We hear of nothing in this place but confession for forgiveness of sin; because God is faithful and just. I would commend the faith of the power of confession for bringing the power of God to cleanse from the practice of sin;—sin as embracing everything adverse to the new nature in Christ.
However slow, or by whatever number of stages, we come to the truth that except or besides Christ there is, and can be, nothing accepted in the presence of God, yet is many a sin and a full variety of evil excused, undiscovered, and slumbered over; and this in many who have come to the full knowledge of the ways of God, and have their portion therein. It is, however, a position of peculiar danger to know, and yet to remain stationary; it morally hardens the soul; for it habituates to evil in the light of God. Evil is permitted by habit, and hypocrisy is not far off.
Again, how sad it is that many a soul dear to God is deeply troubled at sin as it rises to the surface. It struggles, resists, and prays, and is uninformed of the provision of God to meet the desires He has implanted there—a thirsting after the image of Christ—blessed be His name forever! Let us suppose peace—unquestionable peace and acceptance in the risen Jesus—being in the light. Now if the Christian keep to the faith of life, and so in the consciousness of it, and of his calling, I doubt not hitherto undetected sin will often be revealed to him, and it is in God that it should be met, and before God; and confession is the way; and in God's presence will the light make it manifest, and abiding in it complete the circle of the image of Christ in the soul of the believer. To abide until we receive what we look for is faith. It will come, and come effectually, even in the power of God. It is here the conflict is to be carried on—here the heart is broken and blessing in new affections received. The previous question will only be—will he that has the conscience of sin consent to pass by his affections that are in the world, and enter there where he is to lose them? Has the Christian been contending with sin without the precincts of the presence of God? Then he has been contending where the enemy has the vantage ground; where habits may be altered, but where affections are never really relinquished; for the heart bargains for the sight, or thought, at least, of what is forbidden; but all must be swept away in the presence and power of God in the new creature. It is contest enough to pass by the affections that detain him, into the presence of God, which he now knows, and knows they are there to be relinquished.
A sense of sin, if we have been awakened, would send us naturally to struggle in ourselves against it, and with calling on the help of God, while we do not discover that it is, in this case, under the law that we do it. How sincerely is this often done! Prayer—vexation with self—shame (but as if from our sense of sin we had a right to be free) possess the souls of such; and the love that God has to them for their mind towards Him, in their thoughts of sin, and the partial success even they may gain, keep them in the path of weakness, and frustrate them of their desires. They must come lower yet. If they really examined their souls, or rather let God examine their souls, they would find that they hay not really such a sense of sin as they suppose. They have a sense of the dishonor of it, but not of the character of it in the light of God; and that is the reason why the taste of judgments alone really alienates them from it. But these they accept, because they are content, at all cost, to be brought nearer to God; increasing with the increase of God. They learn the judgment against sin in the presence of God; and what they learn in communion is what will be revealed.
But the most important of all is the ground on which judgment is given, and to what the evil is in contrast, while he that confesses his fault is shielded from the burning rays of God's glory by God's love in Christ. That ground is that the believer, by grace attracted by that love, has received Christ; Christ has become his life, whether in capacity of object, which God now is; or in actual condition, developed or undeveloped.
So little is commonly known of the calling of a child of God, or of the Church, Christ's body, in heavenly places, and of the grace the member of Christ receives in confession of Christ, and as witness in the kingdom into which he has been called, yet walking here below where Christ, as Lord, is nowhere acknowledged, that conscience is continually at fault for any resolution of its difficulties. It is often engaged in regulating that from which it should be wholly separate and free. Conscience in such a case vacillates, and its guidance is not to be relied on, because it can alone receive firmness by waiting on God; and, (I may say, without being misunderstood,) waiting for God, that having His mind, on however isolated a point, I should be in the way of a more enlarged understanding of His ways. If I had not my place with God in grace, I should be still incapable of coming to any resolution; but having that place, and knowing I have it, but not what it is, I enjoy His safeguard, as well as all that is needful to life and godliness, as part of His gift. I say this independent of any use of the word, for there may be great incapacity to use it, and yet the conscience is not to be neglected. Doubts therefore as to the world and relationships in it, and as to those arising out of it, can be well held, though God's presence be sought. As soon as I know that I am not of the world, but of Christ's kingdom, and chosen in Him, it settles a host of questions; but I have a conscience in Christ which brings many things in doubt, it may be, long before I know that; for His life is the light of men. I have received in Christ the capacity of receiving God, as an object; but Christ known in glory, becomes necessarily the veiled Christ of the world; so known to him that is a stranger here. Whenever I receive this intelligence (the gospel of the glory of Christ) I find my way with much less fear and trembling.
A definite direction to obedience in the confession of Christ's disacknowledged rights, and the fulfillment of all headships, will be found in the word, and as regulated by the Head of the body. Without this, and the faith of what we have in Christ, indwelling in our hearts by faith, (and one may say here, too, without faith it is impossible to please—Him,) all the Christian will present is a moderated world and a moral man. But when I do know Christ in me as the hope of glory, the presence of God is sought for the putting off the old man, and the putting on the new. This brings in quite another order; and the greater obstacle to a conscience, being thus clear in its judgment, is put away. Sin lives in the mind by neglect. The flesh, in very incipient, voluntary action is contrary to the new nature in Christ; and if these have found no home in us, be the occasion what it may, blessed be God. But if they have: the sense of their evil is perfected in the presence of God, and by confession there, yield to His grace. The power also that would regulate what is still to be acted in the flesh is found there, for the presence of God is the place where moral failings, which affect our duties, and their sources, are discovered and remedied. God in Christ is there. The new man in Christ is the eighth day of the cleansing of the leper, and we know the exceeding greatness of the power of God to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set him at His own right hand, &c.
There is a peculiar conjunction, and yet a difference, between the death of' Christ and the blood of Christ, blessed and holy is His name. The spilling of the blood is the death, for the blood is the life. I am not cleansed by the death, though pardoned by His bearing sin and its penalty for me. It is by the blood that has been drawn forth to the death that I am cleansed. My heart is sprinkled from an evil conscience by the application of the Spirit of the blood-shedding unto death—I am washed by the blood. Nor is the dead lamb left without its use. It is the moral power of the cross on the old man. And I observe that the intent is that the dead lamb roast with fire should be wholly eaten, and what remains uneaten be burnt with fire; and in the same way in the sacrifice of the peace offering, the intent is that none should remain till the morning; and if it be a vow or voluntary offering all that is left on the third day shall be burnt with fire.
It is surprising how the slightest matter defiles—unguarded intercourse—the eye—the ear; and what wretchedness to a tender conscience (in the new creature) which has not escaped from under the law and has not its laver in heaven! But where habit has been contracted, before the soul is regenerate, how humbling, how painful, but how cleansing the work of the Lord in confession. How much worse if engendered after!—what labor in watchfulness to be free, and how sad its condition if not laboring under grace and in the presence of God. In whatever remains of the old man one fault hides a deeper, and the mass would terrify, if seen at once. But oh! the blessing of unpalliating confession! God would not have provided Christ had He not been a pure God, or had not the body of sin been to be destroyed. The character of the law carries trespass—the character of grace a new creature in power possessing the soul, becoming its life and movement. Man by it knowing his Father in heaven, and his Master at the right hand of glory; with a conscience formed by the Spirit. Where else than to the presence of God will the Spirit lead us about our soul? It is here, therefore, the soul is to be laid open to God, for Him to tell it of itself, of the judgment of sin, and of the fullness of His grace; here to become acquainted with God; and here to receive the white robe at His hands.