If we have not unlimited confidence in God as our Father, we have not found our place. All our relationships are known, not by the intelligence placing us in them; but in the exercise of affections flowing from the consciousness of being in them. A child addresses his father as such, and why? A servant his master as such, and why? Because they live in those relationships. If our souls have not unlimited confidence in God to go to Him with our very follies, we do not know “the Father.”
A Word to Troubled Souls.
There are many souls passing through the deep exercises which all must learn before solid peace with God is known. For such I write these lines. They find the heart filled with evil thoughts—the conscience laden with sin—all but despairing of forgiveness and peace. Efforts innumerable have been made to throw off such a state; all found to be ineffectual. There is no power to pray: everything a burden. Many are passing through these deep waters. Is it not strange to say to such that it is well that even this is so? It is an indication that life is working in the soul—it is not dead. This is a great mercy; for if there was no new nature there would not be the discovery of the terrible evil within. Sooner or later all must learn this lesson. Some learn it by degrees—some quickly, but when once we discover the terrible and hopeless evil of one’s nature, we are glad to be cast upon the full sovereign grace of God, and then all is peace. The soul may have been going on for years in quiet; floating on in the stream of profession without reality; no exercise of conscience. The conscience (like Job’s) never having been in God’s presence—a change has come; it can’t tell how. God has permitted it to get into these deep waters, to learn, not only that it has sinned, which is easy enough, but “that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing.” It is one thing to know that I have done bad things; but quite another to learn in God’s presence, that in me dwells no good thing; and what is more, there never will! It is when we come to such a strait as this that we find that the total condemnation of a sinner, and the sovereign grace of God go together, and I am free I learn that my acceptance depends—not on what I am to God—but, what God is to me, when I am nothing but badness, and never can be better. I find then that God is perfect love to me when He knows far more of my wretched heart’s corruption even than I do myself—deeply as I have loathed in my soul the workings of an evil heart; and have felt the sin that is too much for me. I then find that the mind of the flesh is not merely carnal, but enmity against God—is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
God’s grace is greater than my sins—greater than the evil nature that did the sins—and He has accepted Christ for all I have done and am. No one could look at Christ dying on the cross and say, He is not enough for my sins:” yet God gave Him to put them away. How wonderful! God has accepted the offering Christ made for sin. No one would dare to say that God has not accepted what Christ has done. So that if it is a question of what you are, as a sinner, you are lost and shut out forever! But if it is a question of what Christ has done; why He has been accepted of God and gone into heaven. If you could simply see this, all is peace with God. Not peace with yourself—conflict plenty, and exercises innumerable; but cloudless peace with God! If you mix up what you find in yourself with what Christ has done, you will never get peace. God has shown His love in giving His Son to die for sinners when He knew well there was no mending them. He knew the worst thought in your heart when He did so. Christ has charged Himself on the cross with what I am and have done, as a sinner; and God has accepted the satisfaction Christ offered to Him. You may (as you do) feel the wretched vileness of your heart very deeply. So much the better. The more deeply I feel my wretchedness the better. But Christ died not for my virtues, supposing I had any, but for my sins-for all I am and had done, and God has accepted Him for me, and I am free!
My acceptance never depends on what I am to God in anywise. He has proved I was nothing but badness, and that I could not be mended. He has shown Himself as nothing but goodness when He knew He could not mend me—that I was incorrigible. You see it was just this with the prodigal when he awaked in the far country. He discovered he was perishing; and his misery was sorrowfully increased when he thought of his good kind father, whose abundance flowed out to the servants in his house, and when he knew he had no right to it. He made his trembling journey of misery and uncertainty—making up by the way what he would tell his father; and how he would try and get in as a servant. He might reason how it would be with him at his journey’s end, before he met his father; but when he met him all uncertainty and reasoning was over. His acceptance into the house depended upon what his father was; not what he was—he was all rags and filth—a wretched spendthrift who had squandered away his patrimony with harlots and profligacy of every kind. His father ran out and fell on his neck when his rags were on him—not of him.
This is the way you learn what God is to you. What you want to learn is that bad as you are, you will never be better; and moreover that God knows it, and has given His Son to die for the foulest and vilest sinners in love and goodness, when He did know it.
If once you got your eye upon Jesus who is bone up to the right hand of the majesty on high “when he had by himself purged our sins;” and that He looks down in love and tenderness upon every poor contrite trembling soul—no matter how vile they are, provided they are miserable in their vileness (surely you are this), you will find that your peace with God depends upon what Christ has done, and what God is to you, in spite of your sins, so to say. You will never then refer to your own heart to get the evidence of your acceptance. You will find that the more full and complete your acceptance is, because of what Christ has done, the more deep will be the sense of the intolerable character of the nature you carry about with you—for which He was judged. You will then be learning it in the consciousness of that grace which does not impute it to you, because God had imputed it all to His Son when He was made a sacrifice for sin. All then is cloudless peace! Conscience will not be quieted by service, and thoughts, and reasonings. They will not bring peace to your soul. You get peace by giving up all hope in yourself, and being cast over upon what God has done for you, and is for you in Christ; and that in all your vileness. There is no use trying to combat with what you find in your own heart. It would not bring you peace, even supposing you did subdue these workings. The nature they came from is there; and you can’t change your nature. God has condemned it in His Son upon the cross, when He bore the judgment for you. He has ended the whole thing there and then in His own sight; and He seeks to lead you into the same thoughts as His own about it. Faith is simply the taking God’s thoughts for your own. His are right your’s are wrong. You will deceive yourself—He never will. Faith accepts His thoughts. He desires that your conscience should be purged, so that knowing all the evil of your heart, as He knows it, you may stand in the light of His presence, and boldly too, purged and cleansed by Christ. You hate it—so does He; He gave His Son in love, to purge away the thing He hated. Thank God, you say, He has purged it away. Instead of condemning me, as I know I deserved, He has cleansed me so perfectly that I can stand in His presence happily, as fit to be there.
The life, or new nature, by which you have discovered your vileness, is thus set free to delight itself in God. The will and affections of the old man will never turn to God. The new man ever will. As long as you are not free, it is all, “I-I-I:” because you are referring to your own state the question of acceptance and peace with God. When you are free you will never more mix up the question of acceptance and peace with God with what you are, but while you hate your evil nature, you will know that your acceptance depends on what Christ is, not what you are.
The Lord give you to know true liberty and joy in His presence, for “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Amen.