There is nothing, besides making known God's peace and truth, that proves the value of the word of God more than this—the simple and telling naturalness, the fresh power with which it applies to the greatest variety of circumstances. What Paul said to the Athenians is most true of men now. I do not mean that all the particular shades of thought found then at Athens—that those schools of philosophy which divided men—are exactly the same as those of our own day; and I am far from meaning that superstition, that addiction to divine worship of a certain low, earthly, sensuous type can be said to be the most marked characteristic of this moment. For all that the truth is a living thing, and it is the only thing that is living—the only thing expressed in words that abides as it is. Theories and ideas change, and, with their authors, pass away. The truth remains. I know that men ask what the truth is, and that they are uncertain—and no wonder.
The truth is inseparable from the word of God; and, further, the truth is never found even in the word apart from Christ. Hence it is that, as the word is called the truth, so Christ declares that He is the truth. And, further, the Holy Ghost is said to be the truth, not God. As such He is never called the truth except by rationalists, and, I am sorry to say, sometimes by legalists. Extremes meet. Again, the Father is never called the truth; nor could He be, because the truth is the full bringing out of what a person or thing is. It is the expression of objects in their reality. It is the full declaration of anything, no matter what—it may be God or man, it may be heaven or hell: but, wherever the thing is set out as it really is, there you have the truth. Christ is the only one who has ever done it objectively. As power the Holy Ghost acts by the word, and there is the link between the word and Spirit of grace. Thus, as you never have Christ really known except by the word of God, so the Holy Ghost is needed to apply that word, and to make it to be an occasion of showing grace to the soul. When you have Christ, you have the truth, and not otherwise.
Now, there may be all measures of difference outside Christ in those who have got the truth. You may have persons who really agree in very little else—they have prejudices, they have prepossessions, they have all kinds of different theories in which they have been brought up. Religious education has an important effect in modifying men's thoughts; yet for all that, if they have Christ, they have got the truth; and what gives a believer confidence, and what we ought to confide in, is that all those who have Christ are saved, and none else. Therefore it is, we see, that, where Christ is really possessed, other things are changed—not all at once, but the Spirit of God can act in living power where Christ is possessed. He may be hindered—and all wrong thoughts of Christ (the truth of God), everything that is not according to Christ, is a hindrance to the Spirit; but still, where Christ is really possessed, the Holy Ghost follows as the seal of redemption. Not only does the Holy Ghost precede, but He follows; and I shall take occasion to open this a little tonight, because it brings out a most important side of the truth, and is little seen.
Christ is never received except where the Spirit of God makes the want of Him felt. There never is, therefore, a reception of Christ simply by the mind. The mind of man always judges. The sinner believing is judged in conscience before God. Now, this is a true test whether you have got the truth. Hence where the word enters by the Holy Ghost, it invariably enters the conscience, and the effect of the word dealing with the conscience is, that the man stands at the bar of God in his spirit at once. From the time that the word of God really deals with him, he stands before God, and how? As a sinner. A solemn meeting, to be sure! God and the sinner; not yet the Judge seen of all, but the judgment-seat of God in the conscience. The word of God has this effect, it judges. That word only is judge yet in the conscience. The rationalist judges it. The natural man slights it. Even the religions man at some time or another may get into difficulties; he does not understand, he does not like to own his ignorance, and then he judges. It is in this way that souls, presuming to judge, are lost. There is no vital faith where the word of God does not judge, the Spirit using it to bring in a man as guilty before God, and to lead him to repentance.
You observe, in the verses that I have read tonight, we have God commanding men everywhere to repent. It is not merely to believe but to repent; and this is an invariable test of genuine faith that the Holy Ghost produces. An intellectual reception of the truth never brings a soul into the presence of God. It always puts man in the wrong place and
God of course also. There is many a sinner who is rather pleased with himself for accepting the truth. He sees, and other people do not see. He receives the truth, whilst others are ignorant of it. He is a little vain thereon. He is proud of his knowledge; but as to self-judgment, he has none. The man who gets in the presence of God follows that way no longer. Ah no! he has certainty now. Do not tell me there is no such thing attainable. Are you a heathen? Heathen men, of course, cannot know with certainty, because they have not even the word of God, and may not believe that such a thing exists. Alas! we find that men in Christendom are practically in this day of ours coming to the state in which the heathen were. They, too, are not sure that scripture is the word of God; they have their opinions about it. They think that Moses made mistakes in the Pentateuch. They think that Paul wrote mistakes. They think that Peter and John were only good men who did their best. They judge. They have never been in the presence of God to be self-judged; and the consequence is that all is wrong, and God is an unknown God.
Now, wherever there is a real action by the Holy Ghost, the truth comes into the soul morally. No matter how the process may be carried on, or what the occasion that began to act, the invariable criterion of a work of God is, that there is not merely a reception of the word, but, along with this, a humbling moral effect produced in the soul; there is personal sense of sin in the conscience before God, in short, repentance And repentance is not merely a change of mind. Do not allow such a definition to possess your minds. I know, of course, what those mean who say so, and perhaps why it is; but mere change of mind is far short of repentance. No doubt always, a mighty change of mind accompanies faith in Christ; there is a complete revolution in the soul; but the change is not intellectual merely, it is moral. The soul is brought to sit in judgment on itself, and to pronounce God's judgment on its ways, taking the place of a sinner, yea of a lost one, before God. Till this is done, there is no divine root. Without it the seed wants life, and will come to nothing.
There is this danger sometimes in revivalistic preaching, if I may say a word on preaching that has been not a little blessed of God: persons are attracted and moved by the good news of pardon, without being truly convinced of their sins. Is this danger met by the common method of being brought in as guilty sinners, and left there? Most preachers were afraid to tell out the fullness of the grace of God, even where they set forth the evil of sin. We should never be afraid to trust the grace of God, provided along with that we insist on the reality of ruin, moral ruin, before God. Granted that the grace of God taken up as an intellectual thought or a feeling is a most dangerous thing, and always leads to licentiousness, for it really tends in principle to antinomianism. But it is never the case where the soul is judged by the truth—where divine revelation puts the man down and gives God His true place. And who is it that brings all this to pass? Jesus, who is the truth, and works by the Spirit.
Just look at Him with the woman of Samaria, where you may see this very thing wrought. What did He do first? He gave her the deepest impression of grace beyond a Jew and beyond man. Did He not gradually make known the truth of God? Who but a divine person could give the Spirit? or empower His servants to act so in His name? And let me tell any person who doubts this truth, that if Jesus was not God, He was not good. If God, He was assuredly good, specially in deigning to be man on earth. There is nothing that is so morally degrading to a man, and so practically a denial of God, as falsehood; and there is no falsehood worse than to say you are what you are not. Now, Jesus, though the lowliest of men, always gave the impression, when it was a question of His own person, that He was divine. It might not be always the time to say it; but whenever the occasion occurred, not only did the apostles say so—not only did John, for instance, begin his Gospel with, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” —not only did Paul bring it into the very heart of the Epistle to the Romans—but hear what Jesus says Himself: “Before Abraham was, I am.” He is the “I AM.” There was and is the truth.
There were occasions when He wrought miracles: but miracles are the lowest instead of the highest way of dealing with men. They have their own importance, no doubt; but miracles might be wrought, and the light perceived on the ground of them, and still the man remain far from God. So it was at the first Passover which is mentioned in the Gospel of John. Jesus was there at Jerusalem on the feast-day—the first of all the festivals, the foundation of all that followed in the Jewish year. But though He did many miracles, and many people believed on Him because of the miracles, Jesus did not commit Himself unto them; for, as the Spirit says so solemnly, “He knew what was in man.” What was the effect of this? He did not trust them. It was merely what was in man.
The only thing that Jesus trusts is what is in and of God. This is what appears in the next chapter; this is what He brings out to Nicodemus. Nicodemus came in the confidence of a man, in the desire of a sincere soul, to be instructed by One so capable. He had seen the miracles, but he was rather ashamed to come and be taught by Jesus. He did not wish to be seen. Conscience was at work though in a feeble way. When men have no conscience, they act boldly. When they have a conscience about things, they dread the difficulties, they have a certain fear of the opinion of others; but, if in earnest, they come, though by night. So it was with Nicodemus. And what did the Lord say? He told him on the very threshold, what He declares for every soul of man, that he must be born again. The sinner needs to be born of God. This is precisely what I am now insisting on, the necessity (not merely of a new walk, but) of a new life from God; and the truth of it I wish to put plainly before you to-night.
I presume that you are all satisfied there must be faith; but without the truth there cannot be faith. Faith cometh, by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Through faith comes eternal life; but eternal life, you must all acknowledge, is not the gift of man nor within the reach of man until the conscience is exercised by the word of God. But the moment the soul bows to Jesus in self-judgment, not merely as a worker of miracles but as the Son of God, come into this world to do these two great things—first of all, to give me a life that I have not, and, secondly, to take away the sins that I have (to remove all the evil that weighs me down, and to give me the very best that God has for me—eternal life in His own Son), then all is clear. The man is a believer. He has repentance towards God. He hates himself, judges himself, condemns himself out-and-out before God; yet none the less but the more does he look out of himself to the Son of man suffering for man's sins, the Son of God given of God's grace. He has faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, and he is a child of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
No doubt after all there may be much infirmity: and he may feel it. Here indeed, I may say, the special privilege of Christianity comes in. I do not mean only the deep characteristic of known eternal life in the Son of God; but over and above it is power imparted. And this is what saints need to know better. It is not merely the Spirit of God producing a sense of want of life, conviction of sins and of sinfulness before God; this is what precedes the soul's having confidence in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. But when the sinner believes the gospel, in his soul bowing to the Son of God, and to the incomparable work of redemption He has wrought, what is the effect? The Holy Ghost seals that soul. As He quickens the sinner, so He seals the saint. This is what is done by the Spirit following faith: He seals. No man is sealed the moment he believes in Jesus: it is always (be it a brief interval, or longer) after believing, as it is said, “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son,” —this is not to make them sons— “into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal. 4). “Also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him” (Acts 5). And so again in Eph. 1:1313In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, (Ephesians 1:13), “In whom, after ye believed,” —or if you take it literally, “having believed,” it comes to the self-same effect” ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.” Sealing is always after the soul rests upon the work of Christ as a finished thing. Hence it was unknown under the Old Testament; and now no man is sealed by the Holy Ghost so long as he has doubts of any kind existing in his soul. It is invariably after a man has submitted himself to the righteousness of God, when he gives himself up as completely lost to find himself saved in virtue of Christ's work, it is then that the Holy Ghost seals him.
Hence we find when the apostle Paul went to Ephesus, his inquiry was— “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” (Acts 19) We must not suppose that this is a question of miracles, or powers, or tongues, or anything of that kind, though these very signs might follow too. There were miracles wrought by the early Christians, and they had also the gift of tongues; but these were only the external vouchers of the Holy Ghost, who had always wrought whatever was for God's glory in man, but never was communicated in person to the believers till after redemption. When Jesus was on the earth, the Holy Ghost came down and abode upon Him; we can all understand this easily. Jesus was absolutely sinless; He was the Holy One of God. But can the Holy Ghost come and dwell in us? Only by redemption, our sins and iniquities being put away righteously from before the eye of God. When God looks and sees in us, not our sins—this was our part—but the precious blood of Christ, accepted in faith as God's gracious provision for the just pardon of sinners, then the Holy Ghost says (as it were), I can come and dwell in such men as these. Thus does the Spirit of God show His estimate of the work of Christ and acknowledge the man who rests on the blood that cleanses from every sin.
It may be observed here, that the apostle Paul, when he was at Athens, only brought in one side of the word. He did not always preach in the same way the truth of God. When among the Thessalonians, the truth he brought prominently forward was that concerning the kingdom; and this gave a particular character to his work among them. There was, in fact, no company in early times so remarkable for waiting for the Son of God from heaven as the Thessalonian assembly. That was what Paul preached to them, and bright was the effect produced. There were however others at work to mar the good: and the second epistle was written not to correct the first, but to counteract the false notion that certain had foisted in, telling them (and pretending the apostle's authority for it) that the day of the Lord was already come. It was not merely that that day was “at hand,” which is a mistake in most versions. Although I have not lived very long, I have lived long enough to see that error almost exploded. I hardly know a single person of learning or ability who does not acknowledge that this is not the true meaning of the word (ἐνέστηκεν); and the power of the Spirit of God has been at work, no doubt, to bring this about. You know there are many who seem to be morbidly sensitive when told of a mistake in the common translation of the Bible; and I sympathize a little with the dislike of hasty or needless change. Nor is it well to hear men talking about “Greek” to people who do not know Greek. Far better to talk about it to those familiar with the language. There they might meet their match; but to be ever talking of Greek to persons who do not know the language is for them a bad habit, which is no less dangerous for those who are talked to. So you will understand I do not mean to say much on such matters in a general audience; but still it seemed not amiss to refer to the generally owned error in our version of 2 Thess. 2:22That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. (2 Thessalonians 2:2).
(To be continued.)