HOW differently we would preach the gospel had we been ten thousand years in heaven, and were then sent to a world of sin like this to tell the love of God to sinners," said I to one with whom I was returning home from a gospel meeting.
Our thoughts had been carried up to heaven, and to the joy of seeing the blessed face of the Lord Jesus, as the prospect awaiting all His people,— “They shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads.”
Seeing His face, being with, and like Him, in that place of purity and everlasting love, was at that moment our theme of sweet communion, and hence the statement.
“Would you preach about b ell at all?" was the answer.
“Certainly, with more intense earnestness than ever," I replied.
“But would not your heart be so lifted with thoughts of the glory and love of God, that you could not speak of His judgment?”
“Doubtless the experience of a bliss that cannot be described would give greater fullness, depth, unction, and tenderness to my preaching, but that is no gospel—or a terrible perversion of it—that omits God's judgment of sin.”
“Well, but does not love win and having then so much of the spirit of heaven, would you not seek to win souls by love?”
“Assuredly but that is only half of the story. Love affects the heart, and so far so good, but the conscience must first be reached, and the soul thus placed before the holiness of God. In heaven there is not only love, there is light as well, and the gospel that speaks of love only is a false witness of God. For we read that ' God is light,' as well as God is love.'
“Take," I said,” as an illustration of conscience-work, the well-known story of The Woman at Sychar's Well. In His dealings with her, the Lord, in order to awaken an interest in her mind, speaks of the gift of God.' If thou knewest the gift of God,' and what was that? He does not say; for His desire was to occupy her, not so much with the gift as the Giver, —not so much with the activities of God's love, as with the love itself which thus acted. His first subject was the wondrous love of God that led Him to give (not now to demand, as under the law), —to be a giving God!”
Ah, my reader, how unspeakably blessed to know God thus! Have you ever stopped for a moment, on life's busy race-course, and said to yourself, “God loves me?” Perhaps you reply that trials, bereavements, and sorrows all combine to disprove the words. Well, so said Job, after the loss of his earthly all, "He counteth me for his enemy." He could not but think that God must hate him. But Job did not see behind the clouds, nor dream of what depths of blessing God had in store for him; nor do you know what is behind these dark mysterious clouds of Providence. Could you but see, you would discover "a smiling face;" that is, behind all, there is a heart yearning, with deepest solicitude, for your good. The trials, &c., are all needed, and the heart of faith can say through them that “God is love." The favors of His Providence are one thing, the love of His heart is another; and he who serves because of the favors, will become an enemy without them.
But to return; having won the attention of the poor Samaritan woman by this precious revelation of God, and having elicited from her the prayer, "Give me this water," the Lord, in perfect wisdom, raises the conscience-question. "Go, call thy husband," said He; and, further still, He details seriatim the whole of her career, and specially the sin of which, at that very time, she was guilty. Awful disclosure, and wholly unexpected! Yet such is necessary.
Conscience must be reached. It is not enough that the mind be instructed or the heart affected. All that may take place, and the man remain really ignorant of the truth.
Conscience, acquired at the Fall, is the inner tribunal, the court of justice, on which the truth acts. As the light shines upon the seething mass of indwelling sin,—the pride, lust, unbelief, hatred of God, and desperate wickedness of the heart,— the conscience, thus enlightened, owns the guilt, accepts the judgment, and expresses itself in repentance, till the blessedness of pardon through faith in Christ is enjoyed.
This is the effect of light. Love is for the heart, light for the conscience.
Until the conscience has been brought into the light,—until sin has been confessed, in its deep malignity, in the searching presence of a holy God, there is no true conversion at all.
My reader, let me linger on this point. I am intensely desirous that, in this day of much and clear gospel preaching, when the way of salvation is known, theoretically, so much better than formerly, you should understand distinctly, that if there never was, during your whole spiritual history, a moment of face-to-face dealing with God in the matter of your sins,—if you have never passed through a period of conviction because of your personal guilt,—if you have never cried, " God be merciful to me a sinner,"— if, whilst you have listened gladly to such words as " He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life," you did not at the same time feel your deep need of that life,—be sure your profession is merely nominal. I do not, of course, specify what should be the depth of your self-judgment; all I say is, that without true repentance there is no salvation. Therefore, I beseech you, see to it how you stand in the light of this truth.
Now, what was the result in the case of this woman? She said, “Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet;" perception is a work of the conscience, and, in her case, Christ had caused the light to shine. She apprehended something of what He was. How different to her former utterance, “Give me this water," an expression which merely declared her own selfishness!
Now, her eyes are opened,—she perceives. She is, so far, turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.
The fitted moment comes in which Christ reveals. Himself to her; the effect is, that she leaves her water-pot, empty as it is of the water of Jacob's well, and quickly retires to the city, possessed of “a well of living water" within; satisfied evermore to tell of the wonderful Man—the Chief Evangelist— who had shown both her sins and God's salvation to her.
She returns to the place of her infamy,—but under how different a character? You may tell me that Christ did not mention "hell" to her. True; for the simple reason, that the fact of sin's punishment is involved in the truth that exposes it. If I can convict my child of disobedience, his guilty conscience anticipates the just consequences.
It is not, therefore, in the preaching of hell, important as that is, as the place of eternal punishment, both of fallen angels, and of impenitent sinners, that the secret lies, but in leading souls to a true judgment of themselves and their ways, that will, through grace, avert God's otherwise inevitable condemnation.
Christ came from heaven and preached the gospel. How full were His warnings of the future punishment in hell of the sinner!
Nay! the intense purity of heaven would only make me the more clear-sighted as to sin and its punishment.
Reader, "God is light,"—do not trifle with sin; “God is love,"—learn at the Cross how "God commends his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Oh, what a commendation of love! Stand by the Cross and look. That sight won a dying thief, and that day was he found in paradise. What grace for him, and for us, too, who believe! We, too, shall be with Christ in glory, and—
“When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We'll have no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we first begun.”
Reader, will you be there? J. W. S.