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Christ Exalted Above Evil by Jonathan Edwards

January 16, 2010 by ADMIN

For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.  The last enemy that shall be destroyed, is death –1 Corinthians 15:25-26

The apostle in this chapter particularly opposes some among the Christian Corinthians who denied the resurrection of the dead and infested the church with their doctrine.  There were two sorts of persons in that age who were especially great opposers of the doctrine of the resurrection: one among the Jews, and the other among the heathen. Among the Jews there the Sadducees of whom we read in Acts 23:8.  Among the heathen, that were the chief opposers of this doctrine were the philosophers.  The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was not consistent with their philosophy which taught that it was impossible that one who was deprived of life should ever receive it again.  And therefore they ridiculed the doctrine when the apostle preached it among them at Athens.  Probably the church at Corinth received this corruption from the philosophers and not the Sadducees.  For Corinth was near to Athens, the place of the chief resort of the philosophers of Greece.

In opposing this error, the apostle first insists on Christ’s resurrection from the dead and next on the resurrection of all the saints at the end of the world.  And in the verses next before the text he shows how both are connected or how one arises or follows from the other.  And then he adds, “then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority, and power.  For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet.  The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” — Observe,

1. That Christ will be exalted over all his enemies. This is one aspect of the glory of his exaltation and dominion that Christ as our redeemer has – that it issues in the subjection of all enemies under his feet.  Their being under his feet denotes their being perfectly subdued and his being gloriously exalted over them.  It shall be thus with respect to God’s and his people’s enemies universally, not one excepted.  This universality is signified here two ways, all enemies — and the very lost enemy: when there shall be but one enemy left (death) that shall also be put under his feet.

2. That all kinds of enemies are defeated in his resurrection. We may learn what is here meant by enemies by the particular instance here given as the last that shall be destroyed, viz. death.  This shows that enemies does not mean persons only, but all that set themselves in opposition to God and his people, including all evils, whatever is against God and his people and opposes Christ or his saints, whether they be persons or things.

SECTION 1

How evil of all kinds has prevailed and highly exalted itself in the world.

Evil of all kinds has risen to an exceeding height in the world and highly exalted itself against God, and Christ, and the church. — This will appear by the following particulars.

1. Satan has highly exalted himself and greatly prevailed. He is vastly superior in his natural capacity and abilities to mankind.  He was originally one of the highest rank of creatures; but he proudly exalted himself in rebellion against God in heaven.  We are told that pride was the condemnation of the devil.  He became proud of his own superior dignity and mighty abilities and the glory which his Creator had put upon him and probably thought it too much to submit to the Son of God and attempted to exalt his throne above him.  And he prevailed to draw away vast multitudes of the heavenly hosts into an open rebellion against God.  And after he was cast down from heaven, he proudly exalted himself in this world and prevailed to do great things.  By his subtle temptations he procured the fall of our first parents and so brought about the ruin of their whole race.  He procured their ruin in body and soul and in the death of both; and that they should be exposed to all manner of calamity in this world and to eternal ruin hereafter.  He so far prevailed, that he drew men off from the service of their Maker and set up himself to be the god of this world.  And in a little time, he drew the world into that almost universal corruption which brought on the flood by which the world was destroyed.  And after that, he drew off all nations, except the posterity of Jacob, from the worship of the true God and darkened all the world with heathenism and held them under this darkness for a great many ages.  Being as worshipful as God almost all over the world, the nations of the earth offered sacrifices to him and multitudes even offered up their children.

And during that time, he often so far prevailed against the people of God that he had almost swallowed them up.  The church was often brought to the very brink of ruin.  And when Christ himself appeared in the world, how did he exalt himself against him and prevailed so far as to influence men to hate and despise him all the days of his life.  And at last, he persuaded one of his own disciples to betray him.  Accordingly, he was delivered into the hands of men to be mocked, buffeted, spit upon, and treated with the greatest ignominy that unrestrained malice could devise; and at last procured that he should be put to the most cruel and ignominious kind of death.  And since then, he has greatly exalted himself against the gospel and kingdom of Christ.  He has procured that the church, for the most part, has been the subject of great persecution; has often brought it to the brink of utter destruction; has accomplished great works in setting up those great kingdoms of antichrist and Mohamed and darkened great part of the world that was once enlightened with the gospel of Christ with worse than heathen darkness.  And he has infected the Christian world with multitudes of heresies and false ways of worship and greatly promoted atheism and infidelity.  Thus highly has the devil exalted himself against God and Christ, and the elect; and so far he prevailed.

2. Guilt is another evil which has come to a great height in the world.  All guilt is an evil of a dreadful nature: the least degree of it is enough utterly to undo any creature.  It is a thing that reaches unto heaven and cries to God and brings down his wrath.  The guilt of any one sin is so terrible an evil that it prevails to bind over the guilty person to suffer everlasting burnings.  So is in some respect infinite, in that it obliges us to that punishment which has no end and so is infinitely terrible.  But this kind of evil has risen to a most amazing height in this world where not only some persons are guilty, but all, in all nations and ages.  And they who live to act any time in the world are not only guilty of one sin, but of thousands and thousands of thousands.  What multiplied and what aggravated sins are some men guilty of!  What guilt lies on some particular persons!  How much more on some particular populous cities!  How much more still on this wicked world!  How much does the guilt of the world transcend all account, all expression, all powers of numbers or measures!  And above all, how vast is the guilt of the world in all ages, from the beginning to the end of it!  To what a pitch has guilt risen!  The world being, as it were, on every side, loaded with it, as with mountains heaped on mountains, above the clouds and stars of heaven.

And guilt, when it was imputed to Christ, greatly prevailed against him — though in himself innocent and the eternal Son of God — even so as to hold him prisoner of justice for a while, and to open the flood-gates of God’s wrath upon him.

3. Corruption and wickedness of heart is another thing that has risen to an exceeding height in the world. Sin has so far prevailed that it has become universal: all men are become sinful and corrupt creatures.  Let us attend to St Paul’s description of the worlds “Jews and Gentiles are all under sin.  “As is written, There is none righteous, no not one, there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way they are together become unprofitable, there is none that doeth good, no not one.”  And not only is every one corrupt, but they are all over corrupt, in every power, faculty, and principle, every part is depraved.  This is here (in Romans 3:10-18) represented by the several parts of the body being corrupt, as the throat, the tongue, the lips, the mouth, the feet: “Their throat is an open sepulcher, with their tongues they have used deceit, the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood.”  And not only is every part corrupt, but exceeding corrupt, being possessed with dreadful principles of corruption, horribly evil dispositions and principles of sin, that may be represented by the poison of asps: which makes men like vipers and devils: principles of all uncleanness, pride, deceit, injustice, enmity, malice, blasphemy, murder.  Here their throats are compared to an open sepulcher and their mouth is said to be full of cursing and bitterness and destruction and misery are said to be in their ways.

And there are those principles of sin not only that are very bad, but every kind, here is no sort of wickedness but there is a seed of it in men.  And these seeds and Principles have not only a being in men’s hearts, but they are there in great strength: they have the absolute possession and dominion over men so that they are sold under sin.  Yea, wicked principles, and those only, are in the heart.  The imagination of the thoughts of their heart is evil only.  There are bad principles only, and no good ones.  “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”  Thus the hearts of all men are deceitful and desperately wicked.  And if we look, not only at the natural corruption of the heart, but at the contracted habits of sin, by wicked education and customs, how full shall we find the world of wickedness, in this respect!  How have men, by bad customs in sinning, broken down all restraints upon natural corruption and as it were abandoned themselves to wickedness!  So far has corruption and wickedness prevailed in the world, and so high has it risen, that it is become a great and universal deluge that overtops all things and prevails with that strength, that it is like the raging waves of the tempestuous ocean; which are ready to bear down all before them.

4. Many of the devil’s instruments have greatly prevailed and have been exalted to an exceeding height in the in the world.  It has been so in almost all ages of the world.  Many of the devil’s instruments have prospered and prevailed till they have got to the head of great kingdoms and empires, with vast riches and mighty power.  Those four great heathen monarchies that rose in the world before Christ are spoken of in Scripture as kingdoms set up in opposition to the kingdom of Christ.  So they are represented in the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.  These monarchies were exceeding powerful.  The two last ruled over the greater part of the then known world.  And the last especially, viz. the Roman Empire, was exceeding mighty: so that it is said to be diverse from all kingdoms, and that it should devour the whole earth, and tread it down, and break it in pieces.  It is represented by the fourth beast which was dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly and had great iron teeth that devoured and broke in pieces and stamped the residue with his feet.  These four kingdoms all persecuted the church of God in their turns, especially the last.  One of the governors of this monarchy put Christ to death.  And afterwards one emperor after another made dreadful havoc of the church making a business of it with the force of all the empire to torment and destroy the Christians, endeavoring, if possible, to root out the Christian name from under heaven.

And in these latter ages, how those two great instruments of the devil, viz. antichrist and Mahomet have prevailed and to what a pitch of advancement have they arrived; ruling over vast empires, with mighty wealth, pride and power: so that the earth has been, as it were, subdued by them.  Antichrist has set up himself as the vicar of Christ and has for many ages usurped the power of God, “sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself that he is God; and exalting himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped.”  And how dreadfully has he ravaged the church of God, being drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus.  And has often, as it were, deluged the world in Christian blood, shed with the utmost cruelty that human wit and malice could invent. — And at this day, many other instruments of the devil, many heretics, atheists, and other infidels, are exerting themselves against Christ and his church with great pride and contempt.

5. Affliction and misery have also prevailed and risen to an unspeakable height in the world. The spiritual misery which the elect are naturally in is great.  They are miserable captives of sin and Satan and under obligations to suffer eternal burnings.  This misery all mankind are naturally in.  And spiritual troubles and sorrows have often risen to a great height in the elect.  The troubles of a wounded spirit and guilty conscience have been felt with intolerable end insupportable weight.  And the darkness that has risen to God’s people after conversion, through the temptations and buffetings of the devil and the hidings of God’s face and manifestations of his anger, has been very terrible.   And temporal afflictions have often risen exceeding high.  The church of God has, for the most part, all along, been a seat of great affliction and tribulation.

But the height to which the evil of affliction has risen nowhere appears so much as in the afflictions that Christ suffered.  The evil of affliction and sorrow exalted itself so high as to seize the Son of God himself and to cause him to be all in a bloody sweat and to make his soul exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.  It caused him to cry out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!”  Affliction never prevailed to such a degree in this world, as in Christ, whose soul was, as it were, overwhelmed in an ocean of it.

6. Death is an evil which has greatly prevailed and made dreadful havoc in this world. How does it waste and devour mankind, one age after another, sparing none, high or low, rich or poor, good or bad!  Wild beasts have destroyed many; many cruel princes have taken away the lives of thousands and laid waste whole countries: but death devours all.  None are suffered to escape.  And the bodies of the saints, as well as others, fall prey to this great devourer.  Yea, so high did this enemy rise that he took hold on Christ himself and swallowed him among the rest.  He became the prey of this great, insatiable monster.  By this means, his bodily frame was destroyed and laid dead in the dark and silent grave.  And death still goes on destroying thousands every day.  And therefore the grave is one of those things which Agur says, never has enough. — So have evils of every kind prevailed and to such a degree have they exalted themselves in the world.

SECTION 2

How Jesus Christ, in the work of redemption, appears gloriously above all these evil.

It was not the will of the infinitely wise and holy Governor of the world that things should remain in this confusion.  But he had a design for subduing it and delivering an elect part of the world from it and exalting them to the possession of the greatest good to reign in the highest glory, out of a state of subjection to all these evils.  And he chose his Son as the person most fit for an undertaking that was infinitely too great for any mere creature: and he has undertaken the work of our redemption.

And though these evils are so many and so great and have prevailed to such a degree and risen to such a height and have been, as it were, all combined together; yet wherein they have exalted themselves, Christ, in the work of redemption, appears above them.  He hath gloriously prevailed against them all and brings them under his feet and rides forth in the chariots of salvation over their heads or leading them in triumph at his chariot wheels.  He appears in this work infinitely higher and mightier than they and sufficient to carry his people above them and utterly to destroy them all.

1. Christ appears gloriously above all evil in what he did to procure redemption for us in his state of humiliation, by the righteousness he wrought out and the atonement he made for sin.  The evils mentioned never seemed so much to prevail against him as in his sufferings: but in them, the foundation was laid for their overthrow.  In them, he appeared above Satan.  Though Satan never exalted himself so high as he did in procuring these sufferings of Christ; yet, then, Christ laid the foundation for the utter overthrow of his kingdom.  He slew Satan, as it were, with his own weapon, the spiritual David cut off this Goliath’s head with his own sword; and he triumphed over him in his cross.  “Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”  There the wisdom of Christ appeared gloriously above the subtlety of Satan.

Satan, that old serpent, used a great deal of subtlety to procure Christ’s death, and doubtless, when he had accomplished it, thought he had obtained a complete victory, being then ignorant of the contrivance of our redemption.  But the wisdom of Christ did so order things that Satan’s subtlety and malice should be made the very means of undermining the foundations of his kingdom.  And so he wisely led him into the pit that he had digged.

In this also, Christ appeared gloriously above the guilt of men.  For he offered a sacrifice, that was sufficient to do away all the guilt of the whole world.  Though the guilt of man was like the great mountains, whose heads are lifted up to the heavens, yet his dying love and his merits, appeared as a mighty deluge that overflowed the highest mountains, or like a boundless ocean that swallows them up; or like an immense fountain of light, that with the fullness and redundancy of its brightness swallows up men’s greatest sins, as little motes are swallowed up and hidden in the disk of the sun.

In this, Christ appeared above all the corruption of man because he purchased holiness for the chief of sinners.  And in undergoing such extreme afflicting, Christ got the victory over all misery and laid a foundation for its being utterly abolished with respect to his elect.  In dying, he became the plague and destruction of death.  When death slew him, it slew itself: for Christ, through death, destroyed him that had the power of death, even the devil.  By this, he laid the foundation of the glorious resurrection of all his people to an immortal life.

2. Christ appears gloriously exalted above all evil in his resurrection and ascension into heaven. When Christ rose from the dead, then it appeared that he was above death, which, though it had taken him captive, could not hold him.  Then he appeared above the devil.  Then this Leviathan that had swallowed him was forced to vomit him up again; as the Philistines that had taken captive the ark were forced to return it, Dagon being fallen before it, with his head and hands broken off, and only the stumps left. — Then he appeared above our guilt: for he was justified in his resurrection.  In his resurrection, he appeared above all affliction.  For though he had been subject to much affliction and overwhelmed in it, he then emerged out of it as having gotten the victory, never to conflict with any more sorrow.   When he ascended up into heaven, he rose far above the reach of the devil and all his instruments, who had before had him in their hands.  And now he has sat down at the right hand of God as being made head over all things to the church, in order to a complete and perfect victory over sin, Satan, death, and all his enemies.  It was then said to him, “Sit thou on my right hand, until I make shine enemies thy footstool.”  He entered into a state of glory wherein he is exalted far above all these evils, as the forerunner of his people; and to make intercession for them, till they also are brought to be with him, in like manner exalted above all evil.

3. Christ appears gloriously above all evil in his work in the hearts of the elect in their conversion and sanctification. This is what the application of redemption consists of in this world.  In this work of Christ in the hearts of his elect, he appears glorious above Satan.  For the strong man armed is overcome, and all his armor wherein he trusted is taken from him, and his spoil divided.  In this work, the lamb is, by the spiritual David, taken out of the mouth of the lion and bear: the poor captive is delivered from his mighty and cruel enemies.

In this, Christ appears gloriously above the corruption and wickedness of the heart, above its natural darkness in dispelling it, and letting in light, and above its enmity and opposition, by prevailing over it, drawing it powerfully and irresistibly to himself, and turning a heart of stone into a heart of flesh: above the obstinacy and perverseness of the will, by making them willing in the day of his power.  In this, he appears above all their lusts.  For all sin is put to death in this work and the soul is delivered from the power and dominion of it. — In this work, the grace of Christ gloriously triumphs over men’s guilt.  He comes over the mountains of their sins and visits them with his salvation.

And God often desires in this work, either in the beginning or progress of it, to give his people those spiritual comforts, in which he gloriously appears to be above all affliction and sorrow: and often gives them to triumph over the devil and his powerful and cruel instruments.  Many saints, by the influences of Christ’s Spirit on their hearts, have rejoiced and triumphed when suffering the greatest torments and cruelties of their persecutors.  And in this work Christ sometimes gloriously appears above death in carrying his people far above the fears of it and making them to say, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory,”

4. Christ gloriously appears above all these aforementioned evils in his glorifying the souls of departed saints in heaven. In this, he gives a glorious victory over death.  Death by it is turned from an enemy into a servant; and their death, by the glorious change that passes in the state of their souls, is become a resurrection, rather than a death.  Now Christ exalts the soul to a state of glory where it is perfectly delivered from Satan and all his temptation’s and all his instruments; and from all remains of sin and corruption and from all affliction: “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat — and

God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

5. Christ appears gloriously above these evils in what he does in his providence in the world as head and redeemer of his church.  If he appears gloriously above Satan and all his instruments in upholding his church, even from its first establishment, through all the powerful attempts that have been made against it by earth and hell: hereby fulfilling his promise, “That the gates of hell should never prevail against it.”   Christ gloriously triumphed over these his enemies in a remarkable success of his gospel soon after his ascension when many thousands in Jerusalem and all parts of the world were so soon turned from darkness unto light and from the power of Satan unto God: and in causing his word to go on and prosper and his church to increase and prevail against all the opposition of the heathen world when they united all their power to put a stop to it and root it out.  So that, in spite of all that the philosophers and wise men, and emperors and princes could do, the gospel in a little time overthrew Satan’s old heathenish kingdom in the whole Roman Empire which was then the main part of the world; and so brought about the greatest and most glorious revolution.  Instead of one single nation, now the greater part of the nations of the known world were become God’s people.  And Christ’s exaltation above all evil in his government of the world, in his providence, as the Redeemer of his people, has since gloriously appeared in reviving his church by the reformation from popery, after it had for many ages lain in a great measure hid and dwelt in a wilderness under anti-Christian persecution.

And he will yet far more gloriously triumph over Satan and all his Instruments in all the mighty kingdoms that have been set up in opposition to the kingdom of Christ, at the time of the fall of antichrist and the beginning of those glorious times.  “And then the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15.  Though great and mighty empires have been set up one after another in the world, in opposition to the kingdom of Christ, during the succession of so many ages, yet, Christ’s kingdom shall be the last and the universal kingdom, which he has given him, as the heir of the world.

Whatever great works Satan has wrought, the final issue and event of all in the winding up of things in the last ages of the world shall be the glorious kingdom of Christ through the world; a kingdom of righteousness and holiness, of love and peace, established everywhere.  This is in agreement with the ancient prediction, “I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man, came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.  And there was given him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people nations, and languages should serve him: his dominion is a everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13-14).  “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him” (Daniel 7:27).

Then shall Christ appear gloriously exalted indeed above all evil: and then shall all the saints in earth and heaven gloriously triumph in him, and sing, “Hallelujah, salvation, and glory, and honor, and power unto the Lord our God; for true and righteous are his judgments; for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. Hallelujah: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth” (Rev. 19:2, 6.

6. Christ will appear gloriously above all evil in the consummation of the redemption of his elect church at the end of the world. Then the whole work of redemption will be completed with respect to all that Christ died for, both in its application, and not till then.  And then Christ’s exaltation above all evil will be most perfectly and fully manifest.  Then shall the conquest and triumph be completed with respect to all of them.  Then shall all the devils and all their instruments be brought before Christ to be judged and condemned.  And then their destruction shall be completed in their consummate and everlasting misery; when they shall be all cast into the lake of fire, no more to roam and usurp dominion in the world nor have liberty to make opposition against God and Christ.  They shall forever be shut up, thenceforward only to suffer.  Then shall death be totally destroyed.  All the saints shall be delivered everlastingly from it.  Even their bodies shall be taken from the power of death by a glorious resurrection.

Then shall all guilt and all sin and corruption, and all affliction, all sighs and tears, be utterly and eternally abolished, concerning every one of the elect since they will all be brought to their consummate and immutable glory.  And all this as the fruit of Christ’s blood and as an accomplishment of his redemption.

Then all that evil which has so prevailed and so exalted itself and usurped and raged and reigned, shall be perfectly and forever thrust down and destroyed, with respect to all the elect, and all will be exalted to a state where they will be forever immensely above all these things.  “And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

SECTION 3

The subject improved and applied.

1. In this, we may see how the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ appears in the work of redemption.  It was because the Father had from eternity a design of exceedingly glorifying his Son that he appointed him to be the person that should thus triumph over the evil in the world.  The work of redemption is the most glorious of all God’s works that are made known to us.  The glory of God most remarkably shines forth in it.  And this is one thing whereby its glory eminently appears, that Christ appears so gloriously above Satan and all his instruments, above all guilt, all corruption, all affliction, above death, at above all evil.  And more especially, because evil hath so exalted itself in the world, as we have heard, and exalted itself against Christ in particular.

Satan has ever had a peculiar enmity against the Son of God.  Probably his first rebellion, which was his condemnation, was his proudly taking it in disdain when God declared the decree in heaven that his Son in man’s nature should be the King of heaven; and that all the angels should worship him.  However that was, yet it is certain that his strife has ever been especially against the Son of God.  The enmity has always been between the seed of the woman and the serpent.  And therefore that war which the devil maintains against God is represented by the devil and his angels fighting against Michael and his angels.  God had appointed his Son to be the heir of the world, but the devil has contested this matter with him and has strove to set himself up as God of the world.  And how exceedingly has the devil exalted himself against Christ!  How did he oppose him as he dwelt among the Jews in his tabernacle and temple!  And how did he oppose him when on earth!  And how has he opposed him since his ascension!  What great and mighty works has Satan brought to pass in the world!  How many Babels has he built up to heaven in his opposition to the Son of God!  How exceeding proud and haughty has he appeared in his opposition!  How have he and his instruments, and sin, affliction, and death, of which he is the father, raged against Christ?  But yet Christ, in the work of redemption, appears infinitely above them all.  In this work, he triumphs over them, however they have dealt proudly; and they all appear under his feet.  In this the glory of the Son of God in the work of redemption remarkably appears.

The beauty of good appears with the greatest advantage when compared with its contrary evil.  And the glory of that which is excellent, then especially shows itself, when it triumphs over in contrary and appears vastly above it in its greatest height.  The glory of Christ, in this glorious exaltation over so great evil, which so exalted itself against him, appears more remarkably in that he is exalted out of so low a state.  Though he appeared in the world as a little child; yet how does he triumph over the most gigantic enemies of God and men!  He who was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” is a man of war who triumphed over his enemies in all their power.  He who was meek and lowly of heart has triumphed over those proud foes.  And he is exalted over them all in that which appears most despicable even his cross.

2. Here is matter of exceeding great encouragement for all sinful creatures in the world of mankind to come to Christ.  For let them be as sinful as they will and ever so miserable, Christ, in the work of redemption, is gloriously exalted above all their sin and misery.  How ever high their guilt has risen, though mountains have been heaping on mountains all the days of their lives, till the pile appears towering up to heaven and even above the stars; yet Christ in the work of redemption appears gloriously exalted above all this height. — Though they are overwhelmed in a mighty deluge of woe and misery; a deluge that is not only above their heads, but above the heads of the highest mountains; and they do not see how it is possible that they should escape; yet they have no reason to be discouraged from looking to Christ for help, who in the work of redemption, appears gloriously above the deluge of evil.  Though they see dreadful corruption in their hearts; though their lusts appear like giants or like the raging waves of the sea; yet they need not despair help; but may look to Christ, who appears in the work of redemption, gloriously above all this corruption.

If they apprehend themselves to be miser the captives of Satan and find him too strong an adversary for esteem; and the devil is often tempting and buffeting them and triumphing over them with great cruelty.  If it seems to them that the devil has swallowed them up, and has got full possession of them, as the whale had of Jonah; yet there is encouragement for them to look again, as Jonah did, towards God’s holy temple, and to trust in Christ for deliverance from Satan, who appears so gloriously exalted above him in the work of redemption.

If they are ready to sink with darkness and sorrows, distress of conscience, or those frowns of God upon them; so that God’s waves and billows seem to pass over them; yet they have encouragement enough to look to Christ for deliverance.  These waves and billows have before exalted themselves against Christ; and he appeared to be infinitely above them. — And if they are afraid of death; if it looks exceeding, terrible, as an enemy that would swallow them up, yet let them look to Christ who has appeared so gloriously above death; and their fears will turn into joy and triumph.

3. What a glorious cause have those who have an interest in Christ to glory in their Redeemer! They are often beset with many evils and many mighty enemies surround them on every side with open mouths ready to devour them, but they need not fear any of them.  They may glory in Christ, the rock of their salvation, who appears so gloriously above them all.  They may triumph over Satan, over this evil world, over guilt, and over death.  For as their redeemer is mighty and is so exalted above all evil, so shall they also be exalted in him.  They are now, in a sense, so exalted, for nothing can hurt them.  Christ carries them, as on eaglets’ wings, high out of the reach of all evils, so that they cannot come near them to do them any real harm.  And, in a little time, they shall be so out of their reach that they shall not be able even to molest them any more forever.

Posted in Jonathan Edwards |

Maturity and the Word of God by Jonathan Edwards

January 16, 2010 by ADMIN

Maturity and the Word of God

Jonathan Edwards

For then for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.  Hebrews 5:12

Consider yourselves as scholars or disciples put into the school of Christ and therefore be diligent to make proficiency in Christian knowledge.  Content not yourselves with this, that you have been taught your catechism in your childhood, and that you know as much of the principles of religion as is necessary to salvation or else you will be guilty of what the apostle warns against, viz. going no further than laying the foundation of repentance from dead works, etc.

You are all called to be Christians, and this is your profession.  Endeavor, therefore, to acquire knowledge in things which pertain to your profession.  Let not your teachers have cause to complain that while they spend and are spent to impart knowledge to you, you take little pains to learn.  It is a great encouragement to an instructor to have such to teach as make a business of learning, bending their minds to it.  This makes teaching a pleasure, when otherwise it will be a very heavy and burdensome task.

You all have by you a large treasure of divine knowledge in that you have the Bible in your hands; therefore be not contented in possessing but little of this treasure.  God hath spoken much to you in the Scriptures; labor to understand as much of what he saith as you can.  God hath made you all reasonable creatures; therefore let not the noble faculty of reason or understanding lie neglected.  Content not yourselves with having so much knowledge as is thrown in your way, and receive in some sense unavoidably by the frequent inculcation of divine truth in the preaching of the word, of which you are obliged to be hearers, or accidentally gain in conversation; but let it be very much your business to search for it, and that with the same diligence and labor with which men are wont to dig in mines of silver and gold.

Especially I would advise those who are young to employ themselves in this way.  Men are never too old to learn; but the time of youth is especially the time for learning; it is peculiarly proper for gaining and storing up knowledge.  Further, to stir up all, both old and young, to this duty, let me entreat you to consider,

1. If you apply yourselves diligently to this work, you will not lack [usefulness], when you are at leisure from your common secular business. In this way, you may find something in which you may profitably employ yourselves.  You will find something else to do, besides going about from house to house, spending one hour after another in unprofitable conversation, or, at best, to no other purpose but to amuse yourselves, to fill up and wear away your time.  And it is to be feared that very much of the time spent in evening visits is spent to a much worse purpose than that which I have now mentioned.  Solomon tells us, Prov. 10:19, “That in the multitude of words, there lacketh not sin.”  And is not this verified in those who find little else to do but to go to one another’s houses and spend the time in such talk as comes next, or such as anyone’s present disposition happens to suggest?

Some diversion is doubtless lawful; but for Christians to spend so much of their time, so many long evenings, in no other conversation than that which tends to divert and amuse, if nothing worse, is a sinful way of spending time, and tends to poverty of soul at least, if not to outward poverty: Prov. 14:23, “In all labor there is profit; but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.”  Besides, when persons for so much of their time have nothing else to do, but to sit, and talk, and chat, there is great danger of falling into foolish and sinful conversation, venting their corrupt dispositions, in talking against others, expressing their jealousies and evil surmises concerning their neighbors; not considering what Christ hath said, Matt. 12:36, “Of every idle word that men shall speak, shall they give account in the day of judgment.”

If you would comply with what you have heard from this doctrine, you would find something else to employ your time besides contention, or talking about those public affairs which tend to contention.  Young people might find something else to do besides spending their time in vain company; something that would be much more profitable to themselves, as it would really turn to some good account; something, in doing which they would both be more out of the way of temptation and be more in the way of duty and of a divine blessing.  And even aged people would have something to employ themselves in after they are become incapable of bodily labor.  Their time, as is now often the case, would not lie heavy upon their hands, as they would with both profit and pleasure be engaged in searching the Scriptures and in comparing and meditating upon the various truths which they should find there.

2. This would be a noble way of spending your time. The Holy Spirit gives the Bereans this epithet, because they diligently employed themselves in this business: Acts 17:11, “These were more noble than those of Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”  Similar to this is very much the employment of heaven.  The inhabitants of that world spend much of their time in searching into the great things of divinity and endeavoring to acquire knowledge in them, as we are told of the angels, 1 Pet. 1:12, “ Which things the angels desire to look into.”  This will be very agreeable to what you hope will be your business to all eternity, as you doubtless hope to join in the same employment with the angels of light.  Solomon says, Prov. 25:2, “It is the honor of kings to search out a matter;” and certainly, above all others, to search out divine matters.  Now, if this be the honor even of kings, is it not much more your honor?

3. This is a pleasant way of improving time. Knowledge is pleasant and delightful to intelligent creatures, and above all, the knowledge of divine things; for in them are the most excellent truths and the most beautiful and amiable objects held forth to view.  However tedious the labor necessarily attending this business may be, yet the knowledge once obtained will richly requite the pains taken to obtain it.  “When wisdom entereth the heart, knowledge is pleasant to the soul,” Prov. 2:10.

4. This knowledge is exceedingly useful in Christian practice.  Such as have much knowledge in divinity have great means and advantages for spiritual and saving knowledge; for no means of grace have a saving effect, otherwise than by the knowledge they impart.  The more you have of a rational knowledge of divine things, the more opportunity will there be, when the Spirit shall be breathed into your heart, to see the excellency of these things, and to taste the sweetness of them.  The heathens, who have no rational knowledge of the things of the gospel, have no opportunity to see the excellency of them; and therefore the more rational knowledge of these things you have, the more opportunity and advantage you have to see the divine excellency and glory of them.

Again, the more knowledge you have of divine things, the better will you know your duty; your knowledge will be of great use to direct you as to your duty in particular cases.  You will also be the better furnished against the temptations of the devil.  For the devil often takes advantage of persons’ ignorance to ply them with temptations which otherwise would have no hold of them.  By having much knowledge, you will be under greater advantages to conduct yourselves with prudence and discretion in your Christian course and so to live much more to the honor of God and religion.  Many who mean well, and are full of a good spirit, yet for want of prudence, conduct themselves so as to wound religion.  Many have a zeal of God which doth more hurt than good because it is not according to knowledge, Rom. 10:2.  The reason why many good men behave no better in many instances is not so much that they lack grace as that they lack knowledge.  Besides, an increase of knowledge would be a great help to profitable conversation.  It would supply you with matter for conversation when you come together or when you visit your neighbors: and so you would have less temptation to spend the time in such conversation as tends to your own and others’ hurt.

5. Consider the advantages you are under to grow in the knowledge of divinity. We are under far greater advantages to gain much of this knowledge now than God’s people under the Old Testament, both because the canon of Scripture is so much enlarged since that time and also because evangelical truths are now so much more plainly revealed.  So that common men are now in some respects under advantages to know more than the greatest prophets were then.  Thus that saying of Christ is in a sense applicable to us, Luke 10:23-24, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye see.  For I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.”  We are in some respects under far greater advantages for gaining knowledge now in these latter ages of the church than Christians were formerly; especially by reason of the art of printing of which God hath given us the benefit, whereby Bibles and other books of divinity are exceedingly multiplied and persons may now be furnished with helps for the obtaining of Christian knowledge at a much easier and cheaper rate than they formerly could.

6. We know not what opposition we may meet with in the religious principles which we hold. We know that there are many adversaries to the gospel and its truths.  If therefore we embrace those truths, we must expect to be attacked by the said adversaries; and unless we be well informed concerning divine things, how shall we be able to defend ourselves?  Beside, the apostle Paul enjoins it upon us, always to be ready to give an answer to every man who asketh us a reason of the hope that is in us.  But this we cannot expect to do without considerable knowledge in divine things.

Directions for the acquisition of Christian knowledge

1. Be assiduous in reading the Holy Scriptures.  This is the fountain whence all knowledge in divinity must be derived.  Therefore let not this treasure lie by you neglected.  Every man of common understanding who can read, may, if he please, become well acquainted with the Scriptures.  And what an excellent attainment would this be!

2. Content not yourselves with only a cursory reading without regarding the sense. This is an ill way of reading, to which, however, many accustom themselves all their days.  When you read, observe what you read.  Observe how things come in.  Take notice of the drift of the discourse and compare one scripture with another.  For the Scripture, by the harmony of its different; parts, casts great light upon itself.  We are expressly directed by Christ, to search the Scriptures, which evidently intends something more than a mere cursory reading.  And use means to find out the meaning of the Scripture.  When you have it explained in the preaching of the word, take notice of it; and if at any time a scripture that you did not understand be cleared up to your satisfaction, mark it, lay it up, and if possible remember it.

3. Procure, and diligently use, other books which may help you to grow in this knowledge.  There are many excellent books which might greatly forward you in this knowledge and afford you a very profitable and pleasant entertainment in your leisure hours.

4. Improve conversation with others to this end.  How much might persons promote each other’s knowledge in divine things if they would improve conversation as they might; if men that are ignorant were not ashamed to show their ignorance and were willing to learn of others; if those that have knowledge would communicate it without pride and ostentation; and if all were more disposed to enter on such conversation as would be for their mutual edification and instruction.

5. Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls, and in order to practice. If applause be your end, you will not be so likely to be led to the knowledge of the truth, but may justly, as often is the case of those who are proud of their knowledge, be led into error to your own perdition.  This being your end, if you should obtain much rational knowledge, it would not be likely to be of any benefit to you, but would puff you up with pride: 1 Cor. 8:1, “Knowledge puffeth up.”

6. Seek God that he would direct you and bless you in this pursuit after knowledge. This is the apostle’s direction, James 1:5, “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God, who giveth to all liberally, and upbraideth not.”  God is the fountain of all divine knowledge: Prov. 2:6, “The Lord giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.”  Labor to be sensible of your own blindness and ignorance and your need of the help of God, lest you be led into error, instead of true knowledge: 1 Cor. 3:18, “If any man would be wise, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.”

7. Practice according to what knowledge you have. This will be the way to know more.  The psalmist warmly recommends this way of seeking knowledge in divine truth, from his own experience: Psalm. 119:100, “I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.”  Christ also recommends the same: John 7:17, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”

Posted in Jonathan Edwards |

The Warrant of Faith by Charles H. Spurgeon

January 16, 2010 by ADMIN

“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.”

Posted in C. H. Spurgeon |

The Scriptures and Obedience by A. W. Pink

January 16, 2010 by ADMIN

All professing Christians are agreed, in theory at least, that it is the bounden duty of those who hear His name to honor and glorify Christ in this world.  But as to how this is to be done, as to what He requires from us to this end, there is wide difference of opinion.  Many suppose that honoring Christ simply means to join some ‘church,’ take part in and support its various activities.  Others think that honoring Christ means to speak of Him to others and be diligently engaged in ‘per­sonal work.’  Others seem to imagine that honoring Christ signifies little more than making liberal financial contribu­tions to His cause.  Few indeed realize that Christ is honored only as we live holy unto Him, and that, by walking in subjection to His revealed will.  Few indeed really believe that word, ‘Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams’ (1 Samuel 15:22).We are not Christians at all unless we have fully sur­rendered to and ‘received Christ Jesus the Lord’ (Col. 2:6).  We would plead with you to ponder that statement dili­gently.  Satan is deceiving many today by leading them to suppose that they are savingly trusting in ‘the finished work’ of Christ while their hearts remain unchanged and self still rules their lives.  Listen to God’s Word: ‘Salvation is far from the wicked; for they seek not thy statutes’ (Psa. 119:155).  Do you really seek his statutes?  Do you diligently search His Word to discover what He has commanded?  ‘He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him’ (1 John 2:4). What could be plainer than that?

‘And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?’ (Luke 6:46).  Obedience to the Lord in life, not merely glowing words from the lips, is what Christ requires.  What a searching and solemn word is that in James 1:22, ‘Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves!’  There are many ‘hearers’ of the Word, regular hearers, reverent hearers, interested hearers; but alas, what they hear is not incorporated into their life: it does not regulate their way.  And God says that they who are not doers of the Word are deceiving their own selves!

Alas, how many such there are in Christendom today!  They are not downright hypocrites, but deluded.  They suppose that because they are so clear upon salvation by grace alone they are saved.  They suppose that because they sit under the ministry of a man who has ‘made the Bible a new book’ to them they have grown in grace.  They suppose that because their store of biblical knowledge has increased they are more spiritual.  They suppose that the mere listening to a servant of God or reading his writing is feeding on the Word.  Not so!  We ‘feed’ on the Word only when we personally appropriate, masticate and assimilate into our lives what we hear or read.  Where there is not an increasing conformity of heart and life to God’s Word, then increased knowledge will only bring increased con­demnation.  ‘And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes’ (Luke 12:47).

‘Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (2 Tim 3:7).  This is one of the prominent characteristics of the ‘perilous times’ in which we are now living.  People hear one preacher after another, attend this conference and that conference, read book after book on biblical subjects, and yet never attain unto a vital and practical acquaintance with the truth, so as to have an impression of its power and efficacy on the soul.  There is such a thing as spiritual dropsy and multitudes are suffer­ing from it.  The more they hear, the more they want to hear: they drink in sermons and addresses with avidity, but their lives are unchanged.  They are puffed up with their knowledge, not humbled into the dust before God.  ‘The faith of God’s elect is ‘the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness’ (Titus 1:1), but to this the vast majority are total strangers.

God has given us His Word not only with the design of instructing us, but for the purpose of directing us: to make known what He requires us to do. The first thing we need is a clear and distinct knowledge of our duty; and the first thing God demands of us is a conscientious practice of it, corresponding to our knowledge.  ‘What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’ (Micah 6:8).  ‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man’ (Eccles. 12:13).  The Lord Jesus affirmed the same thing when He said, ‘Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you’ (John 15: 14).

1.      A man profits from the Word as he discovers God’s demands upon him; His undeviating demands, for He changes not.  It is a great and grievous mistake to suppose that in this present dispensation God has lowered His de­mands, for that would necessarily imply that His previous demand was a harsh and unrighteous one.  Not so!  “The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good’ (Rom. 7:12).  ‘The sum of God’s demands is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might’ (Deut. 6:5); and the Lord Jesus repeated it in Matthew 22:37.  The apostle Paul enforced the same when he wrote, ‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be Anathema’ (1 Cor. 16:22).

2.      A man profits from the Word when he discovers how entirely and how sinfully he has failed to meet God’s demands. And let us point out for the benefit of any who may take issue with the last paragraph that no man can see what sinner he is, how infinitely short he has fallen of measuring up to God’s standard, until he has a clear sight of the exalted demands of God upon him.  Just in proportion as preachers lower God’s standard of what He requires from every human being, to that extent will their hearers obtain an inadequate and faulty conception of their sinfulness, and the less will they perceive their need of an almighty Savior.  But once a soul really perceives what are God’s demands upon him, and how completely and constantly he has failed to render Him His due, then does he recog­nize what a desperate situation he is in. The law must be preached before any are ready for the Gospel.

3.      A man profits from the Word when he is taught that God, in His infinite grace, has fully provided for His people’s meeting His own demands. At this point, too, much present-day preaching is seriously defective.  There is being given forth what may loosely be termed a ‘half Gospel,’ but which in reality is virtually a denial of the true Gospel.  Christ is brought in, yet only as a sort of make-weight.  That Christ has vicariously met every demand of God upon all who believe upon Him is blessedly true, yet it is only a part of the truth.  The Lord Jesus has not only vicariously satisfied for His people the requirements of God’s righteousness, but He has also secured that they shall personally satisfy them too.  Christ has pro­cured the Holy Spirit to make good in them what the Re­deemer wrought for them.

The grand and glorious miracle of salvation is that the saved are regenerated. A transforming work is wrought within them.  Their understandings are illuminated, their hearts are changed, their wills are renewed.  They are made ‘new creatures in Christ Jesus’ (2 Cor. 5:17).  God refers to this miracle of grace thus: ‘I will put my laws into their minds and write them in their hearts’ (Heb. 8:10).  ‘The heart is now inclined to God’s law: a disposition has been communicated to it which answers to its demands; there is a sincere desire to perform it.  And thus the quick­ened soul is able to say, ‘When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, thy face, Lord, will I seek’ (Psa. 27:8).

Christ not only rendered a perfect obedience unto the Law for the justification of His believing people, but He also merited for them those supplies of His Spirit which were essential unto their sanctification, and which alone could transform carnal creatures and enable them to render acceptable obedience unto God.  Though Christ died for the ‘ungodly’ (Rom. 5:6), though He finds them ungodly (Rom. 4:5) when He justifies them, yet He does not leave them in that abominable state.  On the contrary, He effectually teaches them by His Spirit to deny ungodli­ness and worldly lusts (Titus 2: 12).  Just as weight cannot be separated from a stone, or heat from a fire, so cannot justification from sanctification.

When God really pardons a sinner in the court of his conscience under the sense of that amazing grace, the heart is purified, the life is rectified, and the whole man is sanctified.  Christ ‘gave himself for us, that he might re­deem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a pecu­liar people [not careless about, but] zealous for good works (Titus 2:14).

Said the Lord Jesus, ‘he that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, it is he that loveth me’ (John 14:21).  Not in the Old Testament, the Gospels for the vessels does God own anyone as a lover of him save the one who keeps his commandments.  Love is something more than sentiment or motion; it is a principled action, and it expresses itself in something more than a honeyed expressions, namely, by deeds which please the object loved. ‘ for this is a love of God, that we keep his commandments’ (1 John 5:3 ). O, my reader, you are deceiving yourself if you think you love God and yet have no deep desire and make no real effort to walk obediently before him.

But what is obedience to God? It is far more than a mechanical performance of certain duties.  I may have been brought up by Christian parents, and under them acquired certain moral habits, and yet my abstaining from taking the Lord’s name in vain, and being guiltless of stealing, may be no obedience to the third and the eighth commandments.  Again, obedience to God is more than conforming to the conduct of his people.  I may board in a home or the seventh is strictly observed, and out of respect for them, where because I think it is a good and wise course to rest one day in seven, I may refrain from all unnecessary labor on that day, and yet not keep the fourth commandment at all!  Obedience is not only subjection to an external law, but it is the surrendering of my will to the authority of another.  Thus, obedience to God is the heart’s recognition of His lordship: of His right to command and my duty to comply.  It is the complete subjection of the soul to the blessed yoke of Christ

‘That obedience which God requires can proceed only from a heart which loves Him.  ‘Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord’ (Col. 3:23).  That obedience which springs from a dread of punishment is servile. That obedi­ence which is performed in order to procure favors from God is selfish and carnal.  But spiritual and acceptable obedience is cheerfully given: it is the heart’s free res­ponse to and gratitude for the unmerited regard and love of God for us.

4.      We profit from the Word when we not only see it is our bounden duty to obey God, but when there is wrought in us a love for His commandments. The ‘blessed’ man is the one whose ‘delight is in the law of the Lord’ (Psa. 1:2).  And again we read, ‘Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in his commandments’ (Psa. 112:1).  It affords a real test for our hearts to face honestly the questions, Do I really value His ‘commandments’ as much as I do His promises? Ought I not to do so?  Assuredly, for the one proceeds as truly from His love as does the other.  The heart’s compliance with the voice of Christ is the foundation for all practical holiness.

Here again we would earnestly and lovingly beg the reader to attend closely to this detail.  Any man who sup­poses that he is saved and yet has no genuine love for God’s commandment is deceiving himself.  Said the Psalm­ist, ‘O how love I thy law!’ (Psa. 119:97).  And again, ‘Therefore I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold’ (Psa. 119:127). Should someone object that that was under the Old Testament, we ask, Do you intimate that the Holy Spirit produces a lesser change in the hearts of those whom He now regenerates than He did of old?  But a New Testament saint also placed on record, ‘I delight in the law of God after the inward man’ (Rom. 7:22).  And, my reader, unless your heart delights in the ‘law of God’ there is something radically wrong with you; yea, it is greatly to be feared that you are spiritually dead.

5.      A man profits from the Word when his heart and will are yielded to all God’s commandments. Partial obedience is no obedience at all.  A holy mind declines whatsoever God forbids, and chooses to practice all He requires, with­out any exception.  If our minds submit not unto God in all His commandments, we submit not to His authority in anything He enjoins.  If we do not approve of our duty in its full extent, we are greatly mistaken if we imagine that we have any liking unto any part of it.  A person who has no principle of holiness in him may yet be disinclined to many vices and be pleased to practice many virtues, as he perceives the former are unfit actions and the latter are, in themselves, comely actions, but his disapprobation of vice and approbation of virtue do not arise from any disposi­tion to submit to the will of God.

True spiritual obedience is impartial. A renewed heart does not pick and choose from God’s commandments: the man who does so is not performing God’s will, but his own.  Make no mistake upon this point; if we do not sincerely desire to please God in all things, then we do not truly wish to do so in anything.  Self must be denied; not merely some of the things which may be craved, but self itself! A willful allowance of any known sin breaks the whole law (James 2:10-11).  ‘Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments’ (Psa. 119:6).  Said the Lord Jesus, ‘Ye are my friends, if ye do whatso­ever I command you’ (John 15: 14): if I am not His friend, then I must be His enemy, for there is no other alternative —see Luke 19:27.

6.      We profit from the Word when the soul is moved to pray earnestly for enabling grace.  In regeneration the Holy Spirit communicates a nature which is fitted for obedience according to the Word.  The heart has been won by God.  There is now a deep and sincere desire to please Him.  But the new nature possesses no inherent power and the old nature or ‘flesh’ strives against it, and the Devil opposes.  Thus, the Christian exclaims, ‘To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not’ (Rom. 7:18).  This does not mean that he is the slave of sin, as he was before conversion; but it means that he finds not how fully to realize his spiritual aspirations.  Therefore does he pray, ‘Make me to go in the path of Thy commandments; for therein do I delight’ (Psa. 119:35).  And again, ‘Order my steps in Thy word, and let not any iniquity have dom­inion over me’ (Psa. 119:133).

Here we would reply to a question which the above statements have probably raised in many minds: Are you affirming that God requires perfect obedience from us in this life?  We answer, Yes!  God will not set any lower standard before us than that (see 1 Pet. 1:15). Then does the real Christian measure up to that standard?  Yes and no!  Yes, in his heart, and it is at the heart that God looks (1 Sam. 16:7).  In his heart, every regenerated person has a real love for God’s commandments and genuinely desires to keep all of them completely.  It is in this sense, and this alone, that the Christian is experimentally ‘perfect.’  The word ‘perfect,’ both in the Old Testament (Job 1:1 and Psa. 37:37) and in the new Testament (Phil. 3:15), means ‘upright’, ‘sincere’, in contrast with ‘hypocritical’.

‘Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble’ (Psa. 10: 17).  The ‘desires’ of the saint are the language of his soul, and the promise is, ‘He will fulfill the desire of them that fear him’ (Psa. 145: 19).  The Christian’s desire is to obey God in all things, to be completely conformed to the image of Christ.  But this will only be realized in the resur­rection.  Meanwhile, God for Christ’s sake graciously accepts the will for the deed (1 Pet. 2:5).  He knows our hearts and see in His child a genuine love for and a sincere desire to keep all His commandments, and He accepts the fervent longing and cordial endeavor in lieu of an exact performance (2 Cor. 8:12).  But let none who are living in willful disobedience draw false peace and pervert to their own destruction what has just been said for the comfort of those who are heartily desirous of seeking to please God in all the details of their lives.

If any ask, How am I to know that my ‘desires’ are really those of a regenerate soul?  We answer, Saving grace is the communication to the heart of an habitual disposition unto holy acts.  The ‘desires’ of the reader are to be tested thus: Are they constant and continuous, or only by fits and starts?  Are they earnest and serious, so that you really hunger and thirst after righteousness’ (Matt 5: 6) and pant ‘after God’ (Psa. 42:1)?  Are they operative and efficacious?  Many desire to escape from hell, yet their desires are not sufficiently strong to bring them to hate and turn from that which must inevitably bring them to hell, namely, willful sinning against God.  Many desire to go to heaven, but not so that they enter upon and follow that ‘narrow way’ which alone leads there.  True spiritual ‘desires’ use the means of grace and spare no pains to realize them and continue prayerfully pressing forward unto the mark set before them.

7.      We profit from the Word when we are, even now, en­joying the reward of obedience. ‘Godliness is profitable unto all things’ (1 Tim. 4:8).  By obedience we purify our souls (1 Pet. 1:21).  By obedience we obtain the ear of God (1 John 3:22), just as disobedience is a barrier to our prayers (Isa. 59:2; Jer. 5:25).  By obedience we obtain precious and intimate manifestations of Christ unto the soul (John 14:21).  As we tread the path of wisdom (complete sub­jection to God), we discover that ‘her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace’ (Prov. 3:17).  ‘His commandments are not grievous’ (1 John 5:3), and ‘in keeping of them there is great reward’ (Psa. 19:11).

From Profiting from the Word.

Posted in A. W. Pink |

Objections against Receiving Christ by Ralph Erskine

January 16, 2010 by ADMIN

1. Objections are drawn from the greatness and multitude of sins. It is true, there are some who have no such objections as this at all; they are as secure, senseless, and dense as a stone of the wall.  There is no hope of saying anything to move and affect such unless the Lord himself awaken them.  But if any here were objecting to this purpose, though it was but one in all this company; “Oh! my guilt is so serious, my sins are so great and my transgressions are so multiplied, that you would tremble to think of the sins I have been guilty of and what light I have sinned against, and this makes my heart sink: none know but God and my own conscience, what a sinner I have been; and will Christ ever accept me?”  Answer: The greatness of your sins should be a great argument to engage you to come to Christ, and receive him.  Your sins are not greater than God’s mercies; your guilt is not greater than Christ’s merits.  It is hardly to be supposed that you are worse than some who yet have [already] obtained mercy; such as Paul, a persecutor and blasphemer; Manasseh, a murderer and wizard in compact with the devil; Mary Magdalene, in whom were seven devils; and many of the Jews that crucified the Lord of glory, yet were washed in that blood of the Lamb which they shed.  The merit of Christ’s blood is infinite; though your sins were greater than all sins, yet there is virtue in his blood to expiate them; for, it cleanses from all sin. Though the sands be many and large, yet the sea can overflow them all: so, though your sins be numerous and great, the blood of Christ can cover them all.

In a word, the question is not about the greatness of your sins, but your present duty: be your sin what it will, the Lord calls you to come to Christ and receive him: and your unbelief in your rejecting Christ is greater than all your other sins for it is a refusal of the remedy whereby you may be relieved of all your sin and guilt.  Your other sins are but against the law; but this sin, in rejecting Christ is against the law and the gospel both.  Other sins are against God; but this sin, in rejecting Christ, is against God and Christ both.  It is a great sin to think any sin little; but it is a greater sin to think the righteousness of Christ is not above all sin.  Our disobedience is the disobedience of man, but Christ’s obedience is the obedience of God: therefore, our believing in Christ pleases God better than if we had continued in innocence and never sinned.  The least sin is unpardonable without this obedience and righteousness of Christ; and the greatest is pardonable by it.  Therefore, O seek Christ and be clothed with this righteousness.

2. Objections are drawn from the justice of God. “Oh, God is just and will not hold the sinner guiltless: therefore, though I should fly to the horns of the altar, there I fear justice would be avenged upon me.”  Answer: This is also an argument why you should receive Christ.  God’s justice indeed must be satisfied, and there is no way in the world to give satisfaction to God, but by believing in Christ; for, “God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself.”  He has endured the wrath of God, and so there is no way to answer justice, but by flying to that satisfaction he has made.  And if you do, justice will not demand a double satisfaction: one from you, and another from your Surety.  No, he will deliver you from going down to the pit, because he has found a ransom.  It is contrary to the nature of justice to demand a double satisfaction when the satisfaction given by Christ is infinite.

3. Objection is drawn from the sinner’s unworthiness. “Oh! I am utterly unworthy and have nothing to move God to pity me; will he accept the likes of me?”  Answer: What do you think is the strength of that reasoning?  It comes just to this: I have no merit; therefore, God will have no mercy: there is no salvation for me by the law; therefore there is no salvation for me by the gospel.  If you look at God with the eye of the lawyer, the least sin makes you ineligible for mercy; but if you look at him in Christ, or with an evangelical eye, the greatest sinner may receive mercy; yes, the sense of unworthiness makes a man the more receptive. It is an unworthy objection and argues lamentable ignorance of the gospel.  Come to him as deserving nothing but wrath, and flying to God’s free grace, and Christ’s full merit, and the covenant’s rich promise.  It is with faith as it is with a bird cast into the water: it cannot fly, the element is so gross; it cannot clap its wings there; but cast it into the air, then it will clap its wings and mount.  So faith is the wing of the soul: when it looks to the man’s self and his own worthiness, this is such a gross element, faith cannot mount: but let it out to the air of God’s free grace and promise in Christ, then it will act and fly: yes, grace cannot act but upon an unworthy object, and without any cause from the object.

Justice has an eye upon the disposition of the person, in its rewards; but grace and mercy has an eye upon itself.  Thus, if a king executes a malefactor, this is an act of justice, and the cause of it is in the offender; but if a king pardons a malefactor, this is an act of grace, and the cause of it is in the king’s heart, not in the worthiness of the delinquent.  So here, if you were worthy, you were not capable of this free gift.  If ever there was a gift freely given, it is Christ; and will you reject him because you are unworthy?  Why, if you were worthy, it would not be a free gift.  No, your refusing of Christ and standing a back from him for your unworthiness is great pride: you would have a bladder [life preserver] of your own, that you might swim to heaven without being obliged to Christ.  If you meet a poor beggar and see nothing but misery and poverty in his face and draw your purse and offer him money, would it not be strange to hear him say, “No, I will not have it; I am not worthy; over there is a gentleman in fashionable clothing, give it him for he is worthy”?  Just as ridiculous is the case here, while you stand back from Christ because of your unworthiness.  In a word, Christ is worthy enough of your taking.  What if the greatest prince in the world should make suit to the poorest beggar, who has neither beauty nor dowry, though she be unworthy to hear of the proposal, yet the person is worthy who has made it; so it is here, if Christ, the Prince of life and King of glory, be worth the receiving, then reject not his offer that he makes of himself: and indeed never will you be worthy till you receive him.

4. Objection is drawn from a doubt and suspicion arising in the mind if Christ be willing: “Oh! I fear he is not willing to accept me.”  Answer: He declares in his word that he is not willing that any should perish; and he swears that he has no delight in the death of sinners.  And O sinner! will you look up to God’s face and say, though he has both said and sworn to that purpose, that he is not willing?  His purpose of grace in saving some does not say that he is willing to destroy any; it only says that, as he is not willing that any should perish, so he is resolved that all shall not get leave to destroy themselves; as all would do, if he did not catch hold of some and pluck them as brands out of the burning fire, and his doing so says that none are destroyed by him, unless they destroy themselves.  None are willing to be saved by him, until his willingness precedes their willingness.  His not saving all is no more an argument of his desire that any should perish than a king’s not pardoning all rebels is an argument of that prince’s willingness that any should live in rebellion against him and fall under his furious judgment.  Although it was possible for an earthly prince to make them all willing subjects to him, yet it would not be inconsistent with a merciful disposition for him to allow some to take their will that he may show how stubborn their nature is and how equal and just he is in the administration of his government: for acts of justice towards some are not inconsistent with a will to show mercy upon all.

Natural reason and unbelief still suspect the willingness of Christ, especially because of a decree passed in heaven, which the Word mentions concerning the salvation of some, from which they know not but they may be excluded.  This is a powerful temptation of Satan, leading men boldly and arrogantly to speculate about the records of heaven, that are locked up from men and angels, till the decree is fully unveiled. It is an evidence of our cursed hatred against God that we will not believe his good will in Christ revealed in the gospel toward sinners by so many commands and promises, calls and invitations.  If you would, notice the instances of Christ’s willingness: behold how he wept over Jerusalem, self-destroying Jerusalem, rejecting his offer, Luke 19:41-42, “And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes.”  What a moving sight was this, to see the Son of God in a flood of tears for lost sinners!  Had he been asked, as he did Mary in another case, “Blessed Lord, what seekest thou?  Why weepest thou?”  His answer readily would have been, “I seek not myself; I weep not for myself; for I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, though sinners be not gathered; but I weep to see sinners so mad, as to reject their Savior and salvation rather than part with their lusts, that have damnation attending them; I weep to see them content rather to cast themselves headlong into the devil’s arms than to throw themselves into my arms of mercy or receive and embrace me.”  Oh! how did Christ’s heart melt with pity for you, and will not your hearts melt with desire toward him!  Surely, all the rivers of tears that flowed from his eyes and the rivers of blood that flowed from his pierced heart and feet and hands and side will be standing monuments of his good-will to save sinners.  How would you have him to discover his willingness?  Why man, woman, he just turns humble supplicant to you; and, as it were, upon his bare knees beseeches you to be reconciled to him; 2 Cor. 5:20, “We are ambassadors for Christ, though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.”  Tremendous and amazing condescension!  Behold, divine mercy, stooping down to a sinner in the humble posture, entreating him to receive a Savior and to receive a free remission through him!  Surely the humble entreaties of the great God should both convince us of his willingness to receive us, and shame us out of our unwillingness to receive Christ and salvation through him.

5. Objection is drawn from a doubt or suspicion of our being prepared for receiving Christ.  “Oh,” says the sinner, that is any way sensible, “I am not humbled enough; Christ comes to bind up the brokenhearted; but my heart is not broken; to give the oil of joy for mourning, but I do not have a mourning or humble spirit: therefore I may not believe or receive Christ.”  Answer: You will never reckon yourself humbled enough, if you would have humiliation proportioned to your sin, which is an infinite evil.  Feelings of guilt, though ever so deep, though your heart should be broken in as many pieces as the glass does shiver against the wall; and though you were roaring day and night under the disquiet of a guilty conscience and fearful apprehensions of God’s wrath; yet all this will not say that you are now fit for Christ.  These humiliations may be merely judicial and punishments of sin, as were those of Cain and Judas; therefore, you cannot judge yourself by your legal humiliations, but only by the issue and event of them.  Think not, then, to bring humiliation in your hand as a price – this will but more unfit you.  The best humiliation is to see your lack of humiliation; the best preparation, to see your lack of preparation, and your lack of all good things about you and to receive Christ as the only way to true gospel humiliation.  The law is like a thunder clap that terrifies; but the gospel is like a warm sun that dissolves the ice.  Nothing melts the soul more than Christ apprehended by faith: “They shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn,” Zech. 12:10.  Faith sees the greatest love, the sweetest kindness; and this melts the heart.  No doubt, the prodigal was more melted, and broken, by his father’s embracing of him so kindly than by all his former miseries.  What! art thou embracing me, a stubborn child, and unworthy spend thrift?  So Christ comes in the gospel, saying, “Come, poor sinner, you have done evil as you could; though you have wronged me and my Spirit and my Father and yourself, yet come and I will get you a pardon for all that; fear not, I will be yours to save you; my blood yours, to wash you; my righteousness yours, to justify you; my Spirit yours, to sanctify you.”  This melts the heart!  What! is this for me, guilty me, rebellious me?  Yes, it is for you graciously and freely!  How the soul now dissolves into tears!

6. Objection is drawn from fear that the day of grace is past. “Alas! I have refused many call invitations and offers, so much that Christ will not regard me!  I have often trifled with the gospel, often trampled on his precious blood; and with what confidence can I now claim it?” Answer: It is to be hoped that while you have this call yet to receive Christ, that now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation, if your former refusals of Christ have not yet been malicious and deceitful, but rather temerarious and inadvertent, which though a grievous sin, yet not unpardonable: and now, since Christ does not yet exclude you from the gospel offer, why will you exclude yourselves? The more you have refused his offer in times past, the more need you have of forgiveness.

You should go to God as David, saying, “Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great.”  This would indeed be a strange argument with man, “Pardon my crime, for it is great;” but it is a strong argument with God: Lord, it is great and so I have more need of a pardon; it is great, and so you will have great honor in pardoning: even as a physician has in curing a desperate disease.  The sinning against Christ’s blood or slighting it is indeed a heinous sin, but the more heinous it is, the more need you have to hasten to this blood as the only fountain that can wash away the guilt of trampling upon it.  Nay, though you had shed this blood, as the Jews did, yet you are welcome to come to it for mercy: see the commission that Christ gives to his apostles, Luke 24:46, 47: “Preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name, to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”  O! why at Jerusalem, where he was mocked, pierced, and crucified?  Nay, begin there, for they have most need of my blood to wash them.  If anything could alienate Christ’s heart from sinners, surely the consideration of their crucifying him and using him so deceitfully might have done it.  “Yes,” says he, “go make offer of my blood and mercy to these my murderers,” and accordingly, it was done by Peter, Acts 2, and many of them got this blood applied to them.  Again,

7. Objection is drawn from the long continuation in sin. “I am an old sinner; my sins are of very long continuance; I have remained in the grave of sin and I am just an old rotten sinner.”  Answer: I fear there are some old sinners here very near to hell and damnation; the devil has got the prime of their age, and he is likely to get the dregs.  Oh! if gospel grace would draw you, I would let down the rope ladder of love, by telling you that, though your sins be old, yet they are not so old as Christ’s mercies, which are everlasting mercies.  It is not the first old distemper that Christ hath cured; he raised Lazarus with a word though he had been four days in the grave; he stopped a bloody issue with the hem of his garment, that had run twelve years; he loosed a poor woman, whom Satan had bound eighteen years; he cured an impotent man that had an infirmity thirty-eight years; and, can he not easily cure all the sicknesses in your soul?  He received those that came at the eleventh hour; he received some that came at the last hour.

Consider the thief on the cross, whom the devil thought he was sure of, having drawn him the length of the mouth of hell just ready to cast him in.   Yet, even then, upon his looking to Christ, did the arms of mercy take hold of him.  This is encouragement to you to look to him.

8. Objection is drawn from a doubt or jealousy about our right to receive Christ. “Oh!” says one, “though Christ can save me, yet I have no right to receive him; though his blood is sufficient to wash me, yet I have no right to it.”  Answer: You have a full right and authorization from the very call of the gospel to run to it.  See what Christ enjoins ministers to do: Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature;” make offer of me and my blood to all, without distinction, whatever be their age, sex, or circumstances, man, woman, and child.  Let no children hearing me think they are too young to be included in this call to come to Christ; nay, the gospel is preached to you as well as to old folk.  You may die in your youth; and if you die without Christ, you will perish as well as old Christless persons.”  Preach the gospel to every creature; even to the worst of sinners: every creature, be they ever so wicked; even though they have sinned themselves into the likeness of beasts or devils; yet if they be creatures, offer my blood, my mercy, my merit, my righteousness to them.  Invite and press them to come to me and receive me; and “Him that cometh, I will in no wise cast out.”  O sinner, let the gospel offer be accepted and you shall find, whatever you have been, that there is mercy enough in God’s being to pity you, merit enough in Christ’s blood to pardon you, and power enough in his intercession to provide and apply it to you.  Look to him for a share of this grace offered to you and receive not the grace of God in vain.

9. Objection is drawn from the power of sin. “Alas! I find sin to be strong in me; how should I believe or receive Christ?  None have such a wicked heart; surely the Lord will loath me.”  Answer: That, as to a sense of the power of sin, it is better than to be senseless and dull under it; so, consider the nature of unbelief more than the strength of sin; for, it is an evil heart of unbelief that gives strength to sin.  There are two things you must be obliged to Christ for his merit to get the guilt of sin pardoned; and his Spirit to get the power of sin subdued.  There is no healing but under the wings of Christ; and therefore you must go to him for it.  What do you think of faith?  Is it an enemy to holiness?  No, by no means; it is the only way to it.  And do you find sin opposing you?  Why then, know that this time of opposition is a time for faith to work.  When a man sees death, then it is time for faith to believe life.  When he sees the grave, it is time for faith to believe the resurrection; when he sees guilt, it is time for faith to believe pardoning mercy; and when he sees sin, it is time for faith to receive a Savior; when he sees strong corruption, then it is time for faith to lay hold on Christ’s strength and cast yourself upon his faithful promise for healing and pardoning of it.  You may try other ways, but they will not do; you may wash in other waters, but they will not cleanse you; you may perplex your own thoughts with a thousand shifts beside this, but they will not avail you: in Christ and the promises of the covenant are the cures of your sinful nature; and faith applies the healing medicine.  But now, to name one more,

10. Objection is drawn from the weakness of the creature and of means. “What?” say you, “I have no strength to believe, no strength to pray, no heart to duty: or, if I try it at any time, I have no success in it or benefit by it.”  Here are two objections, and I shall divide them, in order to give a more distinct reply.

Well, then, the first part of the objection is, “I have no strength to believe, no power to receive Christ.  I don’t even have the heart to pray for faith.”  Answer: It is proper for you to know our own utter inability to believe; they who think they can believe well enough of themselves mistake the faith of God’s operation for dreams and strong imagination of their own brain.  But, even though you say you have no strength, see that the disease lies rather in this, that you have no will.  If you were made willing, you undoubtedly would find yourselves made able in due time: therefore, cry for one pull more of omnipotent grace, to make you willing in the day of his power. And even though you say you cannot cry and you have no heart to pray, it is perhaps your mercy to be kept empty-handed that you may not make a Christ of your duty or a Savior of your feelings; for, perhaps, you would rest there.  However, know that unbelief is the great cause of feeling unable to perform duty, for it fills the man with hard thoughts of God.  “Oh!” says unbelief, “God is so holy, he will never regard you; God is so just, he will never endure you.”  Unbelief makes God all full of frowns and anger; and so the man’s spirit sinks within him: but faith would bring up the soul, Psalm 27:13, “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord, in the land of the living.”

Faith shows God to be on a throne of grace and this raises the heart; and faith gives the soul reasons to prevail in prayer; such as, the name of God, the blood of Christ, the promise of the covenant, the intercession of Christ, the faithfulness of God.  In the meantime, think not either to believe or pray aright without opposition from Satan, an evil heart of unbelief, the prevalence of sin, and an ensnaring world.  You must wrestle, through grace, all the way to glory, “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force… Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus… Press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

The second part of the objection is “That, though you attempt, you find no success in duty, no benefit by it; “I am still where I was.”  Answer: True seeking comes always to something: it is pride and impatience that says, “It is vain to serve the Lord” (see Mal. 3:14, 18 and Isa. 40:22-24) and “God is faithful who hath promised.”  It is true, many ask and receive not, because they ask amiss and do not ask in faith, nothing wavering.  What success can we expect if we tell the true God to his face, that he is a liar and that he will not make good a word that he says?  Therefore, seek the removal of this unbelief.

Besides, remember that there is a twofold answer that God makes: real and tangible.  A king may sign a pardon, and yet the criminal not know it for a time.  An answer may be given sometimes when we know not of it.  For example, you seek, perhaps, a heart to pray, and a heart to hate sin.  Well, upon this perhaps you find your heart harder to your feeling than it was and your corruption bursting forth upon you which makes you lie groveling with the greatest urgency at heaven’s gate and causes the most extreme loathing of your depraved nature.  Why, here you get the very thing you were seeking, yet you are not aware that these things are answers because the answer comes in a way different from your expectation.  The heart may have such thirstiness after grace, such an abomination of sin, that these present answers from heaven may seem to be nothing, yet there is something more the man would have.  Present grants are not a satisfying of his desire; however, something is got by every faithful seeking.  The man gets either more addition to some grace or more aversion to some sin; or more grace to seek or more strength to wait. But though you get not so much as you desire, surely you get more than you deserve. Although it is not so much as to satisfy, yet it is as much as to help for the present.

Suppose you be not answered at all; it is your sin to murmur and your duty to wait.  Remember, that God never gives his people so large an alms here, but that they need to become beggars the next hour at the throne of grace again; and know that God loves to be urged, but he does not love to be hastened.  If God promises, it is your duty to believe.  If he delays, it is your duty to wait. God postpones that he may be gracious; and, “Blessed are all they that wait for him.”  In a word, the Lord may keep his door bolted that you may be provoked to knock the harder.  The woman of Canaan struggled with the intent of Christ’s refusing to answer her; therefore she becomes unrelenting, and so gets all her will.  Therefore, whatever discouragement you meet with, resolve never to quit the throne of grace, but always to lay yourselves in Christ’s way and never to go to another for help.  Indeed, purpose that you will die waiting on him.  Remember the Psalmist’s experience, Psalm 40:1, “I waited patiently on the Lord, and at length he inclined his ear, and heard my cry.”  You may meet with discouragement and temptation and be put to very hard thoughts, but you must be resolute in looking to Christ for help, reasoning with yourselves like the four lepers at the siege of Samaria, 2 Kings 7:3-4.  If I live at a distance from Christ, I will certainly perish; there is no hope for me.  If Christ pity me not when I am waiting on him, I will certainly die; but yet there is hope, he will have pity at length. Therefore, if I perish, I will perish at Christ’s feet; still looking up to him, where never one yet perished and he will not let me be the first.

Thus I have attempted to answer some objections: but after all there may be thousands of objections that remain, and it is the Lord only that can effectively and powerfully answer them, or any of those already mentioned, but whatever be your objections against receiving Christ, pray to Christ himself to answer them: he is content that you receive him for this purpose, to answer all your objections, as well as to pardon all your sins and conquer all your corruptions.

Not withstanding all that has been said, perhaps some are ready to think, my objection has not been mentioned, my case has not been touched; for, it is a singular case. I am no more moved with all that has been said than a stone in the wall.  Well, it might give some foundation for faith if you consider that Christ can, out of these stones, raise up children to Abraham, and that he has promised to take away the heart of stone.  O beloved, will you put him to his word?  Nay, say you, my heart is raging in hatred against him, like a devil.  Well, say not for all that, there is no hope; for Christ can cast out devils; and it is his work and business to put evil spirits out, and to put his own Spirit within you: only allow him to work; for it is one of the ways of receiving him, even to exercise him to receive you and to destroy the works of the devil within you.  If Christ should not find any work here among all this company, woe is us, that you should all give such a vile slight to a precious Christ, as that you prefer your lowly lusts to him and will not so much as desire him to put the sacrificing knife to the throat of your lusts; and though he stand knocking at your door, yet you will not so much as desire him to come in, nor invite him to close the door.  If anyone knocks at your door, you will readily desire them to open and come forward.  Shall not glorious Christ get as much reception as that from you?  Oh, invite him, at least, to put in his hand by the knob of the door, and then your inner being will move for him, Song 5:4.  May the Lord persuade you to receive Christ and answer all your objections against him.

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