"I Suppose It's My Will."

“I SUPPOSE it’s my will,” said a man, as he turned away from one who was presenting the gospel to him, and pressing its acceptance.
He had been telling a little of his history, which, as he said himself, was that of the worst man in the Colony. Convicted of mutiny, he had planned and effected the escape of himself and comrades; being taken, he was sent to the Colonies, only to escape again, but was retaken and sent back to the place from which he had escaped. By subsequent good conduct he had obtained a ticket, which enabled him to carry on a school, and it was in the room where this was conducted he had listened to the gospel.
How patient is God, and how marvelous His dealings with souls! God had waited upon this man, and had evidently exercised him lately concerning the state of his soul. He had been to chapel, but did not hear what seemed to suit his case; had attended meetings with like result, but had now been arrested by some plain statements of truth as to God’s righteousness, from the Epistle to the Romans.
In that book it is declared that Christ’s death has satisfied all the demands of God’s righteousness, and enables Him to act according to all the desires of His heart of love towards the believing sinner who has no righteousness of his own. God has set forth Christ, a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness in the remission of sins, and to declare His justice in justifying him that believeth in Jesus, whatever his past character may have been. And now the resurrection is a proof of the efficacy and acceptance of the work that Christ accomplished, He being raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.
“I never heard it so plainly put,” said he, “nor did I ever before see the righteousness of God in accepting the faith of the believer, and accounting him righteous for it.”
“If then you see God’s way of salvation, why do you not accept it?”
“I suppose it’s my will,” said he, as, grinding his teeth, and turning upon his heel, he walked away.
Eternity will show whether this man’s will was eventually subdued, and whether the long-suffering of God towards him was in vain. Certainly, with thousands, the deliberate refusal of a plan of salvation, humbling and distasteful to man, but the very glory of God, and which alone sets Him forth in His true character, is the cause of their unalterable ruin, though perhaps they would not admit it so plainly.
Is it so with the reader?
The Lord said of the children of Jerusalem long ago, “I would, but ye would not.” Alas! how solemn to think of man opposing and refusing the desire of God to save him, and turning his back upon a Saviour-God, only to meet that God as a Judge! But this is the unvarying tendency of the will of man.
“Ye will not come to me that ye might have life” (John 5:4040And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. (John 5:40)).
“Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8:77Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. (Romans 8:7)).
“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:1919And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19)).
The parable spoken by the Lord Jesus in Luke 14 shows that temporal things crowded out eternal things, even in minds that admitted the desirability of reaching heaven at last; and the man who said “I cannot come,” meant “I will not.” The cannot was a moral cannot, for there was no physical impossibility.
Like things absorb souls now—merchandise, a farm, oxen, a wife. They would like to go to heaven, but they cannot come now. They love the gifts more than the Giver, and despise His best of gifts―Jesus, His Son―
“That gift of gifts, all other gifts in one.”
They deliberately make their choice, and cleave to the present while the present lasts.
But, oh! what an awakening will be theirs when, the present being past forever for them, the principles of God’s dealings with them will be reversed; and whereas He now calls and they refuse, He shall, according to His word, “Laugh at their calamity, and mock when their fear cometh!”
Man’s will may oppose itself to God’s grace, and refuse His offered mercy; but man’s will is no match for God’s will, and a man may not refuse to enter those gloomy portals where hope is left behind, when he is relegated to that place by God, for refusing to accept what now he despises. How solemn if, like the man spoken of above, you have seen that God is righteous in dealing graciously, you should be constrained to own He is righteous in your eternal judgment.
May the gracious Lord deliver the reader from such an irrevocable doom.
G. J. S.