence in religious observances, may so add to their stock of
duties, prayers, experiences, devotions, that they may, with some humble hope,
as they call it, claim acceptance from God. By this course of devout living
they think they have made themselves more acceptable to God than they were
before they began this religious process, and much more entitled to expect the
divine favor than those who have not so qualified themselves. In all this the
attempted resting-place is self, - that self which God has condemned.
They would not rest upon unpraying, or unworking, or undevout self; but they
think it right and safe to rest upon praying, and working, and devout self, and
they call this humility! The happy confidence of the simple believer
who takes God's word at once, and rests on it, they call presumption or
fanaticism; their own miserable uncertainty, extracted from the doings of self,
they speak of as a humble hope.
The sinner's own character, in any form, and
under any process of improvement, cannot furnish reasons for trusting God.
However amended, it cannot speak peace to his conscience, nor afford him any
warrant for reckoning on God's favor; nor can it help to heal the breach
between him and God. For God can accept nothing but perfection in such a case,
and the sinner has nothing but imperfection to present. Imperfect duties and
devotions cannot persuade God to forgive. Besides, be it remembered that the
person of the worshipper must be accepted before his services can be
acceptable; so that nothing can be of any use to the sinner save that which
provides for personal acceptance completely, and at the outset. The sinner
must go to God as he is, or not at all. To try to pray himself into something
better than a condemned sinner, in order to win God's favor, is to make prayer
an instrument of self-righteousness; so that, instead of its being the act of
an accepted man, it is the purchase of acceptance, - the price which we pay to
God for favoring us, and the bribe with which we persuade conscience no longer
to trouble us with its terrors. No knowledge of self, nor conscienceness of
improvement of self, can soothe the alarms of an awakened conscience, or be any
ground for expecting the friendship of God. To take comfort from our good
doings, or good feelings, or good plans, or good prayers, or good experiences,
is to delude ourselves, and to say peace when there is no peace. No man can
quench his thirst with sand, or with water from the Dead Sea; so no man can
find rest from his own character however good, or from his own acts however
religious. Even were he perfect, what enjoyment could there be in thinking
about his own perfection? What profit, then, can there be in thinking about
his own imperfection?
Even were there many good things about him, they
could not speak peace: for the good things which might speak peace, could not
make up for the evil things which speak trouble; and what a poor, self-made
peace would that be which arose from his thinking as much good and as little
evil of himself as possible. And what a temptation, besides, would this
furnish, to extenuate the evil and exaggerate the good about ourselves, - in
other words, to deceive our own hearts. Self-deception must always, more or
less, be the result of such estimates of our own experiences. Laid open, as we
are, in such a case, to all manner of self-blinding influences, it is
impossible that we can be impartial judges, or that we can be "without
guile,"[6] as in the case of those who are
freely and at once forgiven.
One man might say, My sins are not very great or
many; surely I may take peace. Another might say, I have made up for my sins
by my good deeds; I may have peace. Another might say, I have a very deep
sense of sin; I may have peace. Another might say, I have repented of my sin;
I may have peace. Another might say, I pray much, I work much, I love much, I
give much; I may have peace. What temptation in all this to take the most
favorable view of self and its doings! But, after all, it would be vain.
There could be no real peace; for its foundation would be sand, not rock. The
peace or confidence which comes from summing up the good points of our
character, and thinking of our good feelings and doings, or about our faith,
and love, and repentance, must be made up of pride. Its basis is
self-righteousness, or at least self-approbation.
It does not mend the matter to say that we look
at these good feelings in us, as the Spirit's work, not our own. In one aspect
this takes away boasting, but in another it does not. It still makes our peace
to turn upon what is in ourselves, and not on what is in God. Nay, it makes
use of the Holy Spirit for purposes of self-righteousness. It says that the
Spirit works the change in us, in order that he may thereby furnish us with a
ground of peace within ourselves.
No doubt the Spirit's work in us must be
accompanied with peace; but not because he has given us something in ourselves
to draw our peace from. It is that kind of peace which arises unconsciously
from the restoration of spiritual health; but not that which Scripture calls
"peace with God." It does not arise from thinking about the change wrought in
us, but unconsciously and involuntarily from the change itself. If a broken
limb be made whole, we get relief straightway; not by "thinking about the
healed member, but simply in the bodily case and comfort which the cure has
given. So there is a peace arising out of the change of nature and character
wrought by the Spirit; but this is not reconciliation with God. This is not
the peace which the knowledge of forgiveness brings. It accompanies it, and
flows from it, but the two kinds of peace are quite distinct from each other.
Nor does even the peace which attends restoration of spiritual health come at
second hand, from thinking about our change; but directly from the change
itself. That change is the soul's new health, and this health is in itself a
continual gladness.
Still it remains true, that in ourselves we have
no resting place. "No confidence in the flesh" must be our motto, as it is the
foundation of God's gospel.
CHAPTER III
God’s Character Our Resting-Place
W
e have seen that a sinner's peace cannot
come from himself, nor from the knowledge of himself, nor from thinking about
his own acts and feelings, nor from the consciousness of any amendment of his
old self.
Whence, then, is it to come? How does he get
it?
It can only come from God; and it is in knowing
God that he gets it. God has written a volume for the purpose of making
himself known; and it is in this revelation of his character that the sinner is
to find the rest that he is seeking. God himself is the fountainhead of our
peace; his revealed truth is the channel through which this peace finds its way
into us; and his Holy Spirit is the great interpreter of that truth to as:
"Acquaint thyself now with God, and be at peace."[7] Yes, acquaintanceship with God is peace!
Had God told us that he was not gracious, that he
took no interest in our welfare, and that he had no intention of pardoning us,
we could have no peace and no hope. In that case our knowing God would only
make us miserable. Our situation would be like that of the devils, who
"believe and tremble;"[8] and the more we knew
of such a God, we should tremble the more. For how fearful a thing must it be
to have the great God that made us, the great Father of Spirits, against us,
not for us!
Strange to say, this is the very state of
disquietude in which we may find many who profess to believe in a God "merciful
and gracious!" With the Bible in their hands, and the cross before their eyes,
they wander on in a state of darkness and fear, such as would have arisen had
God revealed himself in hatred not in love. They seem to believe the very
opposite of what the Bible teaches us concerning God; and to attach a meaning
to the Cross, the very opposite of what the gospel declares it really bears.
Had God been all frowns, and the Bible all terrors, and Christ all sternness,
these men could not have been in a more troubled and uncertain state than that
in which they are.
How is this? Have they not misunderstood the
Bible? Have they not mistaken the character of God, looking on him as an
"austere man" and a "hard master?" Are they not laboring to supplement the
grace of God by something on their part, as if they believed that this grace
was not sufficient to meet their case, until they had attracted it to
themselves by some earnest performances, or spiritual exercises, of their
own?
God has declared himself to be gracious. "God is
love." He has embodied this grace in the person and work of his beloved Son.
He has told us that this grace is for the ungodly, the unholy, the unfit, the
stout-hearted, the dead in sin. The more, then, that we know of this God and
of his grace, the more will his peace fill us. Nor will the greatness of our
sins, and the hardness of our hearts, or the changeableness of our feelings,
discourage or disquiet, however much they may humble us, and make us
dissatisfied with ourselves.
Let us study the character of God: - holy, yet
loving; the love not interfering with the holiness, nor the holiness with the
love; absolutely sovereign, yet infinitely gracious; the sovereignty not
straightening the grace, nor the grace the sovereignty; drawing the unwilling,
yet not hindering the willing, if any such there be; quickening whom he will,
yet having no pleasure in the death of the wicked; compelling some to come in,
yet freely inviting all! Let us look at him in the face of Jesus Christ; for
He is the express image of his person, and he that hath seen Him hath seen the
Father. The knowledge of that gracious character, as interpreted by the cross
of Christ, is the true remedy for our disquietness. insufficient
acquaintanceship with God lies at the root of our fears and gloom. I know
that flesh and blood cannot reveal God to you, and that the Holy Spirit alone
can enable you to know either the Father or the Son. But I would not have you
for a moment suppose that this Spirit is reluctant to do his work in you; nor
would I encourage you in the awful thought, that you are willing while he is
unwilling; or that the sovereignty of God is a hindrance to the sinner, and a
restraint of the Spirit. The whole Bible takes for granted that all this is
absolutely impossible. Never can the great truths of divine sovereignty and
the Spirit's work land us, as some seem to think they may do, in such a
conflict between a willing sinner and an unwilling God. The whole Bible is so
written by the Spirit, and the gospel was so preached by the apostles, as never
to raise the question of God's willingness, nor to lead to the remotest
suspicion of his readiness to furnish the sinner with all needful aid. Hence
the great truths of God's eternal election, and Christ's redemption of his
Church, as we read them in the Bible, are helps and encouragements to the soul.
But interpreted as they are by many, they seem barrier-walls, not ladders for
scaling the great barrier-wall of man's unwillingness; and anxious souls become
land-locked in metaphysical questions, out of which there can be no way of
extrication save that of taking God at his word.
In the Bible God has revealed himself. In Christ
he has done so most expressively. He has done so that there might be no
mistake as to it on the part of man.
Christ's person is a revelation of God. Christ's
work is a revelation of God Christ's words are a revelation of God. He is in
the Father, and the Father in him. His words and works are the words and works
of the Father. In the manger he showed us God. In the synagogue of Nazareth
he showed us God. At Jacob's well he showed us God. At the tomb of Lazarus he
showed us God. On Olivet, as he wept over Jerusalem, he showed us God. On the
cross he showed us God. In the tomb he showed us God. In his resurrection he
showed us God. If we say with Philip, "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth
us;" he answers, "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not
known me? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."[9] This God whom Christ reveals as the God of righteous grace
and gracious righteousness, is the God with whom we have to do.
To know his character as thus interpreted to us
by Jesus and his cross, is to have peace. It is into this knowledge of the
Father that the Holy Spirit leads the soul whom he is conducting, by his
almighty power, from darkness to light. For everything that we know of God we
owe to this divine Teacher, this Interpreter, this "One among a thousand."[10] But never let the sinner imagine that he is
more willing to learn than the Spirit is to teach. Never let him say to
himself, "I would fain know God, but I cannot of myself, and the Spirit will
not teach me."
It is not enough for us to say to some dispirited
one, "It is your unbelief that is keeping you wretched; only believe, and all
is well." This is true; but it is only general truth; which, in many cases, is
of no use, because it does not show him how it applies to him. On this point
he is often a fault; thinking that faith is some great work to be done, which
he is to labor at with all his might, praying all the while to God to help him
in doing this great work; and that unbelief is some evil principle, requiring
to be uprooted before the gospel will be of any use to him.
But what is the real meaning of this faith and
this unbelief?
In all unbelief there are these two things, - a
good opinion of one's self, and a bad opinion of God. So long as these two
things exist, it is impossible for an inquirer to find rest. His good opinion
of himself makes him think it quite impossible to win God's favor by his own
religious performances; and his bad opinion of God makes him unwilling and
afraid to put his case wholly into his hands. The object of the Holy Spirit's
work, in convincing of sin, is to alter the sinner's opinion of himself, and so
to reduce his estimate of his own character, that he shall think of himself as
God does, and so cease to suppose it possible that he can be justified by any
excellency of his own. Having altered the sinner's good opinion of himself,
the Spirit then alters his evil opinion of God, so as to make him see that the
God with whom he has to do is really the God of all grace.
But the inquirer denies that he has a good
opinion of himself, and owns himself a sinner. Now a man may say this; but
really to know it is something more than saying. Besides, he may be willing to
take the name of sinner to himself, in common with his fellow men, and not at
all own himself such a sinner as God says he is, - such a sinner as needs a
whole Saviour to himself, - such a sinner as needs the cross, and blood, and
righteousness of the Son of God. He may not have quite such a bad opinion of
himself as to make him sensible that he can expect nothing from God on the
score of personal goodness, or amendment of life, or devout observance of duty,
or superiority to others. It takes a great deal to destroy a man's good
opinion of himself; and even after he has lost his good opinion of his works,
he retains his good opinion of his heart; and even after he has lost that, he
holds fast his good opinion of his own religious duties, by means of which he
hopes to make up for evil works and a bad heart. Nay, he hopes to be able so
to act, and feel, and pray, as to lead God to entertain a good opinion of him,
and receive him into favor.
All such efforts spring from thinking well of
himself in some measure; and also from his thinking evil of God, as if he would
not receive him as he is. If he knew himself as God does, he would no more
resort to such efforts than he would think of walking up an Alpine precipice.
How difficult it is to make a man think of himself as God does! What but the
almightiness of the Divine Spirit can accomplish this?
But the inquirer says that he has not a bad
opinion of God. But has he such an opinion of him as the Bible gives or the
cross reveals? Has he such an opinion of him as makes him feel quite safe in
putting his soul into his gracious hands, and trusting him with its eternal
keeping? If not, what is the extent or nature of his good opinion of God? The
knowledge of God, which the cross supplies, ought to set all doubt aside, and
make distrust appear in the most odious of aspects, as a wretched
misrepresentation of God's character and a slander upon his gracious name.
Unbelief, then, is the belief of a lie and the rejection of the truth. It
obliterates from the cross the gracious name of God, and inscribes another
name, the name of an unknown god, in which there is no peace for the sinner and
no rest for the weary.
Accept, then, the character of God as given in
the gospel; read aright his blessed name as it is written upon the cross; take
the simple interpretation given of his mind toward the ungodly, as you have it
at length in the glad tidings of peace. Is not that enough? If that which God
has made known of himself be not enough to allay your fears, nothing else
will. The Holy Spirit will not give you peace irrespective of your views of
God's character. That would be countenancing the worship of a false god,
instead of the true God revealed in the Bible. It is in common connection with
the truth concerning the true God, "the God of all grace," that the Spirit
gives peace. It is the love of the true God that he sheds abroad in the
heart.
The object of the Spirit's work is to make us
acquainted with the true Jehovah, that in him we may rest; not to produce in us
certain feelings, the consciousness of which will make us think better of
ourselves, and give us confidence toward God. That which he shows us of
ourselves is only evil; that which he shows us of God is only good. He does
not enable us to feel or to believe, in order that we may be comforted by our
feeling or our faith. Even when working in us most powerfully he turns our
eyes away from his own work in us, to fix it on God, and his love in Christ
Jesus our Lord. The substance of the gospel is the NAME of the great Jehovah,
unfolded in and by Jesus Christ; the character of him in whom we "live and move
and have our being," as the "just God, yet the Saviors,"[11] the Justifier of the ungodly.
Inquiring spirit, turn your eye to the cross and
see these two things, - the Crucifiers and the Crucified. See the Crucifiers,
the haters of God and his Son. They are yourself. Read in them your own
character, and cease to think of making that a ground of peace. See the
Crucified. It is God himself; incarnate love. It is the God who made you,
suffering, dying for the ungodly. Can you suspect his grace? Can you cherish
evil thoughts of him? Can you ask anything farther to awaken in you the
fullest and most unreserved confidence? Will you misinterpret that agony and
death by saying that they do not mean grace, or that the grace which they mean
is not for you? Call to mind that which is written, - "Hereby perceive we the
love of God, that he laid down his life for us."[12] "Herein is LOVE, not that we love God, but that he
loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation of our sins."[13]
CHAPTER IV
Righteous Grace
W
e have spoken of God's character as "the
God of all grace."[14] We have seen that it
is in "tasting that the Lord is gracious" that the sinner has peace.[15]
But let us keep in mind that this grace is the
grace of a righteous God; it is the grace of one who is Judge as well as
Father. Unless we see this we shall mistake the gospel, and fail in
appreciating both the pardon we are seeking, and the great sacrifice through
which it comes to us. No vague forgiveness, arising out of mere paternal love,
will do. We need to know what kind of pardon it is; and whether it proceeds
from the full recognition of our absolute guiltiness by him who is to "judge
the world in righteousness." The right kind of pardon comes not from love
alone, but from law; not from good nature, but from righteousness; not from
indifference to sin, but from holiness.
The inquirer who is only half in earnest
overlooks this. His feelings are moved, but his conscience is not roused.
Hence he is content with very vague ideas of God's mere compassion for the
sinner's unhappiness. To him human guilt seems but human misfortune, and God's
acquittal of the sinner little more than the overlooking of his sin. He does
not trouble himself with asking how the forgiveness comes, or what is the real
nature of the love which he professes to have received. He is easily soothed
to sleep, because he has never been fully awake. He is, at the best, a
stony-ground hearer; soon losing the poor measure of joy that he may have got;
becoming a formalist; or perhaps a trifler with sin; or it may be, a religious
sentimentalist.
But he whose conscience has been pierced, is not
so easily satisfied. He sees that the God, whose favor he is seeking, is holy
as well as loving; and that he has to do with righteousness as well as grace.
Hence the first inquiry that he makes is as to the righteousness of the pardon
which the grace of God holds out. He must be satisfied on this point, and see
that the grace is righteous grace, ere he can enjoy it all. The more alive he
is to his own unrighteousness, the more does he feel the need of ascertaining
the righteousness of the grace which we make known to him.
It does not satisfy him to say, that, since it
comes from a righteous God, it must be righteous grace. His conscience wants
to see the righteousness of the way by which it comes. Without this it cannot
be pacified or "purged;" and the man is not made "perfect as pertaining to the
conscience;"[16] but must always have an
uneasy feeling that all is not right; that his sins may one day rise up against
him.
That which soothes the heart will not always
pacify the conscience. The sight of the grace will do the former; but only the
sight of the righteousness of the grace will do the latter. Till the later is
done, there cannot be real peace. The hurt is healed slightly, and peace is
spoken where there is no peace.[17] The
healing of the hurt can only be brought about by speaking peace where there is
peace.
Here the work of Christ comes in; and the cross
of the Sin-bearer answers the question which conscience has raised, - "Is it
righteous grace?" It is this great work of propitiation that exhibits God as
"the just God, yet the Saviour;"[18] not only
righteous in spite of his justifying the ungodly, but righteous in doing so.
It shows salvation as an act of righteousness; nay, one of the highest acts of
righteousness that a righteous God can do. It shows pardon not only as the
deed of a righteous God, but as the thing which shows how righteous he is, and
how he hates and condemns the very sin that he is pardoning.
Hear the word of the Lord concerning this
"finished" work. "Christ died for our sins." "He was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." "Christ was once offered
to bear the sins of many." "He gave himself for us." "He was delivered for
our offences." "He gave himself for our sins." "Christ died for the ungodly."
"He hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." "Christ hath
suffered for us in the flesh." "Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just
for the unjust." "His own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree."
These expressions speak of something more than
love. Love is in each of them; the deep, true, real love of God; but also
justice and holiness; inflexible and inexorable adherence to law. They have no
meaning apart from law; law as the foundation, pillar, keystone of the
universe.
But their connection with law is also their
connection with love. For as it was law, in its unchangeable perfection, that
constituted the necessity for the Surety's death, so it was this necessity that
drew out the Surety's love, and gave also glorious proof of the love of him who
made him to be sin for us. For if a man were to die for another, when there
was no necessity for his doing so, we should hardly call his death a proof of
love. At best, such would be foolish love, or, at least, a fond and idle way
of showing it. But to die for one, when there is really need of dying, is the
true test of genuine love. To die for a friend when nothing less will save
him; this is the proof of love! When either he or we must die; and when he, to
save us from dying, dies himself, this is love. There was need of a death, if
we were to be saved from dying. Righteousness made the necessity. And, to
meet this terrible necessity, the Son of God took flesh and died! He died,
because it was written, "The soul that sinneth it shall die."[19] Love led him down to the cradle; love led him up to the
cross! He died as the sinner's substitute. He died to make it a righteous
thing in God to cancel the sinner's guilt and annul the penalty of his
everlasting death.
Had it not been for this dying, grace and guilt
could not have looked each other in the face; God and the sinner could not have
come nigh; righteousness would have forbidden reconciliation; and
righteousness, we know, is as divine and real a thing as love. Without this
exception, it would not have been right for God to receive the sinner nor safe
for the sinner to come.
But now, mercy and truth have met together; now
grace is righteousness, and righteousness is grace. This satisfies the
sinner's conscience, by showing him righteous love for the unrighteous and
unlovable. It tells him, too, that the reconciliation brought about in this
way shall never be disturbed, either in this life or that which is to come. It
is righteous reconciliation, and will stand every test, as well as last
throughout eternity. The peace of conscience thus secured will be trial-proof,
sickness-proof, deathbed-proof, judgment-proof. Realizing this, the chief of
sinners can say, "Who is he that condemneth?"
What peace for the stricken conscience is there
in the truth that Christ died for the ungodly; and that it is of the ungodly
that the righteous God is the Justifier! The righteous grace thus coming to us
through the sin-bearing work of the "Word made flesh," tells the soul, at once
and forever, that there can be no condemnation for any sinner upon earth, who
will only consent to be indebted to this free love of God, which, like a
fountain of living water, is bursting freely forth from the foot of the
Cross.
Just, yet the Justifier of the ungodly! What
glad tidings are here! Here is grace; God's free love to the sinner; divine
bounty and goodwill, altogether irrespective of human worth or merit. For this
is the scriptural meaning of that often misunderstood word "grace."
This righteous free love has its origin in the
bosom of the Father, where the only begotten has his dwelling. It is not
produced by anything out of God himself. It was man's evil, not his good, that
called it forth. It was not the drawing to the like, but to the unlike; it was
light attracted by darkness, and life by death. It does not wait for our
seeking, it comes unasked as well as undeserved. It is not our faith that
creates it or calls it up; our faith realizes it as already existing in its
divine and manifold fullness. Whether we believe it or not, this righteous
grace exists, and exists for us. Unbelief refuses it; but faith takes it,
rejoices in it, and lives upon it. Yes, faith takes this righteous grace of
God, and, with it, a righteous pardon, a righteous salvation, and a righteous
heirship of the everlasting glory.
CHAPTER V
The Blood Of Sprinkling
B
ut an inquirer asks, What is the special
meaning of the blood, of which we read so much? How does it speak peace? How
does it "purge the conscience from dead works?" What can blood have to do with
the peace, the grace, and the righteousness of which we have been speaking?
God has given the reason for the stress which he
lays upon the blood; and, in understanding this, we get to the very bottom of
the grounds of a sinner's peace.
The sacrifices of old, from the days of Abel
downward,furnishes us with the key to the meaning of the blood, and explain the
necessity for its being "shed for the remission of sins." "Not without
blood"[20] was the great truth taught by God
from the beginning; the inscription which may be said to have been written on
the gates of tabernacle and temple. For more than two thousand years, during
the ages of the patriarchs, there was but one great sacrifice, - the burnt
offering. This, under the Mosaic service, was split into parts, - the peace
offering, trespass offering, sin offering, etc. In all of these, however, the
essence of the original burnt offering was preserved, - by the blood and the
fire, which were common to them all. The blood, as the emblem of substitution,
and the fire, as the symbol of God's wrath upon the substitute, were seen in
all the parts of Israel's service; but specially in the daily burnt offering,
the morning and evening lamb, which was the true continuation and
representative of the old patriarchal burnt offering. It was to this that John
referred when he said "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the
world." Israel's daily lamb was the kernel and core of all the Old Testament
sacrifices; and it was its blood that carried them back to the primitive
sacrifices, and forward to the blood of sprinkling that was to speak better
things than that of Abel.
In all these sacrifices the shedding of the blood
was the infliction of death. The "blood was the life;" and the pouring out of
the blood was the "pouring out of the soul." This blood shedding or
life-taking was the payment of the penalty for sin; for it was threatened from
the beginning, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;" and it
is written, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," and again, "The wages of sin
is death."
But the blood shedding of Israel's sacrifices
could not take sin away. It showed the way in which this was to be done, but
it was in fact more a "remembrance of sins," than an expiation. It said life
must be given for life, ere sin can be pardoned; but then the continual
repetition of the sacrifices showed that there was needed richer blood than
Moriah's altar was ever sprinkled with, and a more precious life than man could
give.
The great blood-shedding has been accomplished;
the better life has been presented; and the one death of the Son of God has
done what all the deaths of old could never do. His one life was enough; his
one dying paid the penalty; and God does not ask two lives, or two deaths, or
two payments. "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many. In that he
died, he died unto sin once." "He offered one sacrifice for sins forever."
The "sprinkling of the blood," was the making use
of the death, by putting it upon certain persons or things, so that these
persons or things were counted to be dead, and, therefore, to have paid the
law's penalty. So long as they had not paid that penalty, they were counted
unclean and unfit for God to look upon; but as soon as they had paid it, they
were counted clean and fit for the service of God. Usually when we read of
cleansing, we think merely of our common process of removing stains by water
and soap. But this is not the figure meant in the application of the
sacrifice. The blood cleanses, not like the prophet's "nitre and much soap,"
but by making us partakers of the death of the Substitute. For what is it that
makes us filthy before God? It is our guilt, our breach of law, and our being
under sentence of death in consequence of our disobedience. We have not only
done what God dislikes, but what his righteous law declares to be worthy of
death. It is this sentence of death that separates us so completely from God,
making it wrong for him to bless us, and perilous for us to go to him.
When thus covered all over with that guilt whose
penalty is death, the blood is brought in by the great High Priest. That blood
represents death; it is God's expression for death. It is then sprinkled on
us, and thus death, which is the law's penalty, passes on us. We die. We
undergo the sentence; and thus the guilt passes away. We are cleansed! The
sin which was like scarlet becomes as snow; and that which was like crimson
becomes as wool. It is thus that we make use of the blood of Christ in
believing; for faith is just the sinner's employing the blood. Believing what
God has testified concerning this blood, we become one with Jesus in his death;
and thus we are counted in law, and treated by God, as men who have paid the
whole penalty, and so been "washed from their sins in his blood."[21]
Such are the glad tidings of life, through him
who died. They are tidings which tell us, not what we are to do, in order to
be saved, but what He has done. This only can lay to rest the sinner's fears;
can "purge his conscience;" can make him feel as a thoroughly pardoned man.
The right knowledge of God's meaning in this sprinkling of the blood, is the
only effectual way of removing the anxieties of the troubled soul, and
introducing him into perfect peace.
The gospel is not the mere revelation of the
heart of God in Christ Jesus. In it the righteousness of God is specially
manifested; and it is this revelation of the righteousness that makes it so
truly "the power of God unto salvation." The blood shedding is God's
declaration of the righteousness of the love which he is pouring down upon the
sons of men; it is the reconciliation of law and love; the condemnation of the
sin and the acquittal of the sinner. As "without shedding of blood there is no
remission; so the gospel announces that the blood has been shed by which
remission flows; and now we know that "the Son of God is come," and that "the
blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin." The conscience is satisfied. It
feels that God's grace is righteous grace, that his love is holy love. There
it rests.
It is not by incarnation but by blood shedding
that we are saved. The Christ of God is no mere expounder of wisdom; no mere
deliverer or gracious benefactor; and they who think they have told the whole
gospel, when they have spoken of Jesus revealing the love of God, do greatly
err. If Christ be not the Substitute, he is nothing to the sinner. If he did
not die as the Sinbearer, he has died in vain. Let us not be deceived on this
point, nor misled by those who, when they announce Christ as the Deliverer,
think they have preached the gospel. If I throw a rope to a drowning man, I am
a deliverer. But is Christ no more than that? If I cast myself into the sea,
and risk my life to save another, I am a deliverer. But is Christ no more?
Did he but risk his life? The very essence of Christ's deliverance is the
substitution of Himself for us, his life for ours. He did not come to risk his
life; he cam to die! He did not redeem us by a little loss, a little
sacrifice, a little labor, a little suffering, "He redeemed us to God by his
blood;" "the precious blood of Christ." He gave all he had, even his life,
for us. This is the kind of deliverance that awakens the happy song, "To him
that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood."
The tendency of the world's religion just now is,
to reject the blood; and to glory in a gospel which needs no sacrifice, no
"Lamb slain." Thus, they go "in the way of Cain." Cain refused the blood, and
came to God without it. He would not own himself a sinner, condemned to die,
and needing the death of another to save him. This was man's open rejection of
God's own way of life. Foremost in this rejection of, what is profanely called
by some scoffers, "the religion of the shambles," we see the first murderer;
and he who would not defile his altar with the blood of a lamb, pollutes the
earth with his brother's blood.
The heathen altars have been red with blood; and
to this day they are the same. But these worshippers know not what they mean,
in bringing that blood. It is associated only with vengeance in their minds;
and they shed it, to appease the vengeance of their gods. But this is no
recognition either of the love or the righteousness of God. "Fury is not in
him;" whereas their altars speak only of fury. The blood which they bring is a
denial both of righteousness and grace.
But look at Israel's altars. There is blood; and
they who bring it know the God to whom they come. They bring it in
acknowledgment of their own guilt, but also of his pardoning love. They say,
"I deserve death;" but let this death stand for mine; and let the love which
otherwise could not reach me, by reason of guilt, now pour itself out on
me."
Inquiring soul! Beware of Cain's error on the
one hand, in coming to God without blood; and beware of the heathen error on
the other, in mistaking the meaning of the blood. Understand God's mind and
meaning, in "the precious blood" of his Son. Believe his testimony concerning
it; so shall thy conscience be pacified, and thy soul find rest.
It is into Christ's death, that we are baptized,
and hence the cross, which was the instrument of that death, is that in which
we glory. The cross is to us the payment of the sinner's penalty, the
extinction of the debt, and the tearing up of the bond or handwriting which was
against us. And as the cross is the payment, so the resurrection is God's
receipt in full, for the whole sum, signed with his own hand. Our faith is
not the completion of the payment, but the simple recognition on our part of
the payment made by the Son of God. By this recognition, we become so one
with Him who died and rose, that we are henceforth reckoned to be the parties
who have paid he penalty, and treated as if it were we ourselves who had died.
Thus are we justified from the sin, and then made partakers of the
righteousness of him, who was not only delivered for our offences, but who rose
again for our justification.
CHAPTER VI
The Person And Work Of The Substitute
L
ife comes to us through death; and thus
grace bounds towards us in righteousness. This we have seen in a general way.
But we have something more to learn concerning him who lived and died as the
sinner's substitute. The more that we know of his person and his works, the
more shall we be satisfied, in heart and conscience, with the provision which
God has made for our great need.
Our sin-bearer is the Son of God, the eternal Son
of the Father. Of him it is written, "In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God." He is "the brightness of his glory,
and the express image of his person." He is "in the Father, and the Father in
him;" "the Father dwelleth in him;" "he that hath seen him hath seen the
Father;" and "he that heareth him, heareth him that sent him." He is the "Word
made flesh;" "God manifest in flesh;" "Jesus the Christ, who has come in the
flesh." His name is "Immanuel," God with us; Jesus, the "Saviour;" "Christ,"
the anointed One, filled with the Spirit without measure; "the only begotten of
the Father, full of grace and truth."
He came preaching the gospel of the kingdom, that
is, the good news about the kingdom; teaching the multitudes that gathered
round him; healing the sick, and opening the eyes of the blind, and raising the
dead; "receiving sinners and eating with them." "He came to seek and to save
that which was lost;" he went about speaking words of grace such as man never
spake, saying, "I am the Way, and the truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto
the Father, but by me." He went out and in as The Saviour, and in his whole
life we see him as the Shepherd seeking his lost sheep, as the woman her lost
piece of silver, and as the father looking out for his lost son. He is
"mighty to save;" he is "able to save to the uttermost;" he came to be "the
Saviour of the world."
In all these things thus written concerning
Jesus, there is good news for the sinner; such as should draw him, in simple
confidence to God; making him feel that his case has really been taken up in
earnest by God; and that God's thoughts towards him are thoughts, not of anger,
but of peace and grace. Heaven has come down to earth! There is goodwill
toward man. He is not to be handed over to his great enemy. God has taken his
side, and stepped in between him and Satan. This world is not to be burned up,
nor its dwellers made eternal exiles from God! The darkness is passing away,
and the true light is shining!
Yet it is not the person of Christ, nor his
birth, nor his life, that can suffice. That the Son of God took a true but a
sinless humanity of the very substance of the virgin; becoming bone of our
bone, and flesh of our flesh; being in very deed the woman's seed; that he
dwelt among us for a lifetime, is but the beginning of the good news; the
Alpha, but not the Omega. This was shown to Israel, and to us also, in the
temple veil. That veil was the type of the flesh; and, so long as that curtain
remained whole, there was no entrance into the near presence of God. The
worshipper was not indeed frowned upon; but he had to stand afar off. The veil
said to the sinner, "Godhead is within;" but is also said, "You cannot enter
till something more has been done." The Holy Ghost, by it, signified that the
way into the Holiest was not yet open. The rending of the veil; that is, the
crucifixion of "the Word made flesh," opened the way completely.
Hence it is that the Holy Spirit sums up the good
news in one or two special points. They are these: Christ was crucified.
Christ died. Christ was buried. Christ rose again from the dead. Christ went
up on high. Christ sits at God's right hand, our "Advocate with the Father,"
"ever living to make intercession for us."
These are the great facts which contain the good
news. They are few and they are plain; so that a child may remember and
understand them. They are the caskets which contain the heavenly gems. They
are the cups which hold the living water for the thirsty soul; the golden
baskets in which God has placed the bread of life, the true bread which came
down from heaven, of which if man eat he shall never die. They are the volumes
in whose brief but blessed pages are written the records of God's mighty mercy;
records so simple that even the "fool" may read and comprehend them; so true
that all the wisdom of the world, and all the wiles of hell, cannot shake their
certainty.
The knowledge of these is salvation. On them we
rest our confidence; for they are the revelation of the name of God; and it is
written, "They that know thy name will put their trust in thee."
Let us listen to apostolic preaching, and see how
these facts form the heads of primitive sermons; sermons such as Peter's at
Jerusalem, or Paul's at Corinth and Antioch. Peter's sermon at Jerusalem was
that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, had been raised from the dead and
exalted to the throne of God, being made Lord and Christ. This the apostle
declared to be "good news." Paul's sermon at Antioch was, in substance the
same, - a statement of the facts regarding the death and resurrection of Jesus;
and the application of that sermon was in these words, "Be it known unto you,
men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of
sins: and by him all that believe are justified." His sermon at Corinth was
very similar. He gives us the following sketch of it: "Moreover, brethren, I
declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have
received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in
memory what I preached unto you. For I delivered unto you first of all that
which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day
according to the Scriptures." Then he adds: "So we preach, and so ye
believed."
Such was apostolic preaching. Such was Paul's
gospel. It narrated a few facts respecting Christ; adding the evidence of
their truth and certainty, that all who heard might believe and be saved. In
these facts the free love of God to sinners is announced; and the great
salvation is revealed. It is this gospel which is "the power of God unto
salvation to every one that believeth. For therein is the righteousness of God
revealed from faith to faith." Its burden was not, "Do this or do that; labor
and pray, and use the means;" - that is, law, not gospel: - but Christ has done
all! He did it when he was "delivered for our offences, and raised again for
our justification." He did it all when he "made peace by the blood of his
cross." "It is finished." His doing is so complete that it has left nothing
for us to do. We have but to enter into the joy of knowing that all is done!
"This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life; and this life is
in his Son."
But let us gather together some of the "true
sayings of God" concerning Christ and his work. In these we shall find the
divine interpretation of the facts above referred to. We shall see the meaning
which the Holy Spirit attaches to these, and so our faith shall not "stand in
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." It is in this way that the Lord
himself, ere he left the earth, removed the unbelief of the doubters around
him. He reminded them of the written word, "Thus it is written, and thus it
behooved the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day; and that
repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name, among all
nations beginning at Jerusalem."
Hear, then, the word of the Lord! For heaven and
earth shall pass away, but these words shall not pass away. "Who was delivered
for our offences, and raised again for our justification." "God hath not
appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who
died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him."
"By the which will we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once for all." "In due time Christ died for the ungodly."
"It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the
right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." "Who gave himself for
our sins." "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a
curse for us." "In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness
of sins according to the riches of his grace." "He humbled himself and became
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." "Remember that Jesus Christ,
of the seed of David, was raised from the dead, according to my gospel." "Who
gave himself for us." "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many."
"Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered
without the gate." "Christ also suffered for us." "Who his own self bare our
sins in his own body on the tree." "Christ also hath once suffered for sins,
the just for the unjust." "Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh." "He is
the propitiation for our sins." "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our
sins in his own blood." "I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am
alive for evermore." "Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy
blood."
These are all divine truths written in divine
words. These sayings are faithful and true; they come from Him that cannot
lie; and they are as true, in these last days, as they were eighteen hundred
years ago; for "the word of our God shall stand forever." In them we find the
authentic exposition of the facts which the apostles preached; and in that we
learn the glad tidings concerning the way in which salvation from a righteous
God has come to unrighteous man. Jesus died! That is the paying of the debt,
the endurance of the penalty; the death for death! He was buried. That is the
proof that his death was a true death, needing a tomb as we do. He rose again.
This is God's declaration that he, the righteous Judge, is satisfied with the
payment, no less than with him who made it.
Could there be a better, gladder news to the
sinner than this? What more can he ask to satisfy him, than that which has so
fully satisfied the holy Lord God of earth and heaven? If this will not avail,
then he can expect no more. If this is not enough, then Christ has died in
vain.
God has thus "brought near his righteousness."
We do not need to go up to heaven for it; that would imply that Christ had
never come down. Nor do we need to go down to the depths of the earth for it;
that would say that Christ had never been buried and never risen. It is near.
It is as near as is the word concerning it, which enters into our ears. We do
not need to exert ourselves to bring it near; nor to do anything to attract it
towards us. It is already so near, so very near, that we cannot bring it
closer. If we try to get up warm feelings and good dispositions in order to
remove some fancied remainder of distance, we shall fail; not simply because
these actings of ours cannot do what we are trying to do, but because there is
no need of any such effort. The thing is done already. God has brought his
righteousness nigh to the sinner. The office of faith is not to work, but to
cease working; not to do anything, but to own that all is done; not to bring
near the righteousness, but to rejoice in it as already near. This is "the
word of the truth of the gospel."
CHAPTER VII
The Word Of The Truth Of The Gospel
H
ow shall I come before God, and stand in
his presence, with happy confidence on my part, and gracious acceptance on
his?
This is the sinner's question; and he asks it
because he knows that there is guilt between him and God. No doubt this was
Adam's question when he stitched his fig leaves together for a covering. But
he was soon made to feel that the fig leaves would not do. He must be wholly
covered, not in part only; and that by something which even God's eye cannot
see through. As God comes near, the uselessness of his fig leaves is felt, and
he rushes into the thick foliage of Paradise to hide from the Divine eye. The
Lord approaches the trembling man, and makes him feel that his hiding place
will not do. Then he began to tell him what will do. He announces a better
covering and a better hiding place. He reveals himself as the God of grace,
the God who hates sin, yet who takes the sinner's side against the sinner's
enemy, - the old serpent. All this through the seed of the woman - "the man"
who is the true "hiding place." Adam can now leave his thicket safely; and
feel that in this revealed grace, he can stand before God without fear or
shame. He has heard the good tidings, and brief as they are, they have
restored his confidence and removed his alarm.
Let us hear the good news, and let us hear it as
Adam did, - from the lips of God himself. For that which is revealed for our
belief is set before us on God's authority, not on man's. We are not only to
believe the truth, but we are to believe it because God has spoken it. Faith
must have a divine foundation.
We gather together a few of these divine
announcements; asking the anxious soul to study them as divine. Nor let him
say that he knows them already; but let him accept our invitation, to traverse,
along with us, the field of gospel statement. It is of God himself that we
must learn; and it is only by listening to the very words of God that we shall
arrive at the true knowledge of what the gospel is. His own words are the
truest, the simplest, and the best. They are not only the likeliest to meet
our case; but they are the words which he has promised to honor and to bless.
Let us hear, then, the words of God as to his own
"grace," or "free love," or "mercy." "The Lord passed by before him, and
proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and
abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving
iniquity, and transgression, and sin." "The Lord is long suffering and of great
mercy." "His mercies are great." "The Lord your God is gracious and merciful."
"Thou are a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful." "His mercy endureth
forever." "Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive, and plenteous in mercy
unto all them that call upon thee;" "thou art a God full of compassion and
gracious, long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth;" "thy mercy is
great unto the heavens;" "thy mercy is great above the heavens;" "his tender
mercies are over all his works;" "Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth
iniquity and passeth by the transgressions of the remnant of his heritage; he
retaineth not his anger forever, because he delighteth in mercy;" "I will love
them freely;" "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son;"
"God commendeth his love towards us;" "God, who is rich in mercy, for the great
love wherewith he hath loved us, even when we were dead in sins;" "the kindness
and love of God our Saviour toward man;" "according to his mercy he saved us;"
"in this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his
only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him; herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins;" "the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth;" "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ;" "the word of his grace;" "the
gospel of the grace of God."
Such are a few of the words of Him who cannot
lie, concerning his own free love. These sayings are faithful and true; and
though perhaps we may but little have owned them as such, or given heed to the
blessed news which they embody, yet they are all fitted to speak peace to the
soul even of the most troubled and heavy laden. Each of these words of grace
is like a star sparkling in the round, blue sky above us; or like a well of
water pouring out its freshness amid desert rocks and sands. Blessed are they
who know these joyful sounds.
Let no one say, - "We know all these passages; of
what use is it to read and re-read words so familiar?" Much every way.
Chiefly because it is in such declarations regarding the riches of God's free
love that the gospel is wrapped up; and it is out of these that the Holy Spirit
ministers light and peace to us. Such are the words which he delights to honor
as his messengers of joy to the soul. Hear then, in these, the voice of the
Spirit's love of the Father and the Son! If you find no peace coming out of
them to you, as you read them the first time, read them again. If you find
nothing the second time, read them once more. If you find nothing the
hundredth or thousandth time, study them yet again. "The word of God is quick
and powerful;" his sayings are the lively oracles; his word liveth and abideth
forever; it is like a fire, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.
The gospel is the power of God; and it is by manifestation of the truth, that
we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.
There are no words like those of God, in heaven
or in earth. Hence it is that we are to study that which is written, for He
Himself wrote it for you. Do not think it needless to read these passages
again and again. They will blaze up at last; and light up that dark soul of
yours with the very joy of heaven.
You have sometimes looked up to the sky at
twilight, searching for a star which you expected to find in its wonted place.
You did not see it at first, but you knew it was there, and that its light was
undiminished. So, instead of closing your eye or turning away to some other
object, you continued to gaze more and more intently on the spot where you knew
it was. Slowly and faintly the star seemed to come out in the sky, as you
gazed; and your persevering search ended in the discovery of the long sought
gem.
Just so it is with those passages which speak to
you of the free love of God. You say, I have looked into them, but they
contain nothing for me. Do not turn away from them, as if you knew them too
well already, yet could find nothing in them. You have not seen them yet.
There are wonders beyond all price hidden in each. Take them up again. Search
and study them. The Holy Spirit is most willing to reveal to you the glory
which they contain. It is his office, it is his delight, to be the sinner's
teacher. He will not be behind you in willingness. It is of the utmost moment
that you should remember this; lest you should grieve and repel him by your
distrust. Never lose sight of this great truth, that the evil thing in you,
which is the root of bitterness to the soul, is distrust of God; distrust of
the Father, who so loved the world as to give his Son; distrust of the Son, who
came to seek and save that which was lost; distrust of the Holy Ghost, whose
tender mercies are over you, and whose work is to reveal the Christ of God to
your souls. Besides, keep this in mind, that in teaching you he is honoring
his own word and glorifying Christ. You need not then suspect him of
indifference toward you, or doubt his willingness to enlighten the eyes of your
understanding. While you are firmly persuaded that it is only his teaching
that can be of any real use to you, do not grieve him by separating his love,
in writing the Bible for you, from his willingness to make you understand it.
He who gave you the word will interpret it for you. He does not stand aloof
from you or from his own word, as if he needed to be persuaded, or bribed by
your deeds and prayers, to unfold the heavenly truth to you. Trust him for
teaching. Taste and see that he is good. Avail yourself at once of his love
and power.
Do not say I am not entitled to trust him till I
am converted. You are to trust him as a sinner, not as a converted man. You
are to trust him as you are, not as you hope to be made ere long. Your
conversion is not your warrant for trusting him. The great sin of an
unconverted man is his not trusting the God that made him; Father, Son, and
Spirit; and how can any one be so foolish, not to say wicked, as to ask for a
warrant for forsaking sin? What would you say to a thief who should say, I
have no warrant to forsake stealing; I must wait till I am made an honest man,
then I shall give it up? And what shall I say to a distruster of God, who
tells me that he has no warrant for giving up his distrust, for he is not
entitled to trust God till he is converted? One of the greatest things in
conversion is turning from distrust to trust. If you are not entitled to turn
at once from distrust to trust, then your distrust is no sin. If, however,
your distrust of the Holy Spirit be one of your worst sins, how absurd it is to
say, I am not entitled to trust him till I am converted! For is not that just
saying, I am not entitled to trust him till I trust him?
You say that you know God to be gracious, yet, by
your acting, you show that you do not believe him to be so; or, at least, to be
so gracious as to be willing to show you the meaning of his own word. You
believe him to be so gracious as to give his only begotten Son; yet the way in
which you treat him, as to his word, shows that you do not believe him to be
willing to give his Spirit to make known his truth. Nay, you think yourself
much more willing to be taught than he is to teach; more willing to be blest
than he is to bless.
You say, I must wait till God enlightens my mind.
If God had told you that waiting is the way of light, you would be right. But
he has nowhere told you to wait; and your idea of waiting is a mere excuse for
not trusting him immediately. If your way of proceeding be correct, God must
have said both "Come" and "wait," "Come now, but do not come now," which is a
contradiction. When a kind rich man sends a message to a poor cripple to come
at once to him and be provided for, he sends his carriage to convey him. He
does not say, "Come; but then, as you are lame, and have besides no means of
conveyance, you must make all the interest you can, and use all the means in
your power, to induce me to send my carriage for you." The invitation and the
carriage go together. Much more is this true of God and his messages. His
word and his Spirit go together. Not that the Spirit is in the word, or the
power in the message, as some foolishly tell you. They are distinct things;
but they go together. And your mistake lies in your supposing, that He who
sent the one may not be willing to send the other. You think that it is He,
not yourself, who creates the interval which you call "waiting;" although this
waiting is, in reality, a deliberate refusal to comply with a command of God,
and a determination to do something else, which he has not commanded, instead;
a determination to make the doing of that something else an excuse for not
doing the very thing commanded! Thus it is that you rid yourself of blame by
pleading inability; nay more, you throw the blame on God, for not being willing
to do immediately that which he is most willing to do.
God demands immediate acceptance of his Son, and
immediate belief of his gospel. You evade this duty on the plea, that as you
cannot accept Christ of yourself, you must go and ask him to enable you to do
so. By this pretext you try to relieve yourself from the overwhelming sense of
the necessity for immediate obedience. You soothe your conscience with the
idea that you are doing what you can, in the mean time, and that so you are not
guilty of unbelief, as before, seeing you desire to believe, and are doing your
part in this great business!
It will not do. The command is "Believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ." Nothing less than this is pleasing to God. And though it
is every man's duty to pray, just as it is every man's duty to love God and to
keep his statutes, yet you must not delude yourself with the idea that you are
doing the right thing, when you only pray to believe, instead of believing.
The thief is still a thief, though he may desire to give up stealing, and pray
to be enabled to give it up, until he actually give it up.
The question is not as to whether prayer is a
duty; but whether it is a right and acceptable thing to pray in unbelief.
Unbelieving prayer is prayer to an unknown God, and it cannot be your duty to
pray to an unknown God.
You must go to your knees, believing that God is
willing, or that he is not willing, to bless you. In the latter case, you
cannot expect any answer or blessing. In the former case, you are really
believing; as it is written, "He that cometh to God must believe that he is,
and that he is the rewarder of all those that diligently seek him." In
maintaining the duty of praying before believing, you cannot surely be
asserting that it is your duty to go to God in unbelief? You cannot mean to
say that you ought to go to God, believing that he is not willing to bless you,
in order that by so praying you may persuade him to make you believe that he is
willing. Are you to perish in unbelief till in some miraculous way faith drops
into you, and God compels you to believe? Must you go to God with unacceptable
prayer, in order to induce him to give you the power of acceptable prayer? Is
this what you mean by the duty of praying in order to believe? If so, it is a
delusion and a sin.
Understanding prayer in the scriptural sense, I
would tell every man to pray, just as I would tell every man to believe. For
prayer includes and presupposes faith. It assumes that the man knows something
of the God he is going to; and that is faith. "Whosoever shall call on the
name of the Lord shall be saved." But then the Apostle adds, "How shall they
call on him in whom they have not believed?" Does not this last verse go to
the very root of the matter before us? It is every man's duty to call upon the
name of the Lord; nay, it is the great sin of the ungodly that they do not do
so. Yet says the Apostle, "How shall they call on him in whom they have not
believed?"
But I do not enter further on this point here.
It may come up again. Meanwhile, I would just remind you of the tidings
concerning God's free love, in the free gift of his Son. Listen to what He
himself has told you regarding this, and know that God who is asking you to
call upon his name; for if thou but knewest this God and his great gift of
love, thou wouldest ask him and he would give thee living water. Remember that
the gospel is not a list of duties to be performed, or feelings to be produced,
or frames which we are to pray ourselves into, in order to make God think well
of us, and in order to fit us for receiving pardon. The gospel is the good
news of the great work done upon the cross. The knowledge of that finished
work is immediate peace.
Read again and again the wondrous words which I
have quoted at length from His own book. The Bible is a living book, not a
dead one; a divine one, not a human one; a perfect one, not an imperfect one.[22] Search it, study it, dig into it. "My
son," says God, our Father, "receive my words; hide my commandments with thee;
incline thine ear unto wisdom; take fast hold of instruction; attend unto my
wisdom and bow thine ear to my understanding; keep my words and lay up my
commandments with thee." Do not say these messages are only for the children
of God; for, as if to prevent this, God thus speaks to the simple, the
scorners, the fools. "Turn ye at my reproof;" showing us that it is in
listening to His words that the simple, the scorner, and the fool cease to be
such and become sons. Do not revert to the old difficulty about your need of
the Holy Spirit; for, as if to meet this, God, in the above pages, adds,
"Behold I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto
you." Not for one moment would God allow you to suspect his willingness to
accompany his word with his Spirit.
Honor the words of God; and honor him who wrote
them, by trusting him for interpretation and light. Do not disparage them by
calling them a dead letter. They are not dead. If you will use the figure of
death in this case, use it rightly. They are the savor of death unto death in
them that perish; but this only shows their awful vitality. As the blood of
Christ either cleanses or condemns, so the words of the Spirit either kill or
make alive. The words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are
Life.
Again I say to you, honor the words of God. Make
much of them. Them that honor me I will honor, is as true of Scripture as it
is of the God of Scripture. Peace, light, comfort, life, salvation, holiness,
are wrapt up in them. "Thy word hath quickened me." "I will never forget thy
precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me."
It is through belief of the truth that God hath
from the beginning chosen us to salvation. It is with the word of Truth that
he begat us: and all this is in perfect harmony with the great truth of man's
total helplessness and his need of the Almighty Spirit.
"So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by
the word of God." "Hear, and your soul shall live."
CHAPTER VIII
Believe And Be Saved
I
t is the Holy Spirit alone that can draw us to
the cross and fasten us to the Saviour. He who thinks he can do without the
Spirit, has yet to learn his own sinfulness and helplessness. The gospel would
be no good news to the dead in sin, if it did not tell of the love and power of
the divine Spirit, as explicitly as it announces the love and power of the
divine Substitute.
But, while keeping this in mind, we may try to
learn from Scripture what is written concerning the bond which connects us
individually with the cross of Christ; making us thereby partakers of the
pardon and the life which that cross reveals.
Thus then it is written, "By grace are ye saved,
through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God."
Faith then is the link, the one link, between the
sinner and the Sin-bearer. It is not faith, as a work or exercise of our
minds, which must be properly performed in order to qualify or fit us for
pardon. It is not faith, as a religious duty, which must be gone through
according to certain rules, in order to induce Christ to give us the benefits
of his work. It is faith, simply as a receiver of the divine record concerning
the Son of God. It is not faith considered as the source of holiness, as
containing in itself the seed of all spiritual excellence and good works; it is
faith alone, recognizing simply the completeness of the great sacrifice for
sin, and the trueness of the Father's testimony to that completeness; as Paul
writes to the Thessalonians, "our testimony among you was believed." It is not
faith as a piece of money or a thing of merit; but faith taking God at his
word, and giving him credit for speaking the honest truth, when he declares
that "Christ died for the ungodly," and that the life which that death contains
for sinners, is to be had without money, and without price."
But let us learn the things concerning this
faith, from the lips of God himself. I lay great stress on this in dealing
with inquirers. For the more that we can fix the sinner's eye and conscience
upon God's own words, the more likely shall we be to lead him aright, and to
secure the quickening presence of that Almighty Spirit who alone can give sight
to the blind. One great difficulty which the inquirer finds in such cases, is
that of unlearning much of his past experience and teaching. Hence the
importance of studying the divine words themselves, by which the sinner is made
wise unto salvation. For they both unteach the false and imperfect, and teach
the true and the perfect.
Let us mark how frequently and strongly God has
spoken respecting faith and believing. "Without faith it is impossible to
please God." "Therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith." "The righteousness of
God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe."
"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood...to
declare his righteousness; that he might be just, and the justifier of him
which believeth in Jesus." "He that believeth shall be saved." "As many as
received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them
that believe on his name." "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have eternal life; for God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have everlasting life. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he
that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the
name of the only begotten Son of God." "He that believeth on the Son hath
everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life." "He
that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting
life." "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent."
"He that believeth on me shall never thirst." "This is the will of him that
sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have
everlasting life." "He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." "I am come a
light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in
darkness." "These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God, and that believing, ye might have life through his name." "By
him all that believeth are justified from all things." "Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." "To him gave all the prophets witness,
that through his name whoever believeth in him shall receive remission of
sins." "To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the
ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." "Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to every one that believeth." "If thou shalt confess
with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath
raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." "It pleased God, by the
foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe." "This is his
commandment, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent." "We have known and
believed the love that God hath to us." "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the
Christ, is born of God." "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness
in himself; he that believeth not God, hath made him a liar, because he
believeth not the record that God gave of his Son." "He that believeth not
shall be damned."
These are some of the many texts which teach us
what the link is between the sinner and the great salvation. They show that it
is our belief of God's testimony, concerning his own free love, and the work of
his Son, that makes us partakers of the blessings which that testimony reveals.
They do not indeed ascribe any meritorious or saving virtue to our act of
faith. They show us that it is the object of faith, - the person, or thing, or
truth of which faith lays hold, - that is the soul's peace and consolation.
But still they announce most solemnly the necessity of believing, and the
greatness of the sin of unbelief. In them God demands the immediate faith of
all who hear his testimony. Yet he gives no countenance to the
self-righteousness of those who are trying to perform the act of faith, in
order to qualify themselves for the favor of God; whose religion consists in
performing acts of a certain kind; whose comfort arises from thinking of these
well-performed acts; and whose assurance comes from the summing up of these at
certain seasons, and dwelling upon the superior quality of many of them.
In some places the word trust occurs where
perhaps we might have expected faith. But the reason of this is plain; the
testimony which faith receives, is testimony to a person and his good will, in
which case, belief of the testimony and confidence in the person are things
inseparable. Our reception of God's testimony is confidence in God himself,
and in Jesus Christ his Son. Hence it is that the Scripture speaks of trust or
confidence as that which saves us, as if it would say to the sinner, "Such is
the gracious character of God, that you have only to put your case into his
hands, however bad it be, and entrust your soul to his keeping, and you shall
be saved."
In some places we are said to be saved by the
knowledge of God or of Christ; that is simply knowing God as he has made
himself known to us in Jesus Christ. (Isa. liii.11; 1 Tim. ii.4; 2 Pet. ii.20).
Thus Jesus spoke, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only
true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." And as if to make simplicity
more simple, the Apostle, in speaking of the facts of Christ's death, and
burial, and resurrection, says, "By which ye are saved, if ye keep in memory
what I preached unto you."[23]
The God connects salvation with believing,
trusting, knowing, remembering. Yet the salvation is not in our act of
believing, trusting, knowing, or remembering; it is in the thing or person
believed on, trusted, known, remembered. Nor is salvation given as a reward
for believing and knowing. The things believed and known are our salvation.
Nor are we saved or comforted by thinking about our act of believing and
ascertaining that it possesses all the proper ingredients and qualities which
would induce God to approve of it, and of us because of it. This would be
making faith a meritorious, or, at least, a qualifying work; and then grace
would be no more grace. It would really be making our faith a part of Christ's
work, - the finishing stroke put to the great understanding of the Son of God,
which, otherwise, would have been incomplete, or, at least, unsuitable for the
sinner, as a sinner. To the man that makes his faith and his trust his rest,
and tries to pacify his conscience by getting up evidence of their solidity and
excellence, we say, miserable comforters are they all! I get light by using my
eyes; not by thinking about my use of them, nor by a scientific analysis of
their component parts. So I get peace by, and in believing; not by thinking
about my faith, or trying to prove to myself how well I have performed the
believing act. We might as well extract water from the desert sands as peace
from our own act of faith. Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ will do
everything for us; believing in our own faith, or trusting in our own trust,
will do nothing.
Thus faith is the bond between us and the Son of
God; and it is so, not because of anything in itself, but because it is only
through the medium of truth, as known and believed, that the soul can get hold
of things or persons. Faith is nothing, save as it lays hold of Christ; and it
does so by laying hold of the truth or testimony concerning him. "Faith cometh
by hearing, and hearing by the word of God," says the apostle. "Ye shall know
the truth," says the Lord, "and the truth shall make you free," and again,
"because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not...And if I say the truth, why
do ye not believe me?" We have also such expressions as these: "Those that
know the truth;" "those that obey not the truth;" "The truth as it is in
Jesus;" "belief of the truth;" "acknowledging of the truth;" "the way of
truth;" "we are of the truth;" "destitute of the truth;" "sanctify them through
thy truth;" "I speak forth the words of truth;" "the Spirit of truth will guide
you into all truth." Most memorable in connection with this subject, are the
Lord's warnings in the parable of the sower, specially the following: - "The
seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear: then cometh
the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should
believe and be saved." The words, too, of the beloved disciple are no less so:
- "He that saw it bare record, and his record is true; and he knoweth that he
saith true, that ye might believe;" and, again, "These are written, that ye
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye
might have life through his name."
This truth regarding Christ and his sacrificial
work, the natural man hates, because he hates Christ himself. "They hated me,"
says the Lord; nay, more, they hated me without a cause." It is not error that
man hates, but truth; and hence the necessity for the Holy Spirit's work to
remove that hatred, - to make the sinner even so much as willing to know the
truth or the True One. Yet there is no backwardness on the part of God to give
that Spirit; - and the first dawnings of inquiry and anxiety show that
something beyond flesh and blood is at work in the soul.
But though it needs the power of the divine
Spirit to make us believing men, this is not because faith is a mysterious
thing, a great exercise or effort of soul, which must be very accurately gone
through in order to make it acceptable, but because of our dislike to the truth
believed, and our enmity to the Being in whom we are asked to confide.
Believing is the simplest of all mental processes; yet not the less is the
power of God needed. Let not the inquirer mystify or magnify faith in order to
give it merit or importance in itself, so that by its superior texture or
quality it may justify him; yet never, on the other hand, let him try to
simplify it for the purpose of making the Spirit's work unnecessary. The more
simple that he sees it to be, the more will he see his own guilt, in so
deliberately refusing to believe, and his need of the divine Helper to overcome
the fearful opposition of the natural heart to the simple reception of the
truth.
The difficulty of believing has its real root in
pure self-righteousness; and the struggles to believe, the endeavors to trust,
of which men speak, are the indications of this self-righteousness. So far are
these spiritual exercises from being tokens for good, they are often mere
expressions of spiritual pride, - evidences of the desperate strength of
self-righteousness. It is worse than vain, then, to try to comfort an anxious
soul by pointing to these exercises or efforts as proofs of existing faith.
They are proofs either of ignorance or of unbelief, - proofs of the sinner's
determination to do anything rather than believe that all is done. Doubts are
not the best evidences of faith; and attempts at performing this great thing
called faith are mere proofs of blindness to the finished propitiation of the
Son of God.
To do some great thing called faith, in order to
win God's favour, the sinner has no objection; nay, it is just what he wants,
for it gives him the opportunity of working for his salvation. But he rejects
the idea of taking his stand upon a work already done, and so ceasing to
exercise his soul in order to effect a reconciliation, for which all that is
needed was accomplished eighteen hundred years ago, upon the cross of Him who
"was made sin for us, though he knew no sin; that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him."
CHAPTER IX
Believe Just Now
Y
ou are in earnest now; but I fear you are
making your earnestness your Christ, and actually using it as a reason for not
trusting Christ immediately. You think your earnestness will lead on to faith,
if it be but intense enough, and long enough persisted in.
But there is such a thing as earnestness in the
wrong direction; earnestness in unbelief, and a substitution of earnestness for
simple faith in Jesus. You must not soothe the alarms of conscience by this
earnestness of yours. It is unbelieving earnestness; and that will not do.
What God demands is simple faith in the record which he has given you of his
Son. You say, "I can't give him faith, but I can give him earnestness; and by
giving him earnestness, I hope to persuade him to give me faith." This is
self-righteousness. It shows that you regard both faith and earnestness as
something to be done in order to please God, and secure his good will. You
say, faith is the gift of God, but earnestness is not; it is in my own power;
therefore I will earnestly labor, and struggle, and pray, hoping that ere long
God will take pity on my earnest struggles, nay, feeling secretly that it would
be hardly fair to him to disregard such earnestness. Now, if God has anywhere
said that unbelieving earnestness and the unbelieving use of means is the way
of procuring faith, I cannot object to such proceeding on your part. But I do
not find that he has said so, or that the apostle in dealing with inquirers set
them upon this preliminary process for acquiring faith. I find that the
apostles shut up their hearers to immediate faith and repentance, bringing them
face to face with the great object of faith, and commanding them in the name of
the living God to believe, just as Jesus commanded the man with the withered
arm to stretch out his hand. The man was thoroughly helpless, yet he is, on
the spot, commanded to do the very thing which he could least of all do, the
thing which Jesus only could enable him to do. The Lord did not give him any
directions as to a preliminary work, or preparatory efforts, and struggles, and
using of means. These are man's attempts to bridge over the great gulf by
human appliances; man's ways of evading the awful question of his own utter
impotence; man's unscriptural devices for sliding out of inability into
ability, out of unbelief into faith; man's plan for helping God to save him;
man's self-made ladder for climbing up a little way out of the horrible pit, in
the hope that God will so commiserate his earnest struggles as to do all the
rest that is needed.
Now God has commanded all men everywhere to
repent; but he has nowhere given us any directions for obtaining repentance.
God has commanded sinners to believe, but has not prescribed for them any
preparatory steps or process by means of which he may be induced to give them
something which he is not from the first most willing to do. It is thus that
he shuts them up to faith, by concluding them in unbelief. It is thus that he
brings them to feel both the greatness and the guilt of their inability; and so
constrains them to give up every hope of doing anything to save themselves; -
driving them out of every refuge of lies, and showing them that these prolonged
efforts of theirs are hindrances, not helps, and are just so many rejections of
his own immediate help, - so many distrustful attempts to persuade him to do
what he is already most willing to do in their behalf.
The great manifestation of self-righteousness, is
this struggle to believe. Believing is not a work, but a ceasing from work;
and this struggle to believe, is just the sinner's attempt to make a work out
of that which is no work at all, to make a labor out of that which is a resting
from labor. Sinners will not let go their hold of their former confidence, and
drop into Christ's arms. Why? Because they still trust these confidences, and
do not trust him who speaks to them in the gospel. Instead, therefore, of
encouraging you to embrace more and more earnestly these preliminary efforts, I
tell you they are all the sad indications of self-righteousness. They take for
granted that Christ has not done his work sufficiently, and that God is not
willing to give you faith till you have plied him with the arguments and
importunities of months or years. God is at this moment willing to bless you;
and these struggles of yours are not, as you fancy, humble attempts on your
part to take the blessing, but proud attempts either to put it from you or to
get hold of it in some way of your own. You cannot, with all your struggles,
make the Holy Spirit more willing to give you faith than he is at this moment.
But our self-righteousness rejects this blessed truth; and if I were to
encourage you in these efforts, I should be fostering your self-righteousness
and your rejection of this grace of the Spirit.
You say you cannot change your heart or do any
good thing. So say I. But I say more. I say that you are not at all aware of
the extent of your helplessness and of your guilt. These are far greater and
far worse than you suppose. And it is your imperfect view of these that leads
you to resort to these appliances. You are not yet sensible of your weakness,
in spite of all you say. It is this that is keeping you from God and God from
you.
God commands you to believe and to repent. It is
at our peril that you attempt to alter this imperative and immediate obligation
by the substitution of something preliminary, the performance of which may
perhaps soothe your terrors and lull your conscience to asleep, but will not
avail either to propitiate God or to life you into a safer, or more salvable
condition, as you imaging. For we are saved by faith, not by efforts to induce
an unwilling God to give us faith.
God commands you to believe; and, so long as you
do not believe, you are making him a liar, you are rejecting the truth, you are
believing a lie; for unbelief is, in reality, the belief in a lie. Yes, God
commands you to believe; and your not believing is your worst sin; and it is by
exhibiting it as your worst sin, that God shuts you up to faith. Now, if you
try to extenuate this sin; if you lay this flattering unction to your soul,
that, by making all these earnest and laborious efforts to believe, you are
lessening this awful sin, and rendering your unbelieving state a less guilty
one; you are deluding your conscience, and thrusting away from you that divine
hand which, by this conviction of unbelief, is shutting you up to faith.
I do not remember to have seen this better stated
anywhere than in Fuller's "Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation." I give just a
few sentences: - "It is the duty of ministers not only to exhort their carnal
hearers to believe in Jesus Christ for the salvation of their souls, but it is
at our peril to exhort them to anything short of it, or which does not involve
or imply it. We have sunk into such a compromising way of dealing with the
unconverted, as to have well nigh lost the spirit of the primitive preachers;
and hence it is that sinners of every description can sit so quietly as they do
in our places of worship. Christ and his apostles, without any hesitation,
called on sinners to repent and believe the gospel; but we, considering them as
poor, impotent, and depraved creatures, have been disposed to drop this part of
the Christian ministry. Considering such things as beyond the powers of their
hearers, they seem to have contented themselves with pressing on them the
things they could perform, still continuing enemies of Christ; such as behaving
decently in society, reading the Scriptures, and attending the means of grace.
Thus it is that hearers of this description sit at ease in our congregations.
But as this implies no guilt on their part, they sit unconcerned, conceiving
that all that is required of them is to lie in the way and wait the Lord's
time. But is this the religion of the Scriptures? Where does it appear that
the prophets or apostles treated that kind of inability, which is merely the
effect of reigning aversion, as affording any excuse? And where have they
descended in their exhortations to things which might be done, and the parties
still continue the enemies of God? Instead of leaving out everything of a
spiritual nature, because their hearers could not find in their hearts to
comply with it, it may be safely affirmed that they exhorted to nothing else,
treating such inability not only as of no account with regard to the lessening
of obligation, but as rendering the subjects of it worthy of the severest
rebuke."...Repentance toward God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ, are
allowed to be duties, but not immediate duties. The sinner is considered as
unable to comply with them, and therefore they are not urged upon him; but
instead of them, he is directed to pray for the Holy Spirit to enable him to
repent and believe! This, it seems, he can do, notwithstanding the aversion of
his heart from everything of the kind. But if any man be required to pray for
the Holy Spirit, it must be either sincerely and in the name of Jesus, or
insincerely and in some other way. The latter, I suppose, will be allowed to
be an abomination in the sight of God; he cannot, therefore, be required to do
this; and as to the former, it is just as difficult and as opposite to the
carnal heart as repentance and faith themselves. Indeed, it amounts to the
same thing; for a sincere desire after a spiritual blessing, presented in the
name of Jesus, is no other than the prayer of faith."
The great thing which I would press upon our
conscience is the awful guilt that there is in unbelief. Continuance in
unbelief is continuance in the very worst of sins; and continuance in it
because (as you say) you cannot help it, is the worst aggravation of your sin.
The habitual drunkard says, he cannot help it; the habitual swearer says, he
cannot help it; the habitual unbeliever says, he cannot help it. Do you admit
the drunkard's excuse? Or do you not tell him that it is the worst feature of
his case, and that he ought to be utterly ashamed of himself for using such a
plea? Do you say, I know you can't give up your drunken habits, but you can go
and pray to God to enable you to give up these habits, and perhaps God will
hear you and enable you to do so. What would this be but to tell him to go on
drinking and praying alternately; and that, possibly, God may hear his drunken
prayers, and give him sobriety? You would not deal with drunkenness in this
way; ought you to deal thus with unbelief? Ought you not to press home the
unutterable guilt of unbelief; and to show a sinner that, when he says I can't
help my unbelief, he is uttering his most dreadful condemnation, and saying, I
can't help distrusting God, I can't help hating God, I can't help making God a
liar; and that he might just as well say, I can't help stealing and lying, and
swearing.
Never let unbelief be spoken of as a misfortune.
It is awfully sinful; and its root is the desperate wickedness of the heart.
How resolutely evil must that heart be, when it will not even believe! For
this depravity of soul and need of a heavenly Quickener, cannot palliate our
unbelief, or make it less truly the sin of sins. If our helplessness and
hardness of heart lessened our guilt, then the more wicked we became, the less
guilty we should be. The sinner who loves sin so much that he cannot part with
it, is the most guilty of all. The man who says, I cannot love God, is
proclaiming himself one of the worst of sinners; but he who says, I cannot even
believe, is taking to himself a guilt which we may truly call the darkest and
most damnable of all.
Oh, the unutterable guilt involved even in one
moment's unbelief - one single act of an unbelieving soul! How much more in
the continuous unbelief of twenty or sixty years! To steal once is bad enough,
how much more to be a thief by habit and repute! We think it bad enough when a
man is overtaken with drunkenness; how much more when we have to say of him, he
is never sober. Such is our charge against the man who has not yet known
Christ. He is a continuous unbeliever. His life is one unbroken course of
unbelief, and hence of false worship, if he worships at all.[24] Every new moment is a new act of unbelief; a new
commission of the worst of sins; the sin of sins; a sin in comparison with
which stealing and drunkenness, and murder, awful as they are, becomes as
trifles.
Let the thought of this guilt, Oh, anxious soul,
cut your conscience to the quick! Oh! tremble as you think of what it is to
be, not for a day or an hour, but for a whole lifetime, an unbelieving man!
CHAPTER X
The Want Of Power To Believe
Y
ou say, I know all these things, yet they
bring me no peace.
I doubt much in that case whether you do know
them; and I should like you to doubt upon this point. You take for granted
much too easily that you know them. Seeing they do not bring to your soul the
peace which God says they are sure to do, your wisest way would be to suspect
the correctness of your knowledge. If a trusty physician prescribes a sure
medicine for some complaint, and if on trial I find that what I have taken does
me no good, I begin to suspect that I have some wrong medicine instead of that
which he prescribed.
Now are you sure that the truth which, you say
you know, is the very gospel of the grace of God? Or is it only something like
it? And may not the reason of your getting no peace from that which you
believe, just be, because it contains none? You have got hold of many of the
good things, but you have missed, perhaps, the one thing which made it a joyful
sound? You believe perhaps the whole gospel, save the one thing which makes it
good news to a sinner? You see the cross as bringing salvation very near; but
no so absolutely close as to be in actual contact with you as you are; not so
entirely close but that there is a little space, just a hand breadth or a
hairbreadth, to be made up by your own prayers, or efforts, or feelings?
Everything, you say, is complete; but then, that want of feeling in myself!
Ah, there it is! There is the little unfinished bit of Christ's work which you
are trying to finish, or to persuade him by your prayers, to finish for you!
That want of feeling is the little inch of distance which you have to get
removed before the completeness of Christ's work is available for you!
The consciousness of insensibility, like the
sense of guilt, ought to be one of your reasons for trusting him the more,
whereas you make it a reason for not trusting him at all. Would a child treat
a father or a mother thus? Would it make its bodily weakness a reason for
distrusting parental love? Would it not feel that that weakness was thoroughly
known to the parent, and was just the very thing that was drawing out more love
and skill? A stronger child would need less care and tenderness. But the poor
helpless palsied one would be of all others the likeliest to be pitied and
watched over. Deal thus with Christ; and make that hardness of heart an
additional reason for trusting him, and for prizing his finished work.
This state of mind shows that you are not
believing the right thing; but something else which will not heal your hurt;
or, at least, that you are mixing up something with the right thing, which will
neutralize all its healing properties.
You must begin at the beginning once more; and go
back to the simplest elements of heavenly truth, which are wrapped up in the
great facts that Jesus died and rose again; facts too little understood, nay,
undervalued by many; facts to which the apostles attached such vast importance,
and on which they laid so much stress; facts out of which the primitive
believers, without the delay of weeks or months, extracted their peace and
joy.
You say, I cannot believe. Let us look into this
complaint of yours.
I know that the Holy Spirit is as indispensable
to your believing, as is Christ in order to your being pardoned. The Holy
Spirit's work is direct and powerful; and you will not rid yourself of your
difficulties by trying to persuade yourself that his operations are all
indirect, and merely those of a teacher presenting truth to you. Salvation for
the sinner is Christ's work; salvation in the sinner is the Spirit's work. Of
this internal salvation he is the beginner and the ender. He works in you, in
order to your believing, as truly as he works in you after you have believed,
and in consequence of your believing.
This doctrine, instead of being a discouragement,
is one of unspeakable encouragement to the sinner; and he will acknowledge
this, if he knows himself to be the thoroughly helpless being which the Bible
says he is. If he is not totally depraved, he will feel the doctrine of the
Spirit's work a hindrance, no doubt; but as, in that case, he will be able to
save himself without much assistance, he might just set aside the Spirit
altogether, and work his way to heaven without his help!
The truth is, that without the Spirit's direct
and almighty help, there could be no hope for a totally depraved being at
all.
You speak of this inability to believe as if it
were some unprovided difficulty; and as if the discovery of it had sorely cast
you down. You would not have so desponded had you found that you could believe
of yourself, without the Spirit; and it would greatly relieve you to be told
that you could dispense with the Spirit's help in this matter. If this would
relieve you, it is plain that you have no confidence in the Spirit; and you
wish to have the power in your own hands, because you believe your own
willingness to be much greater than his. Did you but know the blessed truth,
that his willingness far exceeds yours, you would rejoice that the power was in
his hands rather than in your own. You would feel far more certain of
attaining the end desired when the strength needed is in hands so infinitely
gracious; and you would feel that the man who told you that you had all the
needed strength in yourself, was casting down your best hope, and robbing you
of a heavenly treasure.
How eagerly some grasp at the idea, that they can
believe, and repent, and turn of themselves, as if this were consolation to the
troubled spirit! as if this were the unraveling of its dark perplexities! Is
it comfort to persuade yourself that you are not wholly without strength? Can
you, by lessening the sum total of your depravity and inability, find the way
to peace? Is it a relief to your burdened spirit to be delivered from the
necessity of being wholly indebted to the Spirit of God for faith and
repentance? Will it rescue you from the bitterness of despair to be told that
you had not enough strength left to enable you to love God, yet that in virtue
of some little remaining power, you can perform this least of all religious
acts, believing on the Son of God?
If such be your feeling, it is evident that yo