Reply to a Letter.
WITH pleasure I will (D.V.) try to answer your letter, but fear the attempt will prove very incomplete.
You say, “I cling to the world and cannot help it.” Well, dear friend, if it is worth clinging to, and the present state of things is going to last, by all means continue to cling as tenaciously as you can—that is, if some particular provision has been made in your case whereby you can positively ensure that the things of this world you love will really last, and making you equally sure that you too will last to enjoy them, then go on; by all means go on, and in your heart say—
The world I love; to it I’ll cling,
I’ll chat, and laugh, and dance, and sing;
The world eclipses everything.
At the same time, dear friend, I would seriously draw your attention to the man spoken of in the twelfth of Luke, a very good, industrious farmer, intelligent and far-seeing. In fact, he appeared excellent in all his ways save one. But that one way was a fatal way, for he shut God out of his calculations to the loss of his never-dying soul. It is true he meant to have a “merry” time when his arrangements were completed, but before his merriment even began, the God he had shut out and would have nothing to say to, came unbidden upon the scene and had His say. He will not be shut out; He will always have the last word.
Your letter, from its honesty, gives me much encouragement. You say, “Mine is not a true heart-service.” Now, that is quite correct. But, then, you will never be saved on account of any “true heart-service of yours,” but through the true heart-service of Christ which He rendered to God for the blessing of man, namely, His perfect work on Calvary, where He shed His life’s blood so that we might be saved. You and I are the ones who have sinned. God is The One we have sinned against. Jesus Christ—blessed be His Holy Name! —did there a perfect work, which perfectly satisfied the Holy God we have sinned against. Therefore, what has satisfied Him surely should be enough to satisfy us. Praise Him! I am myself thus satisfied. I am able to say—
“Satisfied with Thee, Lord Jesus, I am blest,
Peace which passeth understanding on Thy breast,
No more doubting, no more trembling—oh, what rest!”
With regard to your question, “Can God so fill our lives that we desire nothing else?” this is an utter impossibility until we are “born again” and KNOW that our sins are all forgiven. It is then not only possible for our hearts to be so filled by Him that we want “nothing more,” but that is our normal condition, and I much fear we are not always in our normal state.
I quite agree with you that “duty” is a “cold” word, and we may be certain of this, that those Christians who live nearest to the Lord do not thus live from a sense of duty, but are constrained by LOVE to do so. “We love Him because He first loved us.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear.” “God is love” (1 John 4). “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)). If, therefore, you will only allow your heart, at this moment, just as you are, to bow to His love and accept what He says about the Person and work of His Beloved Son, you will be one of the “whosoevers” who believe on Him to salvation and life everlasting. True happiness will then begin, and the result be as you say—a desire to “give pleasure to others.” But surely that which suits our Lord must stand first— His interests must be paramount. And as “the King’s business requireth haste,” we must “preach the Word, be instant in season, out of season,” and in this way seek to be used for His Glory in the salvation of souls.
If you notice, in the fifth of Mark there are three classes who prayed. Two of these prayers were answered, and one not.
“The devils besought Him, saying, Send us into the swine.” “Forthwith Jesus gave them leave.”
The Gadarenes, after hearing about the wonderful work of the Blessed Lord, and after having seen the man out of whom He had cast a legion of devils, “clothed, and in his right mind,” “They began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.” That was an extremely fatal prayer, and seems to have been answered at once, for we read, Jesus passed over by ship unto the other side. And yet there are sinners of the Gadara type to be found in the present day. When God in His great love and grace is ready to work in their hearts and consciences by His Blessed Spirit, Satan comes upon the scene and presents something of this poor fleeting world to captivate the heart, and his poor deluded dupes put off “just for a little while” the day of salvation, as Satan tells them. “Go Thy way this time, is their cry, and when I have a convenient season I will call for Thee.” But very often, as it was in the case of Felix (Acts 23:25-2725And he wrote a letter after this manner: 26Claudius Lysias unto the most excellent governor Felix sendeth greeting. 27This man was taken of the Jews, and should have been killed of them: then came I with an army, and rescued him, having understood that he was a Roman. (Acts 23:25‑27)), that “convenient season,” NEVER comes. Immortal souls are eternally lost, and what do they get in exchange for their souls? Just a myth! a shadow! a bauble! a plaything! Poor exchange indeed! The devil certainly gets the best of that bargain.
But to return to the man who had been possessed with a legion of devils. He was now, as a young convert put it the other day, “Under new management,” “Therefore he prayed that he might be with Him.” But the Blessed Lord, under Whose management he now was, “suffered him not.” And why did not the loving Jesus suffer him to be with Him? Simply because He was about to heap such dignity upon his head that the highest angel in heaven would be exceedingly rejoiced to get. “Go,” said He, “go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.”
How delighted his friends must have been when he got home to receive the one who had been as one really dead to them. “Night and day he had been in the mountains and in the tombs crying and cutting himself with stones.” How truly pleased must he have been to go on the little errand his Lord had sent him, and to take the message He had given him. But not only to them did he go, for we read “that he departed and began to publish in Decapolis” (and that means “ten cities”) “how great things Jesus had done for him. And all men did marvel.” Of course they did! They had much to marvel about, for they had never before seen it in this fashion.
The man began to publish the great things the Lord had done for him, but we are not told when he left off. Ten cities was a pretty good sized area to start with. And as he thus began to publish the great things Jesus had done for him, it is to be fervently hoped he so continued until his time came to be put inside one of the tombs he used to wail and wander amongst.
May God grant that none of His servants of the present day who have begun to publish the blessed news of their Saviour’s love to ruined man will leave off telling such a sweet story this side their grave, or the coming of the Lord, I sincerely hope and pray that before you put this letter aside you will accept Jesus as your Saviour, and thus come under “new management” for the rest of your life, happy for time and for eternity. C. P. W. N.
“After many days.”—A letter you wrote to me when I was very young has never been forgotten by me, and the words you used have spread far and wide, and as they pointed out to me what salvation means, and what justification by faith in Christ brings to poor sinners, I have to thank God again and again for the sound teaching I got as a child—(and here let me encourage you in preaching the Gospel—that children DO listen and remember); and although isolated at times, I have been kept simply “looking to Jesus,” who has been to me the “All-sufficient.” —Extract from a letter.