"For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to
God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by
his life." ST. PAUL, who, by the way, is by far the most
argumentative of all the apostles - and who, from being the most successful of
them all, proves that argument is both a legitimate and a powerful weapon in
the work of making Christians, sometimes undertakes to reason upon one set of
premises, and then to demonstrate, how much more valid and irresistible is the
conclusion which he tries to establish, when he is in actual possession of
another and more favourable set of premises. in this way a great additional
strength is made to accrue to his argument - and the "how much more" with which
he finishes, causes it to come with greater power and assurance upon his
readers - and it is this which gives him the advantage of what is well known,
both in law and in logic, under the phrase of
arqumentum a fortiore, or,
an argument which affirms a thing to be true in adverse and unpromising
circumstances, and therefore far more worthy of being held true in likelier
circumstances. It is quite a familiar mode of reasoning in common discourse. If
a neighbour be bound to sympathise with the distresses of an unfortunate
family, how much more, when that neighbour is a relative. If I obtained an
offer of friendship from a man in difficulties, how much more may I count upon
it should he now be translated into a state of sufficiency and ease. If in the
very heat of our quarrel, and under the discouragement of all my provoking
insolence towards him, my enemy forbear the vengeance which he had the power to
inflict, how much more, should the quarrel be made up, and I have been long in
terms of reconciliation with him, may I feel myself secure from the effects of
his indignation.
Such also is the argument of my text. There is one
state of matters in which God sets forth a demonstration of friendship to the
world; and this is compared with the present and actual state of matters, more
favourable tlmn the former, and from which therefore, the friendship of God may
be still more surely inferred, and still more firmly confided in. But it will
be further seen, that in this short sentence of the apostle, there lies a
compound argument which admits of being separated into distinct parts. There is
a reference made to a twofold state of matters, which, by being resolved into
its two particulars, brings out two accessions of strength to the conclusion of
our apostle, which are independent of each other. He, in fact, holds forth a
double claim upon our understanding, and we propose to view successively the
two particulars of which it is made up.
There is first then a
comparison made between one state of matters, and another state of matters
which obtain in our earth - and there is at the same time a comparison made
between one state of matters, and another state of matters which obtain in
heaven - and from each of these there may be educed an argument for
strengthening the assurance of every Christian, in that salvation which the
gospel has made known to us.
Let us first look then to the two states upon
earth; and this may be done either with a reference to this world's history, or
it may be done with a reference to the personal history of every one man who is
now a believer.
That point of time in the series of general history at
which reconciliation was made, was when our Saviour said that it is finished,
and gave up the ghost. God may be said to have then become reconciled to the
world, in as far as He was ready to enter into agreement with all who drew nigh
in the name of this great propitiation. Now think of the state of matters upon
earth, previous to the time when reconciliation in this view was entered upon.
Think of the strength of that moving principle in the bosom of the Deity, which
so inclined Him towards a world then lying in the depths of ungodliness - and
from one end to another of it, lifting the cry of rebellion against Him. There
was no movement on the part of the world towards God - no returning sense of
allegiance towards Him from whom they had revolted so deeply - no abatement of
that profligacy which so rioted at large over a wide scene of lawless and
thankless and careless abandonment - no mitigation of that foul and audacious
insolence by which the throne of Heaven was assailed; and a spectacle so full
of offence to the unfallen was held forth, of a whole province in arms against
the lawful Monarch of creation. Had the world thrown down its weapons of
disobedience - had a contrite and relenting spirit gone previously forth among
its generations - had the light which even then glimmered in the veriest wilds
of Paganism, just up to the strength and degree of its influence, told aright
on the moral sensibilities of the deluded and licentious worshippers - had
they, whose conscience was a law unto themselves, just acted and followed on as
they might under the guidance of its compunctious visitations - had there been
any thing like the forthgoing of a general desire, however faint, towards that
unknown Being, the sense and impression of whom were never wholly obliterated -
then it might have been less decisive of God's will for reconciliation, that He
gave way to these returning demonstrations on the part of His alienated
creatures, and reared a pathway of illumination by which sinners may draw nigh
unto God.
But for God to have done this very thing, when these sinners
were persisting. in the full spirit and determination of their unholy warfare -
for Him to have done so, when, instead of any returning loyalty rising up, to
Him like the incense of a sweet-smelling savour, the exhalations of idolatry
and vice blackened the whole canopy of heaven, and ascended in a smoke of
abomination before Him - for Him to have done so at the very time that all
flesh had corrupted its ways, and when, either with or without the law of
revelation, God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually - in
these circumstances of deep and unalleviated provocation, and when God might
have eased Him of His adversaries, by sweeping the whole of this moral nuisance
away from the face of the universe which it deformed - for such a time to have
been a time of love, when majesty seemed to call for some solemn vindication,
but mercy could not let us go - Surely, if through such a barrier between God
and the guilty, He, in the longings of His desire after them, forced a pathway
of reconciliation, He never will turn himself away from any, who, cheered
forward by His own entreaties, are walking upon that path. But if, when enemies
He Himself found out an approach by which He might beckon them to enter into
peace with Him, how much more, when they are so approaching, will He meet them
with the light of His countenance, and bless them with the joys of His
salvation.
But this argument may be looked to in another way. Instead
of fixing our regards upon that point in the general history of the world, when
the avenue was struck out between our species and their offended Lawgiver; and
through the rent veil of a Saviour's flesh, a free and consecrated way of
access was opened for the guiltiest of them all - let a believer in Christ fix
his regards upon that passage in his own personal history at which he was drawn
in his desires and in his confidence to this great Mediator, and entered upon
the grace wherein he now stands, and gave up his evil heart of unbelief, and
made his transition out of darkness to the marvellous light of the gospel. Let
him compare what he was, when an alien from God, through wicked works of his
own, with what he is when a humble but confiding expectant of God's mercy
through the righteousness of another. Who translated him into the condition
which he now occupies? Who put into his heart the faith of the gospel? Who
awakened him from the dormancy and unconcern of nature? Who stirred up that
restless but salutary alarm which at length issued in the secure feeling of
reconciliation? There was a time of his past life when the whole doctrine of
salvation was an offence to him; when its preaching was foolishness to his
ears; when its phraseology tired and disgusted him; when, in light and lawless
companionship, he put the warnings of religious counsel, and the urgency of
menacing sermons away from his bosom - a time when the world was his all, and
when he was wholly given over to the idolatry of its pursuits and pleasures and
projects of aggrandizement - a time when his heart was unvisited with any
permanent seriousness about God, of whom his conscience sometimes reminded him;
but whom he soon dismissed from his earnest contemplation - a time when he may
have occasionally heard of a judgment; but without one practical movement of
his soul towards the task of preparation - a time when the overtures of peace
met him on his way; but which he, in the impetuous prosecution of his own
objects, utterly disregarded - a time when death plied him with its
ever-recurring mementoes; but which he overlooking the short and summary
arithmetic of the few little years that lay between him and the last messenger,
placed so far on the back ground of his anticipation, that this earth, this
passing and perishable earth - formed the scene of all his solieitudes.
Is there none here present who remembers such a time of his bygone
history, and with such a character of alienation from God and from His Christ,
as we have now given to it? And who, we ask, recalled him from this alienation?
By whose guidance was he conducted to that demonstration either of the press or
of the pulpit, which awakened him? Who sent that afflictive visitation to his
door, which weaned his spirit from the world, and wooed it to the deathless
friendships, and the ever-during felicities of heaven? Who made known to him
the extent of his guilt, with the overpassing extent of the redemption that is
provided for it? It was not he himself who originated the process of his own
salvation. God might have abandoned him to his own courses; and said of him, as
He has done of many others, " I will let him alone, since he will have it so ;"
and given him up to that judicial blindness, under which the vast majority of
the world are now sleeping in profoundest lethargy; and withheld altogether
that light of the Spirit, which he had done so much to extinguish. But if,
instead of all this, God kept by him in the midst of his thankless
provocations; and, while he was yet a regardless enemy, made his designs of
grace to bear upon him; and, throughout all the mazes of his checkered history,
conducted him to the knowledge of Himself as a reconciling God; and so softened
his heart with family bereavements, or so tore it from all its worldly
dependencies by the disasters of business, or so shook it with frightful
agitation by the terrors of the law, or so shone upon it with the light of His
free Spirit, as made it glad to escape from the treachery of nature's joys and
nature's promises, into a relying faith on the offers and assurances of the
gospel
Why, just let him think of the time when God did so much for
him - and then think of the impossibility that God will recede from him now; or
that He will cease from the prosecution of that work in circumstances of
earnest and desirous concurrence on the part of the believer, which He Himself
begun in the circumstances either of his torpid unconcern, or of his active and
haughty defiance. The God who moved towards him in his days of forgetfulness,
will not move away from him in his days of hourly and habitual remembrance; and
He who intercepted him in his career of rebellion, will not withdraw from him
in his career of new obedience; and He who first knocked at the door of his
conscience, and that too in a prayerless and thankless and regardless season of
his history, will not - now that he prays in the name of Christ, and now that
his heart is set upon salvation, and now that the doctrine of grace forms all
his joy and all his dependence;
He who thus found him a distant and exiled
rebel, will not abandon him now that his fellowship is with the Father and with
the Son.
It is thus, that the believer may shield his misgiving heart
from all its despondencies. It is thus, that the argument of the text goes to
fortify his faith, and to perfect that which is lacking in it. It is thus that
the 'how much more' of the apostle should cause him to abound more and more in
the peace and the joy of believing - and should encourage every man who has
laid hold on the hope set before us, to steady and confirm his hold stdl more
tenaciously than before, so as to keep it fast and sure even unto the end. With
a man who knows himself to be a believer, this argument is quite irresistible;
and it will go to establish his faith, and to strengthen it, and to settle it,
and to make it perfect. But it is possible for a man really to believe, and yet
to be in ignorance for a time whether he does so or not; and it is possible for
a man to be in earnest about his soul, and yet not to have received that truth
which is unto salvation; and it is possible for hinu to be actuated by a strong
general desire to be right, and yet to be walking among the elements of
uncertainty; and it is possible for him to be looking to that quarter whence
the truths of the gospel are offered to his contemplation, and yet not to have
attained the distinct or satisfying perception of them - thoroughly engaged in
the prosecution of his peace with God - determinedly bent on this object as the
highest interest he can possibly aspire after - labouring after a settlement;
and, under all the agonies of a fierce internal war, seeking and toiling and
praying for his deliverance.
It is at the point of time when faith
enters the heart, that reconciliation is entered upon - nor can we say of this
man, that he is yet a believer, or, that he has passed from the condition of an
enemy to that of a friend. And yet upon him the argument of the text should not
be without its efficacy. It is such an argument as may be employed not merely
to confirm the faith which already exists, but to help onto its formation that
faith which is struggling for an establishment in the heart of an enquirer. It
falls, no doubt, with fullest and most satisfying light upon the heart of a
conscious believer and yet it may be addressed, and with pertinency too, to men
under their first and earliest visitations of seriousness. For give me an
acquaintance of whom I know nothing more than that his face is towards Zion -
give me one arrested by a sense of guilt and of danger, and merely groping his
way to a place of enlargement - give me a soul not in peace, but in perplexity,
and in the midst of all those initial difficulties which beset the awakened
sinner, ere Christ shall give him light - give me a labouring and heavy-laden
sinner, haunted by the reflection, as if by an arrow sticking fast, that the
mighty question of his eternity is yet unresolved.
There are many we
fear amongst you to whom this tremendous uncertainty gives no concern - but
give me one who has newly taken it up, and who, in the minghings of doubt and
despondency, has not yet found his way to any consolation; and even with him
may it be found, that the same reason which strengthens the hope of an advanced
Christian, may well inspire the hope of im who has still his Christianity to
find, and thus cast a cheering and a comforting influence on the very infancy
of his progress. For if it was in behalf of a careless world that the costly
apparatus of redemption was reared - if it was in the full front and audacity
of their most determined rebellion that God laid the plan of reconciliation -
if it was for the sake of men sunk in the very depths of ungodliness, that He
constructed His overtures of peace, and sent forth His Son with them amongst
our loathsome and polluted dwelling-places - if, to get at His strayed
children, He had thus to find His way through all those elements of impiety and
ungodliness, which are most abhorrent to the sanctity of His nature - Think
you, that the God who made such an advancing movement towards the men whose
faces were utterly away from Him - is this a God who will turn His own face
away from the man who is moving towards God, and earnestly seeking after Him if
haply he may find Him?
This argument obtains great additional force,
when we look to the state of matters in heaven at the time that we upon earth
were enemies; and compare it with the state of matters in heaven, now that we
are actually reconciled, or are beginning to entertain the offers of
reconciliation. Before the work of our redemption, Jesus Christ was in primeval
glory; and though a place of mystery to us, it was a place of secure and
ineffable enjoyment - insomuch, that the fondest prayer He could utter in the
depths of His humiliation, was to be taken hack again to the Ancient of days,
and there to be restored to the glory which He had with him before the world
was. It was from the heights of celestial security and blessedness that He
looked with an eye of pity on our sinful habitations - it was from a scene
where beings of a holy nature surrounded Him, and the full homage of the
Divinity was rendered to Him, and, in the ecstacics of his fellowship with God
the Father, all was peace and purity and excellence - it was from this that He
took His voluntary departure, and went out on His errand to seek and to save
us. And it was not the parade of an unreal suffering that He had to encounter;
but a deep and a dreadful endurance - it was not a triumphant promenade through
this lower world, made easy over all its obstacles by the energies of His
Godhead; but a conflict of toil and of strenuousness - it was not an egress
from heaven on a journey brightened through all its stages by the hope of a
smooth and gentle return; but it was such an exile from heaven as made His
ascent and His readmittance there the fruit of a hardwon victory.
We
have nothing but the facts of revelation to guide or to inform us; and yet from
a these we most assuredly gather, that the Saviour, in stepping down from the
elevation of His past eternity, incurred a substantial degradation - that when
He wrapped Himself in the humanity of our nature, He put on the whole of its
infirmities and its sorrows - that, for the joy which He renounced, He became
acquainted with grief, and a grief too, commensurate to the whole burden of our
world s atonement - that the hidings of His Father's countenance were
terrifying to His soul; and when the offended justice of the Godhead was laid
upon His person, it required the whole strength of the Godhead to sustain it.
What mean the agonies of the garden? What mean the bitter cries and
cornplainings of abandonment upon the cross? What mineaneth the prayer that the
cup might pass away from Him; and the struggle of a lofty resolution with the
agonies of a mighty and unknown distress; and the evident symptoms of a great
and toilsome achievement throughout the whole progress of this undertaking
angels; and looking down from their eminencies, as on a field of contest, where
a great Captain had to put forth the travailling of His strength, and to spoil
principalities and powers, and to make a show of them openly? Was there nothing
in all this, do you think, but the mockery of a humiliation that was never felt
- the mockery of a pain that was never suffered - the mockery of a battle that
was never fought?
No, be assured that there was, on that day, a real
vindication of God's insulted majesty. On that day there was the real
transference of an avenging hand, from the heads of the guilty to the head of
the innocent. On that day one man died for the people, and there was an actual
laying on of the iniquities of us all. It was a war of strength and of
suffering in highest possible aggravation, because the war of elements which
were infinite. The wrath which millions should have borne, was all of it
discharged. Nor do we estimate aright what we owe of love and obligation to the
Saviour, till we believe, that the whole of that fury, which if poured out upon
the world, would have served its guilty generations through eternity - that all
of it was poured into the cup of expiation. A more adequate sense of this might
not only serve to awaken the gratitude which slumbers within us, and is dead -
it might also, through the aid of the argument in our text, awaken and assure
our confidence. If when we were enemies, Christ ventured on an enterprise so
painful - if when loathsome outcasts from the sacred territory of heaven, He
left the abode of His Father, and exchanged love, and adoration, and congenial
felicity among angels, for the hatred and persecution of men - if when the
agonies of the coming vengeance were still before Him, and the dark and dreary
vale of suffering had yet to be entered upon, and He had to pass under the
infiictions of that sword which the Eternal God awakened against His fellow,
and He had still to give Himself up to a death equivalent in the amount of its
soreness to the devouring fire, and the everlasting burnings, which but for Him
believers would have borne - if, when all this had yet to be travelled through,
He nevertheless, in His compassionate longing for the souls of men, went forth
upon the errand of winning them to Himself, - let us just look to the state of
matters then, and compare it with the state of matters now.
Christ has
there ascended on the wings of victory; and He is now sitting at God's right
hand, amid all the purchased triumphs of His obedience; and the toil, and the
conflict, and the agony, are now over; and from that throne of mediatorship to
which He has been exalted, is it His present office to welcome the approaches
of all who come, and to save to the uttermost all who put their trust in Him.
And is it possible, we would ask, is it possible that He who died to atone, now
that He lives, will not live to make intercession for us? Can the love for men
which bore Him through a mighty and a painful sacrifice, not be strong enough
to carry Him onwards in peace and in triumph to its final consummation? Will He
now abandon that work which His own hands have so laboriously reared ? - or
leave the cause for which He has already sustained the weight of such an
endurance, in the embryo and unfinished state of an abortive undertaking? Will
He cast away from Him the spoils of that victory for which He bled; and how can
it be imagined for a moment, but by such dark and misgiving hearts as ours,
that He whose love for a thankless world carried Him through the heat and the
severity of a contest that is now ended, will ever, with the cold and
forbidding glance of an altered countenance, spurn an enquiring world away from
Him?
The death of a crucified Saviour, when beheld under such a view,
is the firm stepping-stone to confidence in a risen Saviour. You may learn from
it, that His desire and your salvation are most thoroughly at one. Of His
good-will to have you into heaven, He has given the strongest pledge and
demonstration, by consecrating, with His own blood, a way of access, through
which sinners may draw nigh. And now that, as our forerunner, He is already
there - now that He has gone up again to the place from which He arose - now
that, to the very place which He left to die, and that, that the barrier to its
entrance from our world may be moved away, He has ascended alive and in glory,
without another death to endure, for death has no nmore the dominion over Him -
will ever He do any thing to close that entrance which it has cost Him so much
to open? Will He thus throw away the toil and the travail of His own soul, and
reduce to impotency that apparatus of reconciliation which He Himself has
reared, and at an expense too, equal to the penance of many millions through
eternity? What He died to begin, will He not now live to carry forward; and
will not the love which could force a way through the grave to its
accomplishments -now that it has reached the summit of triumph and of elevation
which He at present occupies, burst forth and around the field of that mighty
enterprise, which was begun in deepest suffering, and will end in full and
finished glory?
This is a good argument in all the stages of a man's
Christianity. Whether he has found, or is only seeking - whether he be in a
state of faith, or in a state of enquiry - whether a believer, like Paul and
many of the disciples that he was addressing, or an earnest and convinced
sinner groping the way of deliverance, and labouring to be at rest - There may
be made to emanate from the present circumstances of our Saviour, and the
position that He now occupies, an argument either to perpetuate the confidence
where it is, or to inspire it where it is not. If when an enemy I was
reconciled, and that too by His death - if He laid down His life to remove an
obstacle in the way of my salvation, how much more, now that He has taken it
up, will He not accomplish that salvation. It is just fulfilling His own
desire. It is just prospering forward the very cause that His heart is set
upon. It is just following out the faculties which He Himself has opened; and
marching onward in glorious procession, to the consummation of those triumphs
for which He had to struggle His way through a season of difficulties that are
now over. It is thus that the believer reasons himself into a steadier
assurance than before; and peace may be made to flow through his heart like a
mighty river; and, resting on the foundation of Christ, he comes to feel
himself in a sure and wealthy place; and the good- will of the Saviour rises
into an undoubted axiom - so as to chase away all his distrust, and cause him
to delight himself greatly in the riches of his present grace, and in the
brightening certainty of his coming salvation.
And this view of the
matter is not only fitted to heighten the confidence that is already formed -
but also to originate the confidence that needs to be inspired. It places the
herald of salvation on a secure and lofty vantage-ground, it seals and
authenticates the offer with which he is entrusted; and with which he may go
round among the guiltiest of this world's population. It enables him to say,
that for guilt even in the season of its most proud and unrepentant defiance,
did Christ give Himself up unto the death; and that to guilt even in this state
of hardihood, Christ in prosecution of His own work has commissioned him to go
with the overtures of purchased mercy - and should the guilt which has stood
its ground against the threatenings of power, feel softened and arrested by
pity's preventing call, may the preacher of forgiveness affirm, in His Master's
name, that He, who for the chief of sinners bowed Himself down unto the
sacrifice, will not now, that He has arisen a Prince and a Saviour, stamp a
nullity upon that contest, the triumph of which is awaiting Him; but the
bitterness of which has passed away. He will not turn with indifference and
distaste from that very fruit which He Himself has fought for. But if for guilt
in its full impenitency, He dyed His gar ments, and waded through the arena of
contest and of blood - then should the nmost abandoned of her children begin a
contrite movement towards Him, it is not He who will either break the prop for
which He feels, or quench his infant aspiration. He will look to him as the
travail of His own soul, and in him He will be satisfied.
We know not
what the measure of the sinfulness is of any who now hears us. But we know,
that however foul his depravity, and however deep the crimson dye of his
manifold iniquities may be, the measure of the gospel warrant reaches even unto
him. It was to make an inroad on the territory of Satan, and reclaim from it a
kingdom unto Himself, that Christ died, and we speak to the farthest off in
guilt and alienation amongst you - take the overture of peace that is now
brought to your door, and you will add to that kingdom which He came to
establish, and take away from that kingdom which He came to destroy.
The
freeness of this gospel has the honour of Him who liveth and was dead for its
guarantee. The security of the sinner and the glory of the Saviour are at one.
And, with the spirit of a monarch who had to fight his way to the dominion
which was rightfully his own, will He hail the returning allegiance of every
rebel, as a new accession to His triumphs, as another trophy to the might and
the glory of His great undertaking.
But, amid all this latitude of call
and of invitation, let me press upon you that alternative character of the
gospel, to which we have often adverted. We have tried to make knoxvn to you,
how its encouragements rise the one above the other to him who moves towards
it. But it has its corresponding terrors and severities, which also rise the
one above the other to him who moves away from it. If the transgressor will not
be recalled by the invitation which we have now made known to him, he will be
rivetted thereby into deeper and more hopeless condemnation. If the offer of
peace be not entertained by him; then, in the very proportion of its largeness
and generosity, will the provocation be of his insulting treatment in having
rejected it. Out of the mouth of the Son of man there cometh a two-edged sword.
There is pardon free as the light of heaven to all who will. There is wrath,
accumulated and irretrievable wrath, to all who will not. " Kiss the Son,
therefore, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is
kindled but a little: blessed only are they who put their trust in him."
It
is the most delusive of all calculations to put off the acceptance of the
gospel, because of its freeness; and because it is free at all times; and
because the present you think may be the time of your unconcern and liberty,
and some distant future be the time of your return through that door which will
still be open for you. The door of Christ's mediatorship is ever open, till
death put its unchangeable seal upon your eternity. But the door of your own
heart, if you are not receiving Him, is shut at this moment; and every day is
it fixing and fastening more closely; and long ere death summon you away, may
it at length settle immovably upon its hinges; and the voice of him who
standeth without and knocketh, may be unheard by the spiritual ear; and,
therefore, you are not made to feel too much, though you feel as earnestly as
if now or never was the alternative on which you were suspended. It is not
enough, that the word of God, compared to a hammer, be weighty and powerful.
The material on which it works must be capable of an impression.
It is
not enough, that there be a free and forcible application. There must be a
willing subject. You are unwilling now, and therefore it is that conversion
does not follow. To-morrow, the probability is, that you will be still more
unwilling - and therefore, though the application be the same, the conversion
is still at a greater distance away from you. And thus, while the application
continues the same, the subject hardens; and a good result is ever becoming
more and more unlikely; and thus may it go on till you arrive, upon the bed of
your last sickness, at the confines of eternity; and what, we would ask, is the
kind of willingness that comes upon you then Willing to escape the pain of hell
- this you are now, but yet not willing to be a Christian. Willing that the
fire and your bodily sensations be kept at a distance from each other - this
you are now, for who of you at present would thrust his hand among the flamesl
Willing that the frame of your animal sensibilities shall meet with nothing to
wound or to torture it - thiis is willingness of which the lower animals,
incapable of religion, are yet as capable as yourself. You will be as willing
then for deliverance from material torments as you can be now; but there is a
willingness which you want now, and which, in all likelihood will then be still
more beyond the reach of your attainment. If the free gospel do not meet with
your willingness now to accept and to submit to it, neither may it then. And we
know not, my brethren, what has been your experience in death-beds; but sure we
are, that both among the agonies of mortal disease, and the terrors of the
malefactors cell, Christ may be offered, and the offer be sadly and sullenly
put away. The free proclamation is heard without one accompanying charm; and
the man who refused to lay hold of it through life, finds that, in the
impotency of his expiring grasp, he cannot apprehend it. And oh, if you but
knew how often the word of faith may fall from the minister, and the work of
faith be left undone upon the dying man - never would you so postpone the
purposes of seriousness, or look forward to the last week of your abode upon
earth as to the convenient season for winding up the concerns of a neglected
eternity.
If you look attentively to the text, you will find, that there is
something more than a shade of difference between being reconciled and being
saved. Reconciliation is spoken of as an event that has already happened -
salvation as an event that is to come. The one event may lead to the other; but
there is a real distinction between them. It is true, that the salvation
instanced in the preceding verse, is salvation from wrath. But it is the wrath
which is incurred by those who have sinned wilfully, after they had come to the
knowledge of the truth - " when there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but
a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall
devour the adversaries."
Jesus Christ will save us from this by saving
us from sin. He who hath reconciled us by His death, will, by His life,
accomplish for us this salvation. Reconciliation is not salvation - it is only
the portal to it. Justification is not the end of Christ's coming - it is only
the means to an ultimate attainment. By His death He pacified the Lawgiver. By
His life He purifies the sinner. The one work is finished. The other is not so,
but is only going on unto perfection. And this is the secret of that
unwillingness which we have already touched upon. There is a willingness that
God would lift off from their persons the hand of an avenger. But there is not
a willingness that Christ would lay upon their persons the hand of a
sanctifier. The motive for Him to apprehend them is to make them holy. But they
care not to apprehend that for which they are apprehended. They see not that
the use of the new dispensation, is for them to be restored to the image they
have lost, and, for this purpose to be purged from their old sins. This is the
point on which they are in darkness; "and they love the darkness rather than
the light, because their deeds are evil." They are at all times willing for the
reward without the service but they are not willing for the reward and the
service together. The willingness for the one they always have. But the
willingness for both they never have. They have it not to-day; and it is not
the operation of time that will put it in them to-morrow. Nor will disease put
it in. Nor will age put it in. Nor will the tokens of death put it in. Nor will
the near and terrific view of eternity put it in. It may call out into a
livelier sensation than before a willingness for the reward. But it will
neither inspire a taste nor a willingness for the service. A distaste for God
and godliness, as it was the reigning and paramount principle of his life, so
it may be the reigning and paramount principle of his death-bed. As it
envenomed every breath which he drew, so it may envenom his last - and the
spirit going forth to the God who gave it, with all the enmity that it ever
had, God will deal with it as an enemy.
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