Teaching Resources International

“And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ.”—1 John 3:23

The old law shines in terrible glory with its ten commandments.  There are some who love that law so much that they cannot pass over a Sabbath without its being read in their hearing, accompanied by the mournful petition, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.”  Nay, some are so foolish as to enter into a covenant for their children that “they shall keep all God’s holy commandments, and walk in the same all the days of their life.”  Thus they early wear a yoke which neither they nor their fathers can bear, and daily groaning under its awful weight, they labor after righteousness where it never can be found.

Over the tables of the law in every Church, I would have conspicuously printed these gospel words, “By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified.”  The true believer has learned to look away from the killing ordinances of the old law.  He understands that “as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written: Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.”  He therefore turns with loathing from all trust in his own obedience to the ten commands and lays hold with joy upon the hope set before him in the one commandment contained in my text, “This is his commandment that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ.”

We sing, and sing rightly too—

“My soul, no more attempt to draw

Thy life and comfort from the law,”

for from the law death cometh and not life, misery and not comfort.  “To convince and to condemn is all the law can do.”  O, when will all professors, and especially all professed ministers of Christ, learn the difference between the law and the gospel?  Most of them make a mingle-mangle and serve out deadly potions to the people, often containing but one ounce of gospel to a pound of law, whereas, but even a grain of law is enough to spoil the whole thing.  It must be gospel and gospel only.  “If it be of grace, it is not of works, otherwise grace is no more grace; and if it be of works, then it is not of grace, otherwise work is no more work.”

The Christian then, turning his attention to the one command of the gospel, is very anxious to know first, what is the matter of the believing here intended; and secondly, what is the sinner’s warrant for so believing in Christ; nor will he fail to consider the mandate of the gospel.

I. First then, THE MATTER OF BELIEVING, or what is it that a man is to believe in order to eternal life.  Is it the Athanasian creed?  Is it true, that if a man does not hold that confession whole and entire, he shall without doubt perish everlastingly?  We leave those to decide who are learned in matters of bigotry.  Is it any particular form of doctrine?  Is it the Calvinistic or the Arminian scheme?

For our own part, we are quite content with our text—believing on “his Son Jesus Christ.”  That faith which saves the soul is believing on a person, depending upon Jesus for eternal life.  To speak more at large of the things which are to be believed in order to justification by faith, they all relate to the person and the work of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We must believe him to be God’s Son—so the text puts it–“His Son.”  We must grasp with strong confidence the great fact that he is God: for nothing short of a divine Savior can ever deliver us from the infinite wrath of God.  He who rejects the true and proper Godhead of Jesus of Nazareth is not saved, and cannot be, for he believes not on Jesus as God’s Son.

Furthermore, we must accept this Son of God as “Jesus,” the Savior.  We must believe that Jesus Christ the Son of God became man out of infinite love to man that he might save his people from their sins, according to that worthy saying, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” even the chief.  We must look upon Jesus as “Christ,” the anointed of the Father, sent into this world on salvation’s errand, not that sinners might save themselves, but that he, being mighty to save, might bring many sons unto glory.  We must believe that Jesus Christ, coming into the world to save sinners, did really effect his mission; that the precious blood which is shed upon Calvary is almighty to atone for sin, and therefore, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, since the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s dear Son, cleanseth us from all sin.  We must heartily accept the great doctrine of the atonement—regarding Jesus as standing in the room, place, and stead of sinful men, bearing for them the terror of the law’s curse until justice was satisfied and could demand no more.

Moreover, we should rejoice that as Jesus Christ, by his dying, put away forever the sin of his people, so by his living, he gave unto those who trust in him a perfect righteousness, in which, despite their own sins, they are “accepted in the beloved.”  We are also taught, that if we heartily trust our soul with Christ, our sins, through his blood, are forgiven and his righteousness is imputed to us.

The mere knowledge of these facts will not, however, save us, unless we really and truly trust our souls in the Redeemer’s hands.  Faith must act in this wise: “I believe that Jesus came to save sinners, and therefore, sinner though I be, I rest myself on him; I know that his righteousness justifies the ungodly; I, therefore, though ungodly, trust in him to be my righteousness; I know that his precious blood in heaven prevails with God on the behalf of them that come unto him; and since I come unto him, I know by faith that I have an interest in his perpetual intercession.”

Now, I have enlarged the one thought of believing on God’s Son Jesus Christ.  Brethren, I would not darken counsel by words without knowledge.  “Believing” is most clearly explained by that simple word “trust.” Believing is partly the intellectual operation of receiving divine truths, but the essence of it lies in relying upon those truths.  I believe that, although I cannot swim, yonder friendly plank will support me in the flood—I grasp it, and am saved: the grasp is faith.  I am promised by a generous friend that if I draw upon his banker, he will supply all my needs—I joyously confide in him and, as often as I am in want, I go to the bank and am enriched: my going to the bank is faith.  Thus faith is accepting God’s great promise, contained in the person of his Son.  It is taking God at his word and trusting in Jesus Christ as being my salvation, although I am utterly unworthy of his regard.  Sinner, if thou takest Christ to be thy Savior this day, thou art justified; though thou be the biggest blasphemer and persecutor out of hell, if thou darest to trust Christ with thy salvation, that faith of thine saves thee; though thy whole life may have been as black, and foul, and devilish as thou couldst have made it, yet if thou wilt honor God by believing Christ is able to forgive such a wretch as thou art, and wilt now trust in Jesus’ precious blood, thou art saved from divine wrath.

II. The WARRANT OF BELIEVING is the point upon which I shall spend my time and strength this morning. According to my text, the warrant for a man to believe is the commandment of God.  This is the commandment that ye “believe on his Son Jesus Christ.”

Self-righteousness will always find a lodging somewhere or other.  Drive it, my brethren, out of the ground of our confidence; let the sinner see that he cannot rest on his good works, then, as foxes will have holes, this self-righteousness will find a refuge for itself in the warrant of our faith in Christ.  It reasons thus: “You are not saved by what you do but by what Christ did; but then, you have no right to trust in Christ unless there is something good in you which shall entitle you to trust in him.”  Now, this legal reasoning I oppose.  I believe such teaching to contain in it the essence of Popish self-righteousness.  The warrant for a sinner to believe in Christ is not in himself in any sense or in any manner, but in the fact that he is commanded there and then to believe on Jesus Christ.

Some preachers in the Puritanic times, whose shoe latchets I am not worthy to unloose, erred much in this matter.  I refer not merely to Alleyne and Baxter, who are far better preachers of the law than of the gospel, but I include men far sounder in the faith than they, such as Rogers of Dedham, Shepherd, the author of “The Sound Believer,” and especially the American, Thomas Hooker, who has written a book upon qualifications for coming to Christ.  These excellent men had a fear of preaching the gospel to any except those whom they styled “sensible sinners” and consequently kept hundreds of their hearers sitting in darkness when they might have rejoiced in the light.  They preached repentance and hatred of sin as the warrant of a sinner’s trusting to Christ.  According to them, a sinner might reason thus–“I possess such-and-such a degree of sensibility on account of sin, therefore I have a right to trust in Christ.”

Now, I venture to affirm that such reasoning is seasoned with fatal error.  Whoever preaches in this fashion may preach much of the gospel, but the whole gospel of the free grace of God in its fulness he has yet to learn.  In our own day, certain preachers assure us that a man must he regenerated before we may bid him believe in Jesus Christ; some degree of a work of grace in the heart being, in their judgment, the only warrant to believe.  This also is false.  It takes away a gospel for sinners and offers us a gospel for saints.  It is anything hut a ministry of free grace.  Others say that the warrant for a sinner to believe in Christ is his election.  Now, as his election cannot possibly be known by any man until he has believed, this is virtually preaching that nobody has any known warrant for believing at all.  If I cannot possibly know my election before I believe—and yet the minister tells me that I may only believe upon the ground of my election—how am I ever to believe at all?  Election brings me faith and faith is the evidence of my election; but to say that my faith is to depend upon my knowledge of my election, which I cannot get without faith is to talk egregious nonsense.

I lay down this morning with great boldness—because I know and am well persuaded that what I speak is the mind of the Spirit—this doctrine that the sole and only warrant for a sinner to believe in Jesus is found in the gospel itself and in the command which accompanies that gospel, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”  I shall deal with that matter first of all, negatively, and then, positively.

1. First, NEGATIVELY; and here my first observation is that any other way of preaching the gospel-warrant is absurd. If I am to preach faith in Christ to a man who is regenerated, then the man, being regenerated, is saved already, and it is an unnecessary and ridiculous thing for me to preach Christ to him and bid him to believe in order to be saved when he is saved already, being regenerate.  But you will tell me that I ought to preach it only to those who repent of their sins.  Very well; but since true repentance of sin is the work of the Spirit, any man who has repentance is most certainly saved because evangelical repentance never can exist in an unrenewed soul.  Where there is repentance there is faith already, for they never can be separated.  So, then, I am only to preach faith to those who have it.  Absurd, indeed!  Is not this waiting till the man is cured and then bringing him the medicine?  This is preaching Christ to the righteous and not to sinners.  “Nay,” saith one, “but we mean that a man must have some good desires towards Christ before he has any warrant to believe in Jesus.”  Friend, do you not know what all good desires have some degree of holiness in them?  But if a sinner hath any degree of true holiness in him it must be the work of the Spirit, for true holiness never exists in the carnal mind, therefore, that man is already renewed and therefore saved.  Are we to go running up and down the world, proclaiming life to the living, casting bread to those who are fed already, and holding up Christ on the pole of the gospel to those who are already healed?  My brethren, where is our inducement to labor where our efforts are so little needed?  If I am to preach Christ to those who have no goodness, who have nothing in them that qualifies them for mercy, then I feel I have a gospel so divine that I would proclaim it with my last breath, crying aloud, that “Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—sinners as sinners, not as penitent sinners or as awakened sinners, but sinners as sinners, sinners “of whom I am chief.”

Secondly, to tell the sinner that he is to believe on Christ because of some warrant in himself, is legal, I dare to say it—legal. Though this method is generally adopted by the higher school of Calvinists, they are herein unsound, uncalvinistic, and legal.  I lay it down to be legal for this reason: if I believe in Jesus Christ because I feel a genuine repentance of sin, and therefore have a warrant for my faith, do you not perceive that the first and true ground of my confidence is the fact that I have repented of sin?  If I believe in Jesus because I have convictions and a spirit of prayer, then evidently the first and the most important fact is not Christ, but my possession of repentance, conviction, and prayer, so that really my hope hinges upon my having repented; and if this be not legal I do not know what is.  Put it lower.  My opponents will say, “The sinner must have an awakened conscience before he is warranted to believe on Christ.”  Well, then, if I trust Christ to save me because I have an awakened conscience, I say again, the most important part of the whole transaction is the alarm of my conscience, and my real trust hangs there.  If I lean on Christ because I feel this and that, then I am leaning on my feelings and not on Christ alone, and this is legal indeed.  Nay, even if desires after Christ are to be my warrant for believing, if I am to believe in Jesus not because he bids me, but because I feel some desires after him, you will again with half an eye perceive that the most important source of my comfort must be my own desires.  So that we shall be always looking within.  “Do I really desire?  If I do, then Christ can save me; if I do not, then he cannot.”  And so my desire overrides Christ and his grace.  Away with such legality from the earth!

Again, any other way of preaching than that of bidding the sinner believe because God commands him to believe, is a boasting way of faith.  For if my warrant to trust in Jesus be found in my experience, my loathings of sin, or my longings after Christ, then all these good things of mine are a legitimate ground of boasting, because though Christ may save me, yet these were the wedding-dress which fitted me to come to Christ.  If these be indispensable pre-requisites and conditions, then the man who has them may truly and justly say, “Christ did save me, but I had the pre-requisites and conditions first, and therefore let these share the praise.”  See, my brethren, those who have a faith which rests upon their own experience, what are they as a rule?  Mark them and you will perceive much censorious bitterness in them, prompting them to set up their own experience as the standard of saintship, which may assuredly make us suspicious whether they ever were humbled in a gospel manner at all, so as to see that their own best feelings, and best repentances, and best experiences in themselves are nothing more nor less than filthy rags in the sight of God.

My dear brethren, when we tell a sinner that foul and filthy as he is, without any preparation or qualification, he is to take Jesus Christ to be his all in all, finding in him all that he can ever need, when we dare on the spot to bid the jailor just startled out of sleep, “Believe in Jesus,” we leave no room for self-glorification, all must be of grace.  When we find the lame man lying at the temple gates, we do not bid him strengthen his own legs or feel some life in them, but we bid him in the name of Jesus rise up and walk; surely here when God the Spirit owns the Word, all boasting is excluded.  Whether I rely on my experience or my good works makes little difference, for either of these reliances will lead to boasting since they are both legal.  Law and boasting are twin brothers, but free grace and gratitude always go together.

Any other warrant for believing on Jesus than that which is presented in the gospel is changeable. See, brethren, if my warrant to believe in Christ lies in my meltings of heart and my experiences, then if to-day I have a melting heart and I can pour my soul out before the Lord, I have a warrant to believe in Christ. But tomorrow (who does not know this?) tomorrow my heart may be as hard as a stone, so that I can neither feel nor pray.  Then, according to the qualification-theory, I have no right to trust in Christ, my warrant is clean gone from me.  According to the doctrine of final perseverance, the Christian’s faith is continual, if so the warrant of his faith must be always the same, or else he has sometimes an unwarranted faith which is absurd; it follows from this that the abiding warrant of faith must lie in some immutable truth.  Since everything within changes more frequently than ever does an English sky, if my warrant to believe in Christ be based within, it must change every hour; consequently I am lost and saved alternately.  Brethren, can these things be so?

For my part, I want a sure and immutable warrant for my faith; I want a warrant to believe in Jesus which will serve me when the devil’s blasphemy comes pouring into my ears like a flood; I want a warrant to believe which will serve me when my lustings and corruptions appear in terrible array and make me cry out, “O wretched man that I am;’ I want a warrant to believe in Christ which will comfort me when I have no good frames and holy feelings, when I am dead as a stone and my spirit lies cleaving to the dust.  Such an unfailing warrant to belief in Jesus is found in this precious truth, that his gracious commandment and not my variable experience, is my title to believe on his Son Jesus Christ.

Again, my brethren, any other warrant is utterly incomprehensible. Multitudes of my brethren preach an impossible salvation.  How often do poor sinners hunger and thirst to know the way of salvation and there is no available salvation preached to them.  Personally, I do not remember to have been told from the pulpit to believe in Jesus as a sinner.  I heard much of feelings which I thought I could never get and frames after which I longed; but I found no peace until a true, free grace message came to me, “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.”  See, my brethren, if convictions of soul are necessary qualifications for Christ, we ought to know to an ounce how much of these qualifications are needed.  If you tell a poor sinner that there is a certain amount of humblings, and tremblings, and convictions, and heart-searchings to be felt, in order that he may be warranted to come to Christ, I demand of all legal-gospellers distinct information as to the manner and exact degree of preparation required.  Brethren, you will find when these gentlemen are pushed into a corner, they will not agree, but will every one give a different standard, according to his own judgment.  One will say the sinner must have months of law work; another, that he only needs good desires; and some will demand that he possess the graces of the Spirit—such as humility, godly sorrow, and love to holiness.  You will get no clear answer from them.  If the sinner’s warrant to come is found in the gospel itself, the matter is clear and plain; but what a roundabout plan is that compound of law and gospel against which I contend!

And let me ask you, my brethren, whether such an incomprehensible gospel would do for a dying man?  There he lies in the agonies of death.  He tells me that he has no good thought or feeling and asks what he must do to be saved. There is but a step between him and death—another five minutes and that man’s soul may be in hell.  What am I to tell him?  Am I to be an hour explaining to him the preparation required before he may come to Christ?  Brethren, I dare not.  But I tell him, “Believe, brother, even though it be the eleventh hour; trust thy soul with Jesus, and thou shalt be saved.”  There is the same gospel for a living man as for a dying man.  The thief on the Cross may have had some experience, but I do not find him pleading it; he turns his eye to Jesus, saying, “Lord, remember me!”  How prompt is the reply, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”?  He may have had longing desires, he may have had deep convictions, but I am quite sure he did not say, “Lord, I dare not ask thee to remember me, because I do not feel I have repented enough.  I dare not trust thee, because I have not been shaken over hell’s mouth.”  No, no, no; he looked to Jesus as he was, and Jesus responded to his believing prayer.  It must be so with you, my brethren, for any other plan but that of a sinner’s coming to Christ as a sinner, and resting on Jesus just as he is, is utterly incomprehensible, or, if it is to be explained at all, will require a day or two to explain it all; and that cannot be the gospel which the apostles preached to dying men.

Yet again, I believe that the preaching of alarms of conscience and repentance as qualifications for Christ, is unacceptable to the awakened sinner.  I will introduce one, as Saltmarsh does in his “Flowings of Christ’s Blood Freely to the Chief of Sinners.”  Here is a poor brother who dares not believe in Jesus.  I will suppose him to have attended a ministry where the preaching is “If you have felt this, if you have felt that, then you may believe.”  When you went to your minister in trouble, what did he say to you?  “He asked me whether I felt my need of Christ, I told him I did not think I did, at least I did not feel my need enough.  He told me that I ought to meditate upon the guilt of sin and consider the dreadful character of the wrath to come, and I might in this way feel my need more.”  Did you do so?  “I did; but it seemed to me as if while I meditated upon the terrors of judgment, my heart grew harder instead of softer, and I seemed to be desperately set and resolved in a kind of despair to go on in my ways; yet, sometimes I did have some humblings and some meltings of heart.”  What did your minister tell you to do to get comfort then?  “He said I ought to pray much.”  Did you pray?  “I told him I could not pray; that I was such a sinner that it was of no use for me to hope for an answer if I could.”  What did he say then?  “He told me I ought to lay hold upon the promises.”  Yes, did you do so?  “No; I told him I could not lay hold upon the promises; that I could not see they were meant for me for I was not the character intended; and that I could only find threatenings in the Word of God for such as I was.”  What did he say then?  “He told me to be diligent in the use of the means and to attend his ministry.”  What did you say to that?  “I told him I was diligent, but that what I wanted was not means, I wanted to get my sins pardoned and forgiven.”  What did he say then?  “Why, he said that I had better persevere and wait patiently for the Lord; I told him that I was in such a horror of great darkness, that my soul chose strangling rather than life.  Well then, he said, he thought I must already be truly penitent and was therefore safe, and that sooner or later I should have hope.  But I told him, a mere hope was not enough for me, I could not be safe while sin lay so heavy upon me.  He asked me whether I had not desires after Christ.  I said I had, but they were merely selfish, carnal desires; that I sometimes thought I had desires, but they were only legal.  He said if I had a desire to have a desire, it was God’s work, and I was saved.  That did prop me up for a time, sir, but I went down again, for that did not do for me, I wanted something solid to rest on.”  And sinner, how is it now with you?  Where are you now?  “Well, sir, I scarce know where I am, but I pray you, tell me what I must do?”  Brethren, my reply is prompt and plain; hear it.  Poor soul, I have no questions to ask you; I have no advice to give you, except this, God’s command to you is, whatever you may be, trust to the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.  Will you do it or no?  If he rejects that, I must heave him; I have no more to say to him; I am clear of his blood and on him the sentence comes, “He that believeth not shall be damned.”  But you will find in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, that when you begin to talk to the sinner, not about his repentings and his desirings, but about Christ, and tell him that he need not fear the law, for Christ has satisfied it; that he need not fear an angry God, for God is not angry with believers; tell him that all manner of iniquity was cast into the Red Sea of Jesus’ blood, and, like the Egyptians, drowned there forever; tell him that no matter however vile and wicked he may have been, “Christ is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by him;” and tell him that he has a right to come, be he who he may, or what he may, because God bids him come; and you will find that the suitability of such a gospel to the sinner’s case, will prove a sweet inducement in the hand of the Holy Spirit, to lead that sinner to lay hold on Jesus Christ.

O my brethren, I am ashamed of myself when I think of the way in which I have sometimes talked to awakened sinners.  I am persuaded that the only true remedy for a broken heart is Jesus Christ’s most precious blood.  Some surgeons keep a wound open too long; they keep cutting, and cutting, and cutting, till they cut away as much sound flesh as proud flesh.  Better by half heal it, heal it at once, for Jesus Christ was not sent to keep open the wounds, but to bind up the broken in heart.  To you, then, sinners of every sort and hue, black, hard-hearted, insensible, impenitent, even to you is the gospel sent, for “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,” even the chief.

I might here pause, surely, but I must add yet one other point upon this negative mode of reasoning.  Any other warrant for the sinner’s faith than the gospel itself is false and dangerous.

It is false, my brethren, it is as false as God is true, that anything in a sinner can be his warrant for believing in Jesus.  The whole tenor and run of the gospel is clean contrary to it.  It must be false because there is nothing in a sinner until he believes which can be a warrant for his believing.  If you tell me that a sinner has any good thing in him before he believes, I reply, impossible—“Without faith it is impossible to please God.”  All the repentings, and humblings, and convictions that a sinner has before faith, must be, according to Scripture, displeasing to God.  Do not tell me that his heart is broken; if it is only broken by carnal means and trusts in its brokenness, it needs to be broken over again.  Do not tell me he has been led to hate his sin; I tell you he does not hate his sin, he only hates hell.  There cannot be a true and real hatred of sin where there is not faith in Jesus.  All the sinner knows and feels before faith is only an addition to his other sins, and how can sin which deserves wrath be a warrant for an act which is the work of the Holy Spirit?

How dangerous is the sentiment I am opposing.  My hearers, it may be so mischievous us to have misled some of you.  I solemnly warn you, though you have been professors of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for twenty years, if your reason for believing in Christ lies in this, that you have felt the terrors of the law; that you have been alarmed and have been convinced; if your own experience be your warrant for believing in Christ, it is a false reason, and you are really relying upon your experience and not upon Christ: and mark you, if you rely upon your frames and feelings, nay, if you rely upon your communion with Christ, in any degree whatever, you are as certainly a lost sinner as though you relied upon oaths and blasphemies; you shall no more be able to enter heaven, even by the works of the Spirit—and this is using strong language—than by your own works; for Christ, and Christ alone, is the foundation, and “other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”  Take care of resting in your own experience.  All that is of nature’s spinning must be unraveled and everything that gets into Christ’s place, however dear to thee, and however precious in itself, must be broken in pieces, and like the dust of the golden calf, must be strewed upon the water, and thou wilt be made sorrowfully to drink of it, because thou made it thy trust.

I believe that the tendency of that preaching which puts the warrant for faith anywhere but in the gospel command is to vex the true penitent and to console the hypocrite; the tendency of it is to make the poor soul which really repents feel that he must not believe in Christ because he sees so much of his own hardness of heart.  The more spiritual a man is the more unspiritual he sees himself to be; and the more penitent a man is, the more impenitent he discovers himself to be.  Often the most penitent men are those who think themselves the most impenitent; and if I am to preach the gospel to the penitent and not to every sinner, as a sinner, then those penitent persons, who, according to my opponents, have the most right to believe, are the very persons who will never dare to touch it, because they are conscious of their own impenitence and want of all qualification for Christ.  Sinners, let me address you with words of life: Jesus wants nothing of you, nothing whatsoever, nothing done, nothing felt; he gives both work and feeling.  Ragged, penniless, just as ye are, lost, forsaken, desolate, with no good feelings, and no good hopes, still Jesus comes to you and, in these words of pity, he addresses you, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”  If thou believest in him, thou shalt never be confounded.

2. But now, POSITIVELY, and as the negative part has been positive enough, we will be brief here.  The gospel Command is a sufficient warrant for a sinner to believe in Jesus Christ.  The words of our text imply this—“This is the commandment.”  My brethren, do you want any warrant for doing a thing better than God’s command to do it?  The children of Israel borrowed jewels of silver and jewels of gold from the Egyptians.  Many, as they read the Bible, find fault with this transaction; but, to my mind, if God bade them do it, that was enough of justification for them.  Very well; if God bid thee believe—if this be his commandment that thou believe—canst thou want a better warrant?  I say, is there any necessity for any other?  Surely the Lord’s Word is enough.

Brethren, the command to believe in Christ must be the sinner’s warrant if you consider the nature of our commission.  How runs it?  “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”  It ought to run, according to the other plan, “preach the gospel to every regenerate person, to every convinced sinner, to every sensible soul.”  But it is not so; it is to “every creature.”  But unless the warrant be a something in which every creature can take a share, there is no such thing as consistently preaching it to every creature. Then how is it put?—“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.”  Where is there a word about the pre-requisites for believing?  Surely the man could not be damned for not doing what he would not have been warranted in doing.  Our preaching, on the theory of qualifications, should not be, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;” but “Qualify yourselves for faith, be sensible of your sin, be regenerated, get marks and evidences, and then believe.”  Why, surely, if I am not to sow the good seed on the stony places and among the thorns, I had better give up being a sower and take to ploughing or some other work.

When the apostles went to Macedonia or Achaia, they ought not to have commenced with preaching Christ; they should have preached up qualifications, emotions, and sensations, if these are the preparations for Jesus; but I find that Paul, whenever he stands up, has nothing to preach but “Christ, and him crucified.”  Repentance is preached as a gift from the exalted Savior, but it is never as the cause or preparation for believing on Jesus.  These two graces are born together and live with a common life—beware of making one a foundation for the other.  I would like to carry one of those who only preach to sensible sinners and set him down in the capital of the kingdom of Dahomey.  There are no sensible sinners there!  Look at them, with their mouths stained with human blood, with their bodies smeared all over with the gore of their immolated victims—how will the preacher find any qualification there?  I know not what he could say, but I know what my message would be.  My word would run thus—“Men and brethren, God, who made the heavens and the earth; hath sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world to suffer for our sins, and whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If Christ crucified did not shake the kingdom of Dahomey, it would be its first failure.  When the Moravian missionaries first went to Greenland, you remember that they were months and months teaching the poor Greenlander about the Godhead, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the doctrine of sin and the law, and no converts were forthcoming.  But one day, by accident, one of the Greenlanders happening to read that passage, “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God,” asked the meaning, and the missionary, hardly thinking him advanced enough to understand the gospel, nevertheless ventured to explain it to him, and the man became converted and hundreds of his countrymen received the Word.  Naturally enough, they said to the missionaries, “Why did not you tell us this before?  We knew all about there being a God, and that did us no good; why did not you come and tell us to believe in Jesus Christ before?”  O my brethren, this is God’s weapon, God’s method; this is the great battering-ram which will shake the gates of hell; and we must see to it, that it be brought into daily use.

I have tried, on the positive side, to show that a free-grace warrant is consistent with the text—that it accords with apostolic custom, and is, indeed, absolutely necessary, seeing the condition in which sinners are placed.  But, my brethren, to preach Christ to sinners, as sinners, must be right; for all the former acts of God are to sinners, as sinners.  Whom did God elect? Sinners.  He loved us with a great love, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins.  How did he redeem them? Did he redeem them as saints?  No; for while we were yet enemies, he reconciled us unto God by the death of his Son.  Christ never shed his blood for the good that is in us, but for the sin that is in us.  “He laid down his life for our sins,” says the apostle.  If, then, in election and redemption, we find God dealing with sinners, as sinners, it is a marring and nullifying of the whole plan if the gospel is to be preached to men as anything else but sinners.

Again, it is inconsistent with the character of God to suppose that he comes forth and proclaims, “If, O my fallen creatures, if you qualify yourselves for my mercy, I will save you ; if you will feel holy emotions—if you will be conscious of sacred desires after me, then the blood of Jesus Christ shall cleanse you.”  There would be little which is godlike in that.  But when he comes out with pardons full and free, and saith, “Yea, when ye lay in your blood, I said unto you, Live”—when he comes to you, his enemy and rebellious subject, and yet cries, “I have blotted out thy sins like a cloud, and like a thick cloud thine iniquities.”  Why, this is divine.  You know what David said, “I have sinned.”  What did Nathan say?  “The Lord has put away thy sin, thou shalt not die,” and that is the message of the gospel to a sinner as a sinner.  “The Lord has put away thy sin; Christ has suffered; he has brought in perfect righteousness; take him, trust him, and ye shall live.”  May that message come home to you this morning, my beloved.

I have read with some degree of attention a book to which I owe much for this present discourse—a book, by Abraham Booth, called “Glad Tidings to Perishing Sinners.”  I have never heard any one cast a suspicion upon Abraham Booth’s soundness; on the contrary, he has been generally considered as one of the most orthodox of the divines of the last generation.  If you want my views in full, read his book.  If you need something more, let me say, among all the bad things which his revilers have laid to his door, I have never heard any one blame William Huntingdon for not being high enough in doctrine.  Now, William Huntingdon prefaced in his lifetime a book by Saltmarsh, with which he was greatly pleased; and the marrow of its teaching is just this, in his own words, “The only ground for any to believe is, he is faithful that hath promised, not anything in themselves, for this is the commandment, That ye believe on his Son Jesus Christ.”  Now, if William Huntingdon himself printed such a book as that, I marvel how the followers of either William Huntingdon or Abraham Booth, how men calling themselves Calvinistic divines and high Calvinists, can advocate what is not free grace, but a legal, graceless system of qualifications and preparations.

I might here quote Crisp, who is pat to the point and a high doctrine man too.  I mention neither Booth nor Huntingdon as authorities upon the subject, to the law and to the testimony we must go; but I do mention them to show that men holding strong views on election and predestination yet did see it to be consistent to preach the gospel to sinners as sinners—nay, felt that it was inconsistent to preach the gospel in any other way.  I shall only add, that the blessings which flow from preaching Christ to sinners as sinners, are of such a character as prove it to be right.  Do on not see that this levels us all? We have the same warrant for believing, and no one can exalt himself above his fellow.

Then, my brethren, how it inspires men with hope and confidence; it forbids despair. No man can despair if this be true; or if he does, it is a wicked, unreasonable despair, because if he has been never so bad, yet God commands him to believe.  What room can there be for despondency?  Surely if anything could cut off Giant Despair’s head, Christ preached to sinners is the sharp two-edged sword to do it.

Again, how it makes a man live close to Christ! If I am to come to Christ as a sinner every day, and I must do so, for the Word saith, “As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him;” if every day I am to come to Christ as a sinner, why then, how paltry all my doings look!  What utter contempt it casts upon all my fine virtues, my preachings, my prayings, and all that comes of my flesh!  And though it leads me to seek after purity and holiness, yet it teaches me to live on Christ and not on them, and so it keeps me at the fountain head.

My time flies, and I must leave the last head, just to add, sinner, whoever thou mayst be, God now commands thee to believe in Jesus Christ.  This is his commandment: he does not command thee to feel anything, or be anything, to prepare thyself for this.  Now, art thou willing to incur the great guilt of making God a liar?  Surely thou wilt shrink from that: then dare to believe.  Thou canst not say, “I have no right:” you have a perfect right to do what God tells you to do.  You cannot tell me you are not fit; there is no fitness wanted, the Command is given and it is yours to obey, not to dispute.  You cannot say it does not come to you—it is preached to every Creature under heaven; and now soul, it is so pleasant a thing to trust the Lord Jesus Christ that I would fain persuade myself thou needest no persuading.  It is so delightful a thing to accept a perfect salvation, to be saved by precious blood and to be married to so bright a Savior that I would fain hope the Holy Spirit has led thee to cry, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”

“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12.

Those who are fond of a labyrinth of exposition will find a maze perplexing to the last degree if they will read the various commentators and expositors upon this verse. This is the question: by the Word of God, are we here to understand the Incarnate Word, the Divine Logos, who was in the beginning with God. O; or does the passage relate to this inspired Book, and to the gospel, which is the kernel of it, as it is set forth in the preaching of the truth in the power of the Holy Ghost? Confusing!You shall find Dr. John Owen, with a very large number of eminent servants of God, defending the first theory, that the Son of God is doubtless here spoken of; and I confess that they seem to me to defend it with arguments which I should not like to controvert. Much more is to be said on this side of the question than I can here bring before you.

On the other side, we find John Calvin, with an equally grand array of divines, all declaring that it must be the Book that is meant, the gospel, the revelation of God in the Book. Their interpretation of the passage is not to be set aside, and I feel convinced that they all give as good reasons for their interpretation as those who come to the other conclusion. Where such Doctors differ, I am not inclined to present any interpretation of my own which can be set in competition with theirs, though I may venture to propound one which comprehends them all, and so comes into conflict with none. It is a happy circumstance if we can see a way to agree with all those who did not themselves agree. But I have been greatly instructed by the mere fact that it should be difficult to know whether in this passage the Holy Ghost is speaking of the Christ of God, or the Book of God. This shows us a great truth, which we might not otherwise have so clearly noted. How much that can be said of the Lord Jesus may be also said of the inspired volume! How closely are these two allied! How certainly do those who despise the one reject the other! How intimately are the Word made flesh, and the Word uttered by inspired men, joined together!

It may be most accurate to interpret this passage as relating both to the Word of God incarnate, and the Word of God inspired. Weave the two into one thought, for God hath joined them together, and you will then see fresh lights and new meanings in the text. The Word of God, namely, this revelation of himself in Holy Scripture, is all it is here described to be, because Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, is in it. He doth, as it were, incarnate himself as the divine truth in this visible and manifest revelation; and thus it becomes living and powerful, dividing and discerning. As the Christ reveals God, so this Book reveals Christ, and therefore it partakes, as the Word of God, in all the attributes of the Incarnate Word; and we may say many of the same things of the written Word as of the embodied Word; in fact, they are now so linked together that it would be impossible to divide them.

This I like to think of, because there are some nowadays who deny every doctrine of revelation, and yet, forsooth, they praise the Christ. The Teacher is spoken of in the most flattering style, and then his teaching is rejected, except so far as it may coincide with the philosophy of the moment. They talk much about Jesus, while that which is the real Jesus, namely, his gospel, and his inspired Word, they cast away. I believe I do but correctly describe them when I say that, like Judas, they betray the Son of man with a kiss. They even go so far as to cry up the names of the doctrines, though they use them in a different sense that they may deceive. They talk of loyalty to Christ, and reverence for the Sermon on the Mount; but they use vain words. I am charged with sowing suspicion. I do sow it, and desire to sow it. Too many Christian people are content to hear anything so long as it is put forth by a clever man, in a taking manner; I want them to try the spirits, whether they be of God, for many false prophets have gone forth into the world. What God has joined together these modern thinkers willfully put asunder, and separate the Revealer from his own revelation. I believe the Savior thinks their homage to be more insulting than their scorn would be. Well may he do so, for they bow before him, and say, “Hail, Master!” while their foot is on the blood of his covenant, and their souls abhor the doctrine of his substitutionary sacrifice. They are crucifying the Lord afresh, and putting him to an open shame, by denying the Lord that bought them, by daring to deride his purchase of his people as a “mercantile transaction,” and I know not what of blasphemy beside.

Christ and his Word must go together. What is true of the Christ is here predicated both of him and of his Word. Behold, this day the everlasting gospel has Christ within it. He rides in it as in a chariot. He rides in it as, of old, Jehovah “did ride upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.” It is only because Jesus is not dead that the Word becomes living and effectual, “and sharper than any two-edged sword;” for, if you leave Christ out of it, you have left out its vitality and power. As I have told you that we will not have Christ without the Word, so neither will we have the Word without Christ. If you leave Christ out of Scripture, you have left out the essential truth which it is written to declare. Ay, if you leave out of it Christ as a Substitute, Christ in his death, Christ in his garments dyed in blood, you have left out of it all that is living and powerful. How often have we reminded you that as concerning the gospel, even as concerning every man, “the blood is the life thereof:” a bloodless gospel is a lifeless gospel!

A famous picture has been lately produced, which represents our Lord before Pilate. It has deservedly won great attention. A certain excellent newspaper, which brings out for a very cheap price a large number of engravings, has given an engraving of this picture; but, inasmuch as the painting was too large for the paper to give the whole, they have copied a portion of it. It is interesting to note that they have given us Pilate here, and Caiaphas there, but since there was no room for Jesus upon the sheet, they have left out that part of the design. When I saw the picture, I thought that it was wonderfully characteristic of a great deal of modern preaching. See Pilate here, Caiaphas there, and the Jews yonder-but the Victim, bound and scourged for human sin, is omitted. Possibly, in the case of the publication, the figure of the Christ will appear in the next number; but even if he should appear in the next sermon of oar(?) preachers of the new theology, it will be as a moral example, and not as the Substitute for the guilty, the Sin-bearer by whose death we are redeemed. When we hear a sermon with no Christ in it, we hope that he will come out next Sunday; at the same time, the preaching is, so far, spoilt, and the presentation of the gospel is entirely rained so long as the principal figure is left out. I don’t understand the previous sentence. Oh, it is a sad thing to have to stand in any house of prayer and listen to the preaching, and then have to cry, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him!” Rest assured that they have laid him in a tomb. You may be quite certain of that. They have put him away as a dead thing, and to them he is as good as dead. True believer, you may comfort your heart with this recollection that he will rise again. He cannot be held by the bonds of death in any sense; and, though his own church should bury him, and lay the huge lid of the most enormous sarcophagus of heresy upon him, the Redeemer will rise again, and his truth with him, and he and his Word will live and reign together forever and ever.

Brethren, you will understand I am going to speak about the Word of God as being, like the Lord Jesus, the revelation of God. This inspired volume is that gospel whereby you have received life, unless you have heard it in vain. It is this gospel, with Jesus within it, Jesus working by it, which is said to be living and effectual, and “sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” I shall only talk with you in very simple style. First, concerning the qualities of the Word of God; and, secondly, concerning certain practical lessons which these qualities suggest to us.

I. First let me speak CONCERNING THE QUALITIES OF THE WORD OF GOD. It is “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.”

The Word of God is said to be “quick.” I am sorry the translators have used that word, because it is apt to be mistaken as meaning speedy, and that is not the meaning at all; it means alive, or living. “Quick” is the old English word for alive, and so we read of the “quick and dead.” The Word of God is alive. This is a living Book. This is a mystery which only living men, quickened by the Spirit of God, will fully comprehend. Take up any other book except the Bible, and there may be a measure of power in it, but there is not that indescribable vitality in it which breathes, and speaks, and pleads, and conquers in the case of this sacred volume. We have in the book-market many excellent selections of choice passages from great authors, and in a few instances the persons who have made the extracts have been at the pains to place under their quotations from Scripture the name “David,” or “Jesus,” but this is worse than needless. There is a style of majesty about God’s Word and with this majesty a vividness never found elsewhere. No other writing has within it a heavenly life whereby it works miracles and even imparts life to its reader. It is a living and incorruptible seed. It moves, it stirs itself, it lives, it communes with living men as a living Word. Solomon saith concerning it, “When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.” Have you never known what that means? Why, the Book has wrestled with me; the Book has smitten me; the Book has comforted me; the Book has smiled on me; the Book has frowned on me; the Book has clasped my hand; the Book has warmed my heart. The Book weeps with me, and sings with me; it whispers to me, and it preaches to me; it maps my way, and holds up my goings; it was to me the Young Man’s Best Companion, and it is still my Morning and Evening Chaplain. It is a live Book: all over alive; from its first chapter to its last word it is full of a strange, mystic vitality, which makes it have pre-eminence over every other writing for every living child of God.

See, my brothers, our words, our books, our spoken or our printed words by-and-by die out. How many books there are which nobody will ever read now because they are out of date! There are many books that I could read profitably when I was a youth, but they would teach me nothing now. There are also certain religious works which I could read with pleasure during the first ten years of my spiritual life; but I should never think of reading them now, any more than I should think of reading the “a-b ab,” and the “b-a ba,” of my childhood. Christian experience causes us to outgrow the works which were the class-books of our youth. We may outgrow teachers and pastors, but not apostles and prophets. That human system which was once vigorous and influential may grow old, and at length lose all vitality; but the Word of God is always fresh, and new, and full of force. No wrinkle mars its brow: no trembling is in its foot. Here, in the Old and New Testaments, we have at once the oldest and the newest of books. Homer and Hesiod are infants to the more ancient parts of this venerable volume, and yet the gospel which it contains is as truly new as this morning’s newspaper. I say again that our words come and go: as the trees of the forest multiply their leaves only to cast them off as withered things, so the thoughts and theories of men are but for the season, and then they fade and rot into nothingness. “The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth forever.”

Its vitality is such as it can impart to its readers. Hence, you will often find, when you converse with revelation, that if you yourself are dead when you begin to read, it does not matter, you will be quickened as you peruse it. You need not bring life to the Scripture; you shall draw life from the Scripture. Oftentimes a single verse has made us start up, as Lazarus came forth at the call of the Lord Jesus. When our soul has been faint, and ready to die, a single word, applied to the heart by the Spirit of God, has aroused us; for it is a quickening as well as a living Word. I am so glad of this, because at times I feel altogether dead; but the Word of God is not dead; and coming to it, we are like the dead man, who, when he was put into the grave of the prophet, rose again as soon as he touched his bones. Even these bones of the prophets, these words of theirs spoken and written thousands of years ago, will impart life to those who come into contact with them. The Word of God is thus overflowingly alive.

Hence, I may add it is so alive that you need never be afraid that it will become extinct. They dream that they have put us among the antiquities, those of us who preach the old gospel that our fathers loved! They sneer at the doctrines of the apostles and of the reformers, and declare that believers in them are left high and dry, the relics of an age which has long since ebbed away. Yes, so they say! But what they say may not after all be true; for the gospel is such a living gospel that, if it were cut into a thousand shreds, every particle of it would live and grow. If it were buried beneath a thousand avalanches of error, it would shake off the incubus and rise from its grave. If it were cast into the midst of fire it would walk through the flame as it has done many a time, as though it were in its natural element. The Reformation was largely due to a copy of the Scriptures left in the seclusion of a monastery, and there hidden till Luther came under its influence, and his heart furnished soil for the living seed to grow in. Leave but a single New Testament in a Popish community, and the evangelical faith may at any moment come to the front, even though no preacher of it may ever have come that way. Plants unknown in certain regions have suddenly sprung from the soil: the seeds have been wafted on the winds, carried by birds, or washed ashore by the waves of the sea. So vital are seeds that they live and grow wherever they are borne; and even after lying deep in the soil for centuries, when the upturning spade has brought them to the surface, they have germinated at once. Thus is it with the Word of God: it liveth and abideth forever, and in every soil and under all circumstances it is prepared to prove its own life by the energy with which it grows and produces fruit to the glory of God.

How vain, as well as wicked, are all attempts to kill the gospel. Those who attempt the crime, in any fashion, will be forever still beginning, and never coming near their end. They will be disappointed in all cases, whether they would slay it with persecution, smother it with worldliness, crush it with error, starve it with neglect, poison it with misrepresentation, or drown it with infidelity. While God liveth, his Word shall live. Let us praise God for that. We have an immortal gospel, incapable of being destroyed, which shall live and shine when your? lamp of the sun has consumed its scant supply of oil.

In our text, the Word is said to be “powerful” or “active.” Perhaps “energetic” is the best rendering, or almost as well, “effectual.” Holy Scripture is full of power and energy. Oh, the majesty of the Word of God!

They charge us with Bibliolatry; it is a crime of their own inventing, of which few are guilty. If there be such things as venial sins, surely an undue reverence of Holy Scripture is one of them. To me the Bible is not God, but it is God’s voice, and I do not hear it without awe. What an honor to have it as one’s calling, to study, to expound, and to publish this sacred Word! I cannot help feeling that the man who preaches the Word of God is standing, not upon a mere platform, but upon a throne. You may study your sermon, my brother, and you may be a great rhetorician, and be able to deliver it with wonderful fluency and force; but the only power that is effectual for the highest design of preaching is the power which does not lie in your word, nor in my word, but in the Word of God. Have you never noticed, when persons are converted, that they almost always attribute it to some text that was quoted in the sermon? It is God’s Word, not our comment on God’s Word, which saves souls.

The Word of God is powerful for all sacred ends. How powerful it is to convince men of sin! We have seen the self-righteous turned inside out by the revealed truth of God. Nothing else could have brought home to them such unpleasant truth, and compelled them to see themselves as in a clear mirror, but the searching Word of God. How powerful it is for conversion! It comes on-board a man, and without asking any leave from him, it just puts its hand on the helm, and turns him round in the opposite direction from that in which he was going before; and the man gladly yields to the irresistible force which influences his understanding and rules his will. The Word of God is that by which sin is slain, and grace is born in the heart. It is the light which brings life with it. How active and energetic it is, when the soul is convinced of sin, in bringing it forth into gospel liberty! We have seen men shut up as in the devil’s own dungeon, and we have tried to get them free. We have shaken the bars of iron, but we could not tear them out so as to set the captives at liberty. But the Word of the Lord is a great breaker of bolts and bars. It not only casts down the strongholds of doubt, but it cuts off the head of Giant Despair. No cell or cellar in Doubting Castle can hold a soul in bondage when the Word of God, which is the master-key, is once put to its true use, and made to throw back bolts of despondency. It is living and energetic for encouragement and enlargement.

O beloved, what a wonderful power the gospel has to bring us comfort! It brought us to Christ at the first, and it still leads us to look to Christ till we grow like him. God’s children are not sanctified by legal methods, but by gracious ones. The Word of God, the gospel of Christ, is exceedingly powerful in promoting sanctification, and bringing about that whole-hearted consecration which is both our duty and our privilege. May the Lord cause his Word to prove its power in us by its making us fruitful unto every good work to do his will! Through the “washing of water by the Word”—that is, through the washing by the Word—may we be cleansed every day and made to walk in white before the Lord, adorning the doctrine of God our Savior in all things!

The Word of God, then, is quick and powerful in our own personal experience, and we shall find it to be so if we use it in laboring to bless our fellow-men. Dear brethren, if you seek to do good in this sad world, and want a powerful weapon to work with, stick to the gospel, the living gospel, the old, old gospel. There is a power in it sufficient to meet the sin and death of human nature. All the thoughts of men, use them as earnestly as you may, will be like tickling Leviathan with a straw. Nothing can get through the scales of this monster but the Word of God. This is a weapon made of sterner stuff than steel, and it will cut through coats of mail. Nothing can resist it. “Where the word of a king is, there is power.” About the gospel, when spoken with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, there is the same omnipotence as there was in the Word of God when in the beginning he spoke to the primeval darkness saying, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Oh how we ought to prize and love the revelation of God; not only because it is full of life, but because that life is exceedingly energetic and effectual, and operates so powerfully upon the lives and hearts of men.

Next, the apostle tells us that this Word is cutting. “Cutting” would be as correct a translation as that of our own version: it is “more cutting than any two-edged sword.” I suppose the apostle means by the description “two-edged” that it is all edge. A sword with two edges has no blunt side: it cuts both this way and that. The revelation of God given us in Holy Scripture is edge all over. It is alive in every part, and in every part keen to cut the conscience and wound the heart. Depend upon it; there is not a superfluous verse in the Bible, nor a chapter which is useless. Doctors say of certain drugs that they are inert-they have no effect upon the system one way or the other. Now, there is not an inert passage in the Scriptures; every line has its virtues. Have you never heard of one who heard read, as the lesson for the Sabbath-day, that long chapter of names, wherein it is written that each patriarch lived so many hundred years, “and he died”? Thus it ends the notice of the long life of Methuselah with “and he died.” The repetition of the words, “and he died,” woke the thoughtless hearer to a sense of his mortality, and led to his coming to the Savior. I should not wonder that, away there in the Chronicles, among those tough Hebrew names, there have been conversions wrought in cases unknown to us as yet. Anyhow, any bit of Holy Writ is very dangerous to play with, and many a man has been wounded by the Scriptures when he has been idly or even profanely reading them. Doubters have meant to break the Word to pieces, and it has broken them. Yea, fools have taken up portions, and studied them, on purpose to ridicule them, and they have been sobered and vanquished by that which they repeated in sport. There was one who went to hear Mr. Whitefield—a member of the “Hell-fire Club,” a desperate fellow. He stood up at the next meeting of his abominable associates, and he delivered Mr. Whitefield’s sermon with wonderful accuracy, imitating his very tone and manner. In the middle of his exhortation, he converted himself, and came to a sudden pause, sat down broken-hearted, and confessed the power of the gospel. That club was dissolved. That remarkable convert was Mr. Thorpe, of Bristol, whom God so greatly used afterwards in the salvation of others. I would rather have you read the Bible to mock at it than not read it at all. I would rather that you came to hear the Word of God out of hatred to it than that you never came at all.

The Word of God is so sharp a thing, so full of cutting power that you may be bleeding under its wounds before you have seriously suspected the possibility of such a thing. You cannot come near the gospel without its having a measure of influence over you; and, God blessing you, it may cut down and kill your sins when you have no idea that such a work is being done. Dear friends, have you not found the Word of God to be very cutting, more cutting than a two-edged sword, so that your heart has bled inwardly, and you have been unable to resist the heavenly stroke? I trust you and I may go on to know more and more of its edge till it has killed us outright, so far as the life of sin is concerned. Oh, to be sacrificed unto God, and his Word to be the sacrificial knife! Oh, that his Word were put to the throat of every sinful tendency, every sinful habit, and every sinful thought! There is no sin-killer like the Word of God. Wherever it comes, it comes as a sword, and inflicts death upon evil. Sometimes when we are praying that we may feel the power of the Word we hardly know what we are praying for. I saw a venerable brother the other day, and he said to me, “I remember speaking with you when you were nineteen or twenty years of age, and I never forgot what you said to me. I had been praying with you in the prayer-meeting that God would give us the Holy Ghost to the full, and you said to me afterwards, ‘My dear brother, do you know what you asked God for?’ I answered, ‘Yes.’ But you very solemnly said to me, ‘The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit of burning, and few are prepared for the inward conflict which is meant by these two words.”’ My good old friend told me that at the time he did not understand what I meant, but thought me a singular youth. “Ah!” said he, “I see it now, but it is only by a painful experience that I have come to the full comprehension of it.” Yes, when Christ comes, he comes not to send peace on the earth, but a sword; and that sword begins at home, in our own souls, killing, cutting, hacking, breaking in pieces. Blessed is that man who knows the Word of the Lord by its exceeding sharpness, for it kills nothing but that which ought to be killed. It quickens and gives new life to all that is of God; but the old depraved life which ought to die, it hews in pieces, as Samuel destroyed Agag before the Lord. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword.”

But I want you to notice next, that it has a further quality: it is piercing. While it has an edge like a sword, it has also a point like a rapier, “Piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” The difficulty with some men’s hearts is to get at them. In fact, there is no spiritually penetrating the heart of any natural man except by this piercing instrument, the Word of God. But the rapier of revelation will go through anything. Even when the “heart is as fat as grease,” as the Psalmist says, yet this Word will pierce it. Into the very marrow of the man, the sacred truth will pass and find him out in a way in which he cannot even find himself out. As it is with our own hearts, so it is with the hearts of other men. Dear friends, the gospel can find its way anywhere. Men may wrap themselves up in prejudice, but this rapier can find out the joints of their harness; they may resolve not to believe and may feel content in their self-righteousness, but this piercing weapon will find its way. The arrows of the Word of God are sharp in the hearts of the King’s enemies, whereby the people fall under him. Let us not be afraid to trust this weapon whenever we are called up to face the adversaries of the Lord Jesus. We can pin them, and pierce them, and finish them with this.

And next, the Word of God is said to be discriminating. It divides asunder soul and spirit. Nothing else could do that, for the division is difficult. In a great many ways, writers have tried to describe the difference between soul and spirit; but I question whether they have succeeded. No doubt it is a very admirable definition to say, “The soul is the life of the natural man, and the spirit the life of the regenerate or spiritual man.” But it is one thing to define and quite another thing to divide. We will not attempt to solve this metaphysical problem. God’s Word comes in, and it shows man the difference between that which is of the soul, and that which is of the spirit; that which is of man and that which is of God; that which is of grace and that which is of nature.

The Word of God is wonderfully decisive about this. Oh, how much there is of our religion which is-to quote a spiritual poet—“The child of nature finely-dressed, but not the living child:” it is of the soul, and not of the spirit! The Word of God lays down very straight lines and separates between the natural and the spiritual, the carnal and the divine. You would think sometimes, from the public prayers and preaching of clergymen, that we were all Christian people; but Holy Scripture does not sanction this flattering estimate of our condition. When we are gathered together, the prayers are for us all, and the preaching is for us all, as being all God’s people-all born so, or made so by baptism, no question about that! Yet the way the Word of God takes is of quite another sort. It talks about the dead, and the living; about the repentant, and the impenitent; about the believing, and the unbelieving; about the blind, and the seeing; about those called of God, and those who still lie in the arms of the wicked one. It speaks with keen discrimination and separates the precious from the vile. I believe there is nothing in the world that divides congregations, as they ought to be divided, like the plain preaching of the Word of God. This it is that makes our places of worship to be solemn spots, even as Dr. Watts sings—

“Up to her courts with joys unknown

The holy tribes repair;

The Son of David holds the throne,

And sits in judgment there.”

“He hears our praises end complaints;

And, while his awful voice

Divides the sinners from the saints,

We tremble and rejoice.”

The Word of God is discriminating. Once more, the Word of God is marvelously revealing to the inner self. It pierces between the joints and marrow, and marrow is a thing not to be got at very readily. The Word of God gets at the very marrow of our manhood; it lays bare the secret thoughts of the soul. It is “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Have you not often, in hearing the Word, wondered how the preacher could so unveil that which you had concealed? He says the very things in the pulpit which you had uttered in your bed-chamber. Yes, that is one of the marks of the Word of God that it lays bare a man’s inmost secrets; yea, it discovers to him that which he had not even himself perceived. The Christ that is in the Word sees everything.

Read the next verse—“All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” The Word not only lets you see what your thoughts are, but it criticizes your thoughts. The Word of God says of this thought, “it is vain,” and of that thought, “it is acceptable;” of this thought, “it is selfish,” and of that thought, “it is Christ-like.” It is a judge of the thoughts of men. And the Word of God is such a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart that when men twist about, and wind, and wander, yet it tracks them. There is nothing so difficult to get at as a man. You may hunt a badger, and run down a fox, but you cannot get at a man—he has so many doublings and hiding-places: yet the Word of God will dig him out, and seize on him. When the Spirit of God works with the gospel, the man may dodge, and twist, but the preaching goes to his heart and conscience, and he is made to feel it, and to yield to its force.

Many times, I do not doubt, dear brothers, you have found comfort in the discerning power of the Word. Unkind lips have found great fault with you; you have been trying to do what you could for the Lord, and an enemy has slandered you, and then it has been a delight to remember that the Master discerns your motive. Holy Scripture has made you sure of this by the way in-which it understood and commended you. He discerns the true object of your heart and never misinterprets you; and this has inspired you with a firm resolve to be the faithful servant of so just a Lord. No slander will survive the judgment seat of Christ. We are not to be tried by the opinions of men, but by the impartial Word of the Lord; and, therefore, we rest in peace.

II. I have been all this while over the first part of the discourse. I have only a minute or two just to show ONE OR TWO LESSONS WE OUGHT TO GATHER FROM THE QUALITIES OF THE WORD OF GOD that I have described.

The first is this. Brothers and sisters, let us greatly reverence the Word of God. If it be all this, let us read it, study it, prize it, and make it the man of our right hand. And you that are not converted, I do pray you treat the Bible with a holy love and reverence, and read it with the view of finding Christ and his salvation in it. Augustine used to say that the Scriptures are the swaddling-bands of the child Christ Jesus: while you are unrolling the bands I trust you will meet with him.

Next, dear friends, let us, whenever we feel ourselves dead, and especially in prayer, get close to the Word, for the Word of God is alive. I do not find that gracious men always pray alike. Who could? When you have nothing to say to your God, let him say something to you. The best private devotion is made up, half of searching Scripture in which God speaks to us, and the other half of prayer and praise, in which we speak to God. When thou art dead, turn from thy death to that or which still lives.

Next, whenever we feel weak in our duties, let us go to the Word of God, and the Christ in the Word, for power; and this will be the best of power. The power of our natural abilities, the power of our acquired knowledge, the power of our gathered experience, all these may be vanity, but the power which is in the Word will prove effectual. Get thou up from the cistern of thy failing strength to the fountain of omnipotence; for they that drink here, while the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, shall run, and not be weary, and shall walk, and not faint.

Next, if you need as a minister, or a worker, anything that will cut your hearers to the heart, go to this Book for it. I say this because I have known preachers try to use very cutting words of their own. God save us from that! When our hearts grow hot and our words are apt to be sharp as a razor, let us remember that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Let us not attempt to carry on Christ’s war with the weapons of Satan. There is nothing so cutting as the Word of God. Keep to that. I believe also that one of the best ways of convincing men of error is not so much to denounce the error as to proclaim the truth more clearly. If a stick is very crooked, and you wish to prove that it is so, get a straight one, and quietly lay it down by its side, and when men look they will surely see the difference. The Word of God has a very keen edge about it, and all the cutting words you want you had better borrow therefrom.

And next, the Word of God is very piercing. When we cannot get at people by God’s truth, we cannot get at them at all. I have heard of preachers who have thought they ought to adapt themselves a little to certain people, and leave out portions of the truth which might be disagreeable. Brothers, if the Word of God will not pierce, our words will not, you may depend upon that. The Word of God is like the sword of Goliath, which had been laid up in the sanctuary, of which David said “There is none like it, give it me.” Why did he like it so well? I think he liked it all the better because it had been laid up in the Holy Place by the priests; that is one thing. But I think he liked it best of all because it had stains of blood upon it-the blood of Goliath. I like my own sword because it is covered with blood right up to the hilt: the blood of slaughtered sins, and errors, and prejudices has made it like the sword of Don Rodrigo, “of a dark and purple tint.” The slain of the Lord have been many by the old gospel. We point to many vanquished by this true Jerusalem blade. They desire me to use a new one. I have not tried it. What have I to do with a weapon which has seen no service? I have proved the Sword of the Lord, and of Gideon, and I mean to keep to it. My dear comrades in arms, gird this sword about you, and disdain the wooden weapons with which enemies would delude you! Let us use this blade of steel, well tempered in the fire, against the most obstinate, for they cannot stand against it. They may resist it for a time, but they will have to yield. They had better make preparations for surrender; for if the Lord comes out against them with his own Word, they will have to give in and cry to him for mercy.

Next, if we want to discriminate at any time between the soul and the Spirit, and the joints and marrow, let us go to the Word of God for discrimination. We need to use the Word of God just now upon several subjects. There is that matter of holiness, upon which one [person] saith says one thing and another. Never mind what they all say, go to the Book, for this is the umpire on all questions. Amidst the controversies of the day about a thousand subjects, keep to this infallible Book, and it will guide you unerringly.

And lastly, since this Book is meant to be a discerner or critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart, let the Book criticize us. When you have issued a new volume from the press—which you do every day, for every day is a new treatise from the press of life—take it to this great critic, and let the Word of God judge it. If the Word of God approves you, you are approved; if the Word of God disapproves you, you are disapproved. Have friends praised you? They may be your enemies in so doing. Have other observers abused you? They may be wrong or right, let the Book decide. A man of one Book—if that Book is the Bible-is a man, for he is a man of God. Cling you to the living Word, and let the gospel of your fathers, let the gospel of the martyrs, let the gospel of the Reformers, let the gospel of the blood-washed multitude before the throne of God, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, be your gospel, and none but that, and it will save you and make you the means of saving others to the praise of God.