Sequel to the Story of my Conversion.
THOUGH I was truly converted, and saw clearly that I had nothing to do to save myself, yet I had not settled peace. My experience for some time after I professed conversion was very changeable. This I have no doubt arose from two causes. I expected to find in myself perfect love to the Lord, and perfect personal purity. Great was my disappointment when I found neither. The question arose, filling my heart with deepest anxiety, Was I after all deceiving myself? Was all that I had experienced at my supposed conversion a delusion? Was I after all only a hypocrite?
I sought, as best I could, to bring about a better state of things, but was greatly perplexed to find that the more I tried to produce love to the Lord in my own heart, the more I failed to find it there; and the more I tried to keep down evil desires, the more they seemed to trouble me.
Thus I found out my own helplessness, and learned in some measure the utter badness of the flesh in me. The evil I discovered in myself, and which I was so powerless to remove, was far worse than I knew it to be. I found that “when I would do good, evil was present with me.”
At this juncture, when I had almost given up in despair, a well-known book was put into my hands, entitled “Grace and Truth.” I read it with great delight, for it seemed to be the very book to meet my need.
I had never known or even heard before this of the difference between “sin in the flesh, and sin on the conscience.” One night when downcast and heartbroken, I went to my bedroom and read a chapter from this book. The writer plainly illustrated the difference between these two things by the three crosses on Calvary’s hill.
He showed that the two dying malefactors represented two different classes of people. What made the difference between them? Simply this: the unbelieving, impenitent thief had not only sin in him, but sins upon him also, for his whole life of guilt was resting upon him at that moment. The penitent, believing thief had no sins upon him, though he had still sin in him.
But why had the believing thief no sins upon him?
The result was, I saw that all my sins, past, present, and future, as people speak (though all were present to Christ when He suffered for ‘them, and future as far as my actual history was concerned), were laid on Jesus, and that therefore they could not be resting on me. I saw also that, though I had sin in me, and always would have until death ended my history, or the Lord from heaven came to change my body into a body of glory like His own glorious body, my sins could never again be righteously reckoned against me.
The death of Jesus had put them all away from before God, and the knowledge of this through the Scriptures brought home in power to me, cleared me completely and forever of them.
Accepting this, peace came into my soul like a river. I was filled with joy and peace in believing. “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” This ought to be the happy portion of all God’s children, and will be if the truth of the gospel is seen and believed in simplicity.
I can truly say that from that moment I never doubted, but have always been confident of my eternal security. How could I doubt when I saw that Christ’s one offering had settled the whole question of my sins to God’s eternal satisfaction? “For by one offering He hath perfected forever (as regards the conscience) them that are sanctified.” “And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” Precious statements, these! How assuring to the troubled, tempest-tossed soul!
The Holy Spirit had come to dwell within me to shed abroad the love of God in my heart — that is, to make me conscious of God’s love to me, not my love to Him. The knowledge of that love casts out all tormenting fear, and sets the soul at perfect rest before Him.
Instead of now looking into myself for perfect love, I saw that God’s love was perfect and unchanging toward me, and that this love was not because of anything He found in me, but because of what He is in His own nature. “God is love.”
He loved me in spite of all my badness, and apart from any fancied goodness in myself. Though I have since then — nearly thirty years ago — learned myself to be worse than I could ever have conceived myself to be, still His love is the same. I have changed and failed, but His love has never changed, nor once failed me; I saw that the spring and power of my love to him was the knowledge of His love to me. “We love him because he first loved us.”
I saw also that though sin was still in me, it was not reckoned to me; that it had been judged and condemned in Christ’s cross and put away from God’s sight; that He never makes sin chargeable to those who believe. I saw also that I was no longer regarded as being in Adam but “in Christ,” where there is “no condemnation.” “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:11There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1)).
It is now the believer’s privilege to count himself to have died to sin and to be alive unto God in Jesus Christ our Lord. We are not to suppose by all this that God makes little of sin that may come out in the life of His children. Far from it. If we go on in the practice of sin and do not judge ourselves, He may come in with chastening for us. If we do judge ourselves and make confession to Him, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Besides, if we fall into sin, which we may do if not watchful and prayerful, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He takes up our cause in heaven in face of our accuser the devil. He also makes us conscious of the sin committed, and thus works repentance in us. How good and truly gracious He is! Not gracious to our sin, but gracious to us in working so as to deliver us from it, and restore our souls to the happiness we may have lost through it.
How truly blessed it is to look away from self, and all that pertains to it, and to have the eye of faith fixed on Christ, who made our peace on the cross by settling every question that could be raised against us, and who is now our peace at God’s right hand. “He is our peace.” He is everything to God. God has found all His delight in Him, and works in us to make us do the same. He has made Him unto us “wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption.” “Ye are complete in Him.” And if so, nothing more is needed but to rest in Him.
P. W.