THERE is, perhaps, nothing which the heart of a young believer is slower to grasp than the fact of the unchanging character of the love of Christ. When his own heart is warm and his walk, as far as he has light about it, pleasing to the Lord, he does not suspect any change in the love of Christ; but when his ardor cools, when his service slackens, when his walk becomes careless, then he begins to question whether the love of Christ is the same as it was when he first became a Christian. But how grieving this must be to the Spirit, who has written it down for our comfort, that “having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end” (John 13:11Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. (John 13:1)).
A soul in the state we have just been describing soon becomes a special target for the darts of the wicked one. As the taste for heavenly things gradually declines, the world in its most enticing forms is spread out before the eye, and plausible reasons suggested for going in for it. Not the grosser forms of worldliness, perhaps, at first; that would alarm the conscience too much, or draw the attention of others too markedly to the changed course, to be palatable.
Then comes some sad fall, and upbraiding conscience is once more up in arms. Then an effort to be better, but only followed by a deeper fall than ever. Then the subtle adversary suggests giving everything up. He whispers, You have, if you were ever converted at all, lost everything now. Christ could never own and certainly never love such a wicked wretch as you are; so that if ever you are set right and made happy after this, it will have to be by being again converted and coming to Christ for salvation as you first came, although nobody will ever believe in your reality again.”
Now this is all very plausible, but it is anything but the truth. The love of Christ never changes, and what the Spirit of God has effected in the soul of a believer can never perish. No, not even in the soul of a backslider. A deep well may be filled up with dry sand so that, from appearances at the top, none would guess that there was a spring of water at the bottom. But has the spring gone? Nothing of the sort. The spring is as really there as when there was not a particle of sand to bar your free access to it. How is this? Because the secret of the spring’s existence is on yonder distant mountain, where the hand that filled the well with rubbish has never reached and never will. So with the soul of a true believer, no matter how deeply he may have fallen. It is not a new spring he wants, but the removal, by self-judgment and honest confession, of the choking rubbish. “The water that I shall give him,” said the blessed Saviour, “shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:1414But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14)).
Among the wounded in the military hospital at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, the writer found a young man in great distress of soul. He had been shot right through the shoulder, and showed where the bullet entered and where it had escaped, having cut its way clean through to the other side. He was a poor backslider, and though the bodily wound had healed with wonderful rapidity, his wounded conscience was in sore agony still.
“I had made up my mind,” he said, “that there was no hope for me, and seriously contemplated taking my own life. “But,” said he, “I knew too much―too much about what comes after death―to dare to attempt it when it came to the point!”
It appears that he had once been gathered with a few believers in India who had taken the Lord’s supper together; but, he said, “I got away from the Lord (indeed, I never had settled peace at the bottom), and at last I felt it was only playing the part of a hypocrite to continue breaking bread any longer. “Now,” he continued, “do what I will, I get no comfort, no peace. Yet I have been on my knees for hours about it.”
I remarked, “Well, if you have been converted you need not expect to get back your joy and comfort by trying to come to God as you first came,” which brought out the confession that this was exactly what he had been doing. So I tried to point out to him his mistake thus: ―
“You belong to the 2nd Queen’s?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Suppose you were to desert and then afterward reenlist, say into the 11th Hussars, would not that be a criminal offense in the eye of military law?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Would you be at rest in your mind as you once more stood in the ranks under such circumstances? No. You would always be in fear and misgiving. Why? Because the full truth had not been faced before the military authorities. Your only honest way would be to come back, and, making full surrender, confess the simple truth, that you were a deserter from the 2nd Queen’s.
“It is the great enemy that has suggested your coming back to God and joining the ranks of your fellow-Christians by ‘re-enlistment,’ that is, by making a fresh beginning just as you first started. He knows that by this means you will not get the comfort you crave for, that your mind will never be at rest, and that to try to do so is only placing an effectual weapon in His hands wherewith to drive you to crushing despair. God will have reality. If the military authorities will not tolerate false pretenses, how can you expect God to do so?”
What this young man needed is the need of thousands in similar circumstances, namely, to see that there cannot possibly be any change in the love of Christ toward them or any slackening in the interest of Christ in them, come what may. When they carelessly fall into sin, He stands their righteous Advocate to restore them. When they turn against sin, He stands engaged to minister His mighty succor to them and to give them the sense of His tenderest sympathy with them.
If you want soul prosperity, have all out with God. “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Prov. 28:1313He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. (Proverbs 28:13)). “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:99If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)).