We should, just like to add a line or two to our leading article for August, in order to remove one or two more of those stumblingblocks which so sadly block up the path of anxious enquirers.
We find, in many cases, that appropriation is used as a great stumblingblock to souls; and although we have devoted a paper to this very subject, in one of our earlier volumes, we deem, it right to touch upon it briefly in this article for the purpose of. showing the reader that instead of being a stumblingblock in his way, it is, in reality, a landmark in his spiritual inheritance.
To judge from the way in which many put the subject of appropriation, it would seem as though they looked upon it as something which they have to do ere the benefits of Christ’s death can be made available for them. This is a great mistake. The death of Christ, in all its atoning efficacy, applies itself to the sinner the moment he takes his place as a sinner. So far from there being any difficulty in making the application, the difficulty, nay the impossibility, is to refuse it. The blood of Jesus is for the guilty sinner as such. Every one, therefore, who knows and feels himself to be a guilty sinner, is privileged to rest simply in that precious blood. The atoning work is. done. Sin is put away. All is finished — yes, finished by God’s own hand. Have I to wait for anything further? Have I got something else to do — something to add to the finished work of Christ? Assuredly not. I am simply called to rest, by faith, in what Christ has done for me, and know that all my sins are divinely put away, and that my conscience is as clean as the blood of Jesus can make it.
This is appropriation. It is taking God at His word — setting to my seal that God is true. It is not a certain indescribable work of mine, but a resting in the work of Christ. It is not waiting for something that is to be done by me, but a confiding in what has been done by Christ. This makes all the difference. Appropriation is really a landmark, not a stumblingblock. It is only because people mistake what it is that they stumble over it. It not un-frequently happens that while they are vaguely looking for it, they actually possess it. If I heartily believe that Jesus died and rose again, I am privileged to take up those precious accents of the apostle, and say, “He loved me and gave himself for me.” This, truly, is the language of appropriation. But it is appropriation in its right place — as a landmark, not as a stumblingblock. Appropriation, as a stumblingblock, speaketh on this wise, “I know that Christ died for me, but I cannot appropriate the benefits of His death.” This is a very serious error indeed. It is, in reality, to imply that the death of Christ is of no avail without a certain work on the sinners part; whereas scripture teacheth us that the moment a sinner takes his true place, as utterly lost, the death of Christ applies to him as fully and as truly as though he were the only sinner in the universe, and, moreover, that he is justified by faith and not by works of any kind.
It is truly wonderful to mark, the various methods in which the enemy tries to harass and stumble souls. If he cannot succeed in causing them to look to, and lean upon, legal efforts and ceremonial observances, be will perplex them with questions respecting election, appropriation, realization, feelings, frames, and experiences. Anything, in short, but simply resting in a full Christ. It is not that we undervalue these things; far from it; we value them as landmarks, but we dread them as stumblingblocks. The true ground of a believer’s peace is not election, appropriation, or realization, but Christ. He rests on the eternal truth that God dealt with Christ on the cross about all his sins — that the entire question was gone into and settled there, once and forever. To believe this is appropriation. To abide in the faith of it is realization.
May the Spirit of God lead the anxious reader to understand these things! It is our heart’s desire and prayer to God continually that burdened souls may be set at liberty, by the knowledge of a full and free salvation — a salvation unencumbered by any of those perplexing questions which are so frequently raised to the damage of God’s truth and the darkening of the souls of men. Election is a truth; appropriation is a fact; realization is a reality but let us, once for all, declare, and let the reader fully understand and constantly remember, that these things are not to be laid as stumblingblocks along the pathway of the sinner, but set up as precious landmarks in the inheritance of the saints.