Insensibility
March 15th 2008 13:07
Insensibility - How to tell if you are a sinner or not.
In the early nineteen forties and fifties and sixties, there came many a good movie on the topic of insensibility, and in one movie came a cry from a member in the audience at a movie theatre - Is there a doctor in the house, for there is a lady who has fallen and is knocked out here and she is insensible to every thing around her.
And in the poems by Wilfred Owen he writes –
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers,
But they are troops who fade, not flowers
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling
Losses who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.
But the story is not yet over, for insensibility drives from us, the ability to recognise the very thing that pervades us all. Gather around ye, one and all and here this gospel message about the full nature of the insensibility that controls us to this very day. How then can you say, that you do not feel yourself to be a sinner; that you are not anxious enough; that you are not penitent enough. Be it so.
Let me, however, ask you such biblical questions as the following: -
1. Does your want of feeling alter the gospel? Does it make the good news less free, less blessed, less suitable? Is it not glad tidings of God's love to the unworthy, the unlovable, the insensible? Your not feeling your burdens does not affect the nature of the gospel, nor change the gracious character of Him from whom it comes. It suits you as you are, and you suit it exactly. It comes up to you on the spot, and says, Here is a whole Christ for you, - a Christ containing everything you need. Your acquisition of feeling would not qualify you for it, nor bring it nearer, nor buy its blessings, nor make you more welcome, nor persuade God to do anything for you that he is not at this moment most willing to do.
2. Is your want of feeling and excuse for your unbelief? Faith does not spring out of feeling, but feeling out of faith. The less you feel the more you should trust. You cannot feel aright till you have believed. As all true repentance has its root in faith, so all true feeling has the same. It is vain for you to attempt to reverse God's order of things.
3. Is your want of feeling a reason for your staying away from Christ? A sense of want should lead you to Christ, and not keep you away. "More are drawn to Christ," says old Thomas Shepherd, "under a sense of a dead, blind heart, than by all sorrows, humiliations, and terrors." The less of feeling or conviction that you have, you are the more needy; and is that a reason for keeping aloof from him? Instead of being less fit for coming, you are more fit. As in the biblical example of the blind man Bartimeus - The blindness of Bartimeus was his reason for coming to Christ, not for staying away (how ever, if you have more blindness and deadness than others, you have so many more reasons for coming, so many fewer for standing afar off). If the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint, you should feel yourself the more shut up to the necessity of coming, - and that immediately. And the Christian who speaks out about this to you, is worthy of being called a true friend, for whatever others may do who have convictions, you who have none dare not stay away, nor even wait an hour. You must come!
4. Will your want of feeling make you less welcome to Christ? How is this? What makes you think so? Has he said so, or did he act, when on earth, as if this were his rule of procedure/ Had the woman of Sychar any feeling when he spoke to her so lovingly?
Was it the amount of conviction in Zaccheus (the Tax Jewish Collector), that made the Lord address him so graciously, "Make haste, for today I must abide at thy house?" For it can be pointed out to you that - The balm of Gilead will not be the less suitable for you, nor the physician there the less affectionate and cordial, because, in addition to other diseases, you are afflicted with the benumbing palsy. Your greater need only gives him an opportunity of showing the extent of his fullness, as well as the riches of his grace. Better I think it would be, if you would come to him (Jesus), then, just because you do not feel. For He said this, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." For whatever you may feel, or may not feel, it is still a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that the Christ of this world, Jesus came into the world to save sinners (Yeah mate, that’s you and me too). Do not limit the grace of God, nor suspect the love of Christ. Confidence in that grace and love will do everything for you; want of confidence, nothing. Christ wants you to come; not to wait, nor to stay away.
5. Will your remaining away from Christ remove your want of feeling? No. It will only make it worse; for it is a disease which he only can remove. And I would add, what better physician could you possibly need than He? So that a double necessity is laid upon you for going to Him. As mankind would have it, others who feel more than you may linger. You cannot afford to do so. You must go immediately to Him who is exalted "a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and the forgiveness of sins." There is no escape route that we can take to out run this dilemma, and seeing that distance and distrust will do nothing for you, then now is the time to try what drawing near and confidence will do. Jesus can easily say to the now Apostle Paul and to each of us, “To you, though the chief of sinners, the message is, Let us draw near." The why and how of it is so simple, that we almost always miss it, for, God commands you to come, without any further delay or preparation; to bring with you your sins, your unbelief, your insensibility, your heart, your will, your whole man, and to put them into Christ's hands. God demands your immediate confidence and instant surrender to Christ. "Kiss the Son," is his message. It is therefore His word that insists on your return, - "Return unto the Lord thy God." It shows you that the real cause of the continuance of this distance is your unwillingness to let His Christ save you in his own way, - and a desire to have the credit of removing your insensibility by your own prayers and tears.
6. Is not your insensibility one of your worst sins? A hard-hearted child is one of the most hateful of beings. You may pity and excuse many things, but not hard-heartedness. "Thou art the man." Thou art the hard-hearted child! Cease then to pity yourself, and cease learning only to condemn. Give this sin no quarter. Treat it not as a misfortune, but as unmingled guiltiness. Many a scientist and you yourself, may call it a disease; but remember that it is an inexcusable sin. It is one great all pervading sin added to your innumerable others (Um, I have been told that before). This should shut you up to Christ. If as I say that as an incurable leper you must go to him for cure. And as a desperate criminal, you must go to him for pardon. Do not, I dreadfully beseech you, add to this awful sin; for yet the more damning sin of refusing to acknowledge Christ as the healer of all diseases, and the forgiver of all iniquities. Try to remember then, that Repentance is only to be got from Christ. Our blindness tries to keep us away from this truth; Why then should you make the want of it a reason for staying away from him? Go to Him for it. He is exalted to give it. I know many a father would do their level best to teach their children to own up to a mistake they have made and be willing to make thew proper amends for that mistake: So, if you speak of waiting, you only show that you are not sincere in your desire to have it. Normally no man nor woman in such circumstances would think of waiting.
Your conviction of sin is to come, not by waiting, but by looking; therefore, the best thing for any of us to do, and you, is in the looking to Him whom your sins have (or may well be) crucified, and whom, by your distrust and unbelief, you are crucifying afresh. It is written in the Bible that when a Christian talks of how Jesus has saved him or her, Jesus confirms this by saying "They shall look on me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn?" So, beware of fancying that convictions are to save you, or that they are to be desired for their own sakes. Thus writes an old minister, "I was put out of conceit with legal terrors; for I thought they were good, and only esteemed them happy that were under them; they came, but I found they did me ill; and unless the Lord had guided me thus, I think I should have died doting after them." And another says, "Sense of a dead, hard heart is an effectual means to draw to Christ; yea, more effectual than any other can be, because it is the poor, the blind, the naked, the miserable, that are invited." As to what is called a "law-work," preparatory to faith in Christ, let us consult the Acts of the Apostles. There we have the preaching of the apostolic gospel and the fruits of it, in the conversion of thousands. We have several inspired sermons, addressed both to Jew and Gentile; but into none of these is the law introduced.
In the books of Luke and John, we see that, That which pricked the hearts of the thousands at Pentecost was a simple narrative of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, concluding with these awful words, which must have sounded like the trumpet of doom to those who heard them, "Therefore let all the house of Israel know, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." Many a biblical narrative can well describe the torment of ones soul when being faced with this dilemma in that these were words more terrible than law; more overwhelming than Sinai heard. Awful as it would have been to be told, "Ye have broken the whole law of God;" what was this to being told, "Ye have crucified his Son?" The sin of crucifying the Lord of glory was greater than that of breaking a thousand laws. And yet in that very deed of consummate wickedness was contained the gospel of the grace of God.
That which pronounced the sinner's condemnation, declared also his deliverance. There was life in that death; and the nails which fastened the Son of God to the cross, let out the pent up stream of divine love upon the murderers themselves! And so it went on through of the New Testament passages, in the hope that such words given by God from heaven, by the Holy Ghost, would reach in to the heart of every one that picks up the Bible and reads it, may have their hearts pricked. In life we can make many a mistake and at times land up in front of a judge and jury, and then the Gavel comes down with a sickening thud, and the sentence is delivered to us like a crash of lightning – in you go and prepare for the death sentence, and our hearts fail us at that moment. The gospel was the apostolic hammer for breaking hard hearts in pieces; for producing repentance unto life. It was a believed gospel that melted the obduracy of the self-righteous Jew; and nothing but the good news of God's free love, condemning the sin yet pardoning the sinner, will, in our own day, melt the heart and soften human rock-work into men" - "The Law and as many terrors that can besiege us in our dreams or daily lives, do but harden;" and their power, though wielded by an Elijah, is feeble in comparison with that of a preached cross. "O blessed cross of Christ," as Luther, using an old hymn, used to say, "there is no wood like thine!"
Amazingly, as we look for answers to all of our daily problems, for security, safety, food, shelter, wealth, and work and prosperity and a long and happy life and in there here after, we seem to focus on doing just those things that seem to be right in front of us to do, and not a stich more; but the word repentance signifies in the Greek, "change of mind and heart, and soul" seems to be a mythological word from some dark ages past, how ever this is a lie because this change can occur, by the power and authority of the Holy Spirit produces in connection with the gospel, not the law. So if any one who is truly a Christian Man or woman comes up to you and says "Repent and believe the gospel: does not mean that we can have this repentance by the law, and then believe the gospel; for the reverse is true; but let this good news about the kingdom which I am preaching, lead you to change your views and receive the gospel. In our lives, no matter how old our history is, we are told many lies, by various organisations and institutions, and means, for where we have come from and what our final end will be and so on; now we must look to this very thing called Repentance, for Repentance (which is an action by the Holy ghost upon a persons soul and nature and mind, in order to free it from its own corrupted state), being put before faith here, simply implies, that there must be a turning from what is false in order to the reception of what is true. If I would turn my face to the north, I must turn it from the south; yet I should not think of calling the one of these preparatory to the other. They must, in the nature of things, go together.
Repentance, then, is not, in any sense, a preliminary qualification for faith, - least of all in the sense of sorrow for sin. "It must be reckoned a settled point," says Calvin, "that repentance not only immediately follows upon faith, but springs out of it...They who think that repentance goes before faith, instead of flowing from or being produced by it, as fruit from a tree, have never understood its nature. And Dr. Colquahoun remarks, "Justifying and saving faith is the mean of true repentance; and this repentance is not the mean but the end of that faith."
Insensibility dictates to us, a certain rational that defies the godly logic of the facts of the Bible; That terror of conscience may go before faith, I do not doubt. But such terror is very unlike Biblical repentance; and its tendency is to draw men away from, not to, the cross. Alarms, such as these, are not uncommon among unbelieving men, such as Ahab and Judas. They will be heard with awful distinctness in hell; but they are not repentance. Many of us, and probably all of us, have suffered from the anguish of Sorrow for each sin and for the sin in us, over the period of our lives; for sorrow comes from apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, from the sight of the cross and of the love which the cross reveals. How ever, and even more so it is recorded through out the annuls of mankind’s history, that ,The broken and the contrite heart is the result of our believing the glad tidings of God's free love, in the death and resurrection of his Son. Few things are more dangerous to the anxious soul than the endeavors to get convictions, and terrors, and humiliations, as preliminaries to believing the gospel.
They who would tell a sinner that the reason of his not finding peace is that he is not anxious enough, nor convicted enough, nor humble enough, and that they are still unconverted enemies to the cross of Christ. I find it ever more pleasant these days, to use words of earlier days, and especially from the periods of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeen and eighteen centuries, in order to pass the message on about these things. For those who inculcate (teach and demand) a course of prayer, and humiliation, and self-examination, and dealing with the law, in order to believing in Christ, are teaching what is the very essence of Popery; not the less poisonous and perilous, because refined from Romish grossness, and administered under the name of gospel. Christ asks no preparation of any kind whatsoever, - legal or evangelical, outward, or inward, - in the coming sinner. And he that will not come as he is shall never be received at all. It is not exercised souls, nor penitent believers, nor well humbled seekers, nor earnest users of the means, nor any of the better class of Adam's sons and daughters, but "sinner", that Christ welcomes. He came not to call the righteous (those who are actually righteous at that time, and those who think they are), but sinners to repentance (meaning us, you and them). This man receiveth sinners. Spurious repentance, the produce and expression of unbelief and self-righteousness, may be found previous to faith - just as all manner of evils abound in the soul before it believes. But when faith comes, it comes not as the result of this self-wrought repentance, - but in spite of it; and this so called repentance will be afterwards regarded by the believing soul as one of those self-righteous efforts, whose only tendency was to keep the sinner from the Saviour. They who call on penitent sinners to believe, mistake both repentance and faith; and that which they teach is no glad tidings to the sinner.
To the better class of sinners (if such there be), who have by laborious efforts got themselves sufficiently humbled, it may be glad tidings; but not to those who are without strength, the lost, the ungodly, the hard-hearted, the insensible, the lame, the blind, the halt, the maimed. "It is not sound doctrine," says Dr. Colquhoun, "to teach that Christ will receive none but the true penitent, or that none else is warranted to come by faith to him for salvation. The evil of that doctrine is that it sets needy sinners on spinning repentance, as it were, out of their own bowels, and on bringing it with them to Christ, instead of coming to him by faith to receive it from him. As he goes on to say - If none be invited but the true penitent, then impenitent sinners are not bound to come to Christ; and cannot be blamed for not coming." So the end result can never justify the means; brings with it that realization that we are so readily willing to deceive our selves and each other, in to every form of self pious ness, and false religious beliefs that no real repentance has been granted, for we are still trying to manufacture this in our selves, by the various methods our self will concocts with in us. Hedging our bets, or trying to have a safety net around us of our own production, will never be enough, for faith, requires more than that. It requires the power and influence of the Holy Ghost to be sent in to us, which confirms to us, that we are now made willing and able to come to the Lord Jesus for to receive hi repentance. And that the very acts of repentance are the actual workings of the Holy Ghost in a believer, where by, the believer can go about righting wrongs, bringing restitution for any damages and harms done in the past, and the humbling of our spirit (heart and soul, and nature), is what brings the depths of God’s peace and quietness and serenity and rest to our other wise bereft souls.
The End.
In the early nineteen forties and fifties and sixties, there came many a good movie on the topic of insensibility, and in one movie came a cry from a member in the audience at a movie theatre - Is there a doctor in the house, for there is a lady who has fallen and is knocked out here and she is insensible to every thing around her.
And in the poems by Wilfred Owen he writes –
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers,
But they are troops who fade, not flowers
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling
Losses who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.
But the story is not yet over, for insensibility drives from us, the ability to recognise the very thing that pervades us all. Gather around ye, one and all and here this gospel message about the full nature of the insensibility that controls us to this very day. How then can you say, that you do not feel yourself to be a sinner; that you are not anxious enough; that you are not penitent enough. Be it so.
Let me, however, ask you such biblical questions as the following: -
1. Does your want of feeling alter the gospel? Does it make the good news less free, less blessed, less suitable? Is it not glad tidings of God's love to the unworthy, the unlovable, the insensible? Your not feeling your burdens does not affect the nature of the gospel, nor change the gracious character of Him from whom it comes. It suits you as you are, and you suit it exactly. It comes up to you on the spot, and says, Here is a whole Christ for you, - a Christ containing everything you need. Your acquisition of feeling would not qualify you for it, nor bring it nearer, nor buy its blessings, nor make you more welcome, nor persuade God to do anything for you that he is not at this moment most willing to do.
3. Is your want of feeling a reason for your staying away from Christ? A sense of want should lead you to Christ, and not keep you away. "More are drawn to Christ," says old Thomas Shepherd, "under a sense of a dead, blind heart, than by all sorrows, humiliations, and terrors." The less of feeling or conviction that you have, you are the more needy; and is that a reason for keeping aloof from him? Instead of being less fit for coming, you are more fit. As in the biblical example of the blind man Bartimeus - The blindness of Bartimeus was his reason for coming to Christ, not for staying away (how ever, if you have more blindness and deadness than others, you have so many more reasons for coming, so many fewer for standing afar off). If the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint, you should feel yourself the more shut up to the necessity of coming, - and that immediately. And the Christian who speaks out about this to you, is worthy of being called a true friend, for whatever others may do who have convictions, you who have none dare not stay away, nor even wait an hour. You must come!
4. Will your want of feeling make you less welcome to Christ? How is this? What makes you think so? Has he said so, or did he act, when on earth, as if this were his rule of procedure/ Had the woman of Sychar any feeling when he spoke to her so lovingly?
Was it the amount of conviction in Zaccheus (the Tax Jewish Collector), that made the Lord address him so graciously, "Make haste, for today I must abide at thy house?" For it can be pointed out to you that - The balm of Gilead will not be the less suitable for you, nor the physician there the less affectionate and cordial, because, in addition to other diseases, you are afflicted with the benumbing palsy. Your greater need only gives him an opportunity of showing the extent of his fullness, as well as the riches of his grace. Better I think it would be, if you would come to him (Jesus), then, just because you do not feel. For He said this, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." For whatever you may feel, or may not feel, it is still a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that the Christ of this world, Jesus came into the world to save sinners (Yeah mate, that’s you and me too). Do not limit the grace of God, nor suspect the love of Christ. Confidence in that grace and love will do everything for you; want of confidence, nothing. Christ wants you to come; not to wait, nor to stay away.
5. Will your remaining away from Christ remove your want of feeling? No. It will only make it worse; for it is a disease which he only can remove. And I would add, what better physician could you possibly need than He? So that a double necessity is laid upon you for going to Him. As mankind would have it, others who feel more than you may linger. You cannot afford to do so. You must go immediately to Him who is exalted "a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and the forgiveness of sins." There is no escape route that we can take to out run this dilemma, and seeing that distance and distrust will do nothing for you, then now is the time to try what drawing near and confidence will do. Jesus can easily say to the now Apostle Paul and to each of us, “To you, though the chief of sinners, the message is, Let us draw near." The why and how of it is so simple, that we almost always miss it, for, God commands you to come, without any further delay or preparation; to bring with you your sins, your unbelief, your insensibility, your heart, your will, your whole man, and to put them into Christ's hands. God demands your immediate confidence and instant surrender to Christ. "Kiss the Son," is his message. It is therefore His word that insists on your return, - "Return unto the Lord thy God." It shows you that the real cause of the continuance of this distance is your unwillingness to let His Christ save you in his own way, - and a desire to have the credit of removing your insensibility by your own prayers and tears.
6. Is not your insensibility one of your worst sins? A hard-hearted child is one of the most hateful of beings. You may pity and excuse many things, but not hard-heartedness. "Thou art the man." Thou art the hard-hearted child! Cease then to pity yourself, and cease learning only to condemn. Give this sin no quarter. Treat it not as a misfortune, but as unmingled guiltiness. Many a scientist and you yourself, may call it a disease; but remember that it is an inexcusable sin. It is one great all pervading sin added to your innumerable others (Um, I have been told that before). This should shut you up to Christ. If as I say that as an incurable leper you must go to him for cure. And as a desperate criminal, you must go to him for pardon. Do not, I dreadfully beseech you, add to this awful sin; for yet the more damning sin of refusing to acknowledge Christ as the healer of all diseases, and the forgiver of all iniquities. Try to remember then, that Repentance is only to be got from Christ. Our blindness tries to keep us away from this truth; Why then should you make the want of it a reason for staying away from him? Go to Him for it. He is exalted to give it. I know many a father would do their level best to teach their children to own up to a mistake they have made and be willing to make thew proper amends for that mistake: So, if you speak of waiting, you only show that you are not sincere in your desire to have it. Normally no man nor woman in such circumstances would think of waiting.
Your conviction of sin is to come, not by waiting, but by looking; therefore, the best thing for any of us to do, and you, is in the looking to Him whom your sins have (or may well be) crucified, and whom, by your distrust and unbelief, you are crucifying afresh. It is written in the Bible that when a Christian talks of how Jesus has saved him or her, Jesus confirms this by saying "They shall look on me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn?" So, beware of fancying that convictions are to save you, or that they are to be desired for their own sakes. Thus writes an old minister, "I was put out of conceit with legal terrors; for I thought they were good, and only esteemed them happy that were under them; they came, but I found they did me ill; and unless the Lord had guided me thus, I think I should have died doting after them." And another says, "Sense of a dead, hard heart is an effectual means to draw to Christ; yea, more effectual than any other can be, because it is the poor, the blind, the naked, the miserable, that are invited." As to what is called a "law-work," preparatory to faith in Christ, let us consult the Acts of the Apostles. There we have the preaching of the apostolic gospel and the fruits of it, in the conversion of thousands. We have several inspired sermons, addressed both to Jew and Gentile; but into none of these is the law introduced.
In the books of Luke and John, we see that, That which pricked the hearts of the thousands at Pentecost was a simple narrative of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, concluding with these awful words, which must have sounded like the trumpet of doom to those who heard them, "Therefore let all the house of Israel know, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." Many a biblical narrative can well describe the torment of ones soul when being faced with this dilemma in that these were words more terrible than law; more overwhelming than Sinai heard. Awful as it would have been to be told, "Ye have broken the whole law of God;" what was this to being told, "Ye have crucified his Son?" The sin of crucifying the Lord of glory was greater than that of breaking a thousand laws. And yet in that very deed of consummate wickedness was contained the gospel of the grace of God.
That which pronounced the sinner's condemnation, declared also his deliverance. There was life in that death; and the nails which fastened the Son of God to the cross, let out the pent up stream of divine love upon the murderers themselves! And so it went on through of the New Testament passages, in the hope that such words given by God from heaven, by the Holy Ghost, would reach in to the heart of every one that picks up the Bible and reads it, may have their hearts pricked. In life we can make many a mistake and at times land up in front of a judge and jury, and then the Gavel comes down with a sickening thud, and the sentence is delivered to us like a crash of lightning – in you go and prepare for the death sentence, and our hearts fail us at that moment. The gospel was the apostolic hammer for breaking hard hearts in pieces; for producing repentance unto life. It was a believed gospel that melted the obduracy of the self-righteous Jew; and nothing but the good news of God's free love, condemning the sin yet pardoning the sinner, will, in our own day, melt the heart and soften human rock-work into men" - "The Law and as many terrors that can besiege us in our dreams or daily lives, do but harden;" and their power, though wielded by an Elijah, is feeble in comparison with that of a preached cross. "O blessed cross of Christ," as Luther, using an old hymn, used to say, "there is no wood like thine!"
Amazingly, as we look for answers to all of our daily problems, for security, safety, food, shelter, wealth, and work and prosperity and a long and happy life and in there here after, we seem to focus on doing just those things that seem to be right in front of us to do, and not a stich more; but the word repentance signifies in the Greek, "change of mind and heart, and soul" seems to be a mythological word from some dark ages past, how ever this is a lie because this change can occur, by the power and authority of the Holy Spirit produces in connection with the gospel, not the law. So if any one who is truly a Christian Man or woman comes up to you and says "Repent and believe the gospel: does not mean that we can have this repentance by the law, and then believe the gospel; for the reverse is true; but let this good news about the kingdom which I am preaching, lead you to change your views and receive the gospel. In our lives, no matter how old our history is, we are told many lies, by various organisations and institutions, and means, for where we have come from and what our final end will be and so on; now we must look to this very thing called Repentance, for Repentance (which is an action by the Holy ghost upon a persons soul and nature and mind, in order to free it from its own corrupted state), being put before faith here, simply implies, that there must be a turning from what is false in order to the reception of what is true. If I would turn my face to the north, I must turn it from the south; yet I should not think of calling the one of these preparatory to the other. They must, in the nature of things, go together.
Repentance, then, is not, in any sense, a preliminary qualification for faith, - least of all in the sense of sorrow for sin. "It must be reckoned a settled point," says Calvin, "that repentance not only immediately follows upon faith, but springs out of it...They who think that repentance goes before faith, instead of flowing from or being produced by it, as fruit from a tree, have never understood its nature. And Dr. Colquahoun remarks, "Justifying and saving faith is the mean of true repentance; and this repentance is not the mean but the end of that faith."
Insensibility dictates to us, a certain rational that defies the godly logic of the facts of the Bible; That terror of conscience may go before faith, I do not doubt. But such terror is very unlike Biblical repentance; and its tendency is to draw men away from, not to, the cross. Alarms, such as these, are not uncommon among unbelieving men, such as Ahab and Judas. They will be heard with awful distinctness in hell; but they are not repentance. Many of us, and probably all of us, have suffered from the anguish of Sorrow for each sin and for the sin in us, over the period of our lives; for sorrow comes from apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, from the sight of the cross and of the love which the cross reveals. How ever, and even more so it is recorded through out the annuls of mankind’s history, that ,The broken and the contrite heart is the result of our believing the glad tidings of God's free love, in the death and resurrection of his Son. Few things are more dangerous to the anxious soul than the endeavors to get convictions, and terrors, and humiliations, as preliminaries to believing the gospel.
They who would tell a sinner that the reason of his not finding peace is that he is not anxious enough, nor convicted enough, nor humble enough, and that they are still unconverted enemies to the cross of Christ. I find it ever more pleasant these days, to use words of earlier days, and especially from the periods of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeen and eighteen centuries, in order to pass the message on about these things. For those who inculcate (teach and demand) a course of prayer, and humiliation, and self-examination, and dealing with the law, in order to believing in Christ, are teaching what is the very essence of Popery; not the less poisonous and perilous, because refined from Romish grossness, and administered under the name of gospel. Christ asks no preparation of any kind whatsoever, - legal or evangelical, outward, or inward, - in the coming sinner. And he that will not come as he is shall never be received at all. It is not exercised souls, nor penitent believers, nor well humbled seekers, nor earnest users of the means, nor any of the better class of Adam's sons and daughters, but "sinner", that Christ welcomes. He came not to call the righteous (those who are actually righteous at that time, and those who think they are), but sinners to repentance (meaning us, you and them). This man receiveth sinners. Spurious repentance, the produce and expression of unbelief and self-righteousness, may be found previous to faith - just as all manner of evils abound in the soul before it believes. But when faith comes, it comes not as the result of this self-wrought repentance, - but in spite of it; and this so called repentance will be afterwards regarded by the believing soul as one of those self-righteous efforts, whose only tendency was to keep the sinner from the Saviour. They who call on penitent sinners to believe, mistake both repentance and faith; and that which they teach is no glad tidings to the sinner.
To the better class of sinners (if such there be), who have by laborious efforts got themselves sufficiently humbled, it may be glad tidings; but not to those who are without strength, the lost, the ungodly, the hard-hearted, the insensible, the lame, the blind, the halt, the maimed. "It is not sound doctrine," says Dr. Colquhoun, "to teach that Christ will receive none but the true penitent, or that none else is warranted to come by faith to him for salvation. The evil of that doctrine is that it sets needy sinners on spinning repentance, as it were, out of their own bowels, and on bringing it with them to Christ, instead of coming to him by faith to receive it from him. As he goes on to say - If none be invited but the true penitent, then impenitent sinners are not bound to come to Christ; and cannot be blamed for not coming." So the end result can never justify the means; brings with it that realization that we are so readily willing to deceive our selves and each other, in to every form of self pious ness, and false religious beliefs that no real repentance has been granted, for we are still trying to manufacture this in our selves, by the various methods our self will concocts with in us. Hedging our bets, or trying to have a safety net around us of our own production, will never be enough, for faith, requires more than that. It requires the power and influence of the Holy Ghost to be sent in to us, which confirms to us, that we are now made willing and able to come to the Lord Jesus for to receive hi repentance. And that the very acts of repentance are the actual workings of the Holy Ghost in a believer, where by, the believer can go about righting wrongs, bringing restitution for any damages and harms done in the past, and the humbling of our spirit (heart and soul, and nature), is what brings the depths of God’s peace and quietness and serenity and rest to our other wise bereft souls.
The End.
| 76 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
