A Gospel Address, delivered at the Victoria Hall, Exeter,
by Heyman Wreford.
IN the ninth chapter of Acts we read how the “chief of sinners” obtained mercy, and we will dwell a little on it now.
See the “blasphemer and injurious” on the road to Damascus! The willing servant and accredited agent of the high priest and the Sanhedrin, to wreak their unholy hatred on the followers of Jesus. He was a man of iron will and inflexible determination, and all the strength of his powerful personality was to be used against these faithful followers of the crucified Saviour. He has persecuted them in Jerusalem, and now as he journeys onward he carries with him letters from the high priest to the synagogues of Damascus, empowering him to bring any men or women, who believed in Jesus, bound to Jerusalem.
I see his eager eyes bent upon Damascus as he approaches the city.
But suddenly a blaze of light from heaven shines around him, and he is enveloped in its overwhelming radiance. As he falls to the earth he hears a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Prostrate in the dust, he realizes that no mortal hand has placed him there. The hand of God has been laid upon him; the strong man has been laid low, the imperious will has been broken; the self-centered persecutor has found his Master, and broken and subdued he says, “Who art Thou, Lord?”
Like a high-mettled steed, who has taken the bit in his mouth, and in full career is suddenly thrown upon his haunches by the challenge of the curb held by a strength beyond his own, so Saul is conscious of the power and authority of the One who speaks to him from heaven. The answer comes, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.” The power of the Sanhedrin was shattered by those words; they were the enemies―not of a poor, despised people, but — of the Lord Himself. Saul had powers delegated to him to bring these followers of Jesus to Jerusalem, but the Lord speaks of them as being Himself.
“Why persecutest thou Me?” The whole Jewish nation was in arms against the God of heaven, and Saul, their agent, is fighting against God. These poor people were His; they were one with the Lord of glory. The effect of this revelation was overwhelming. Jesus of Nazareth was the Lord; the Crucified was in heaven; the strength of His love for His people was evidenced by the fallen idols in the temple of his being. The awful significance of his terrible sin, and the dreadful falseness of his life leave him without a shadow of excuse. The hour of doom is striking within his trembling soul; the false foundations of religiousness, and blameless righteousness according to law; the moral elements that had made him the conscientious, religious man he had been, made the wreck of his whole life manifest. There was nothing left in the whole universe for this broken man but the consciousness that he had been at war with his God. Watch his trembling form! See the astonishment written on his face! Listen to his cry in the wild night of his awful despair! “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?”
“And the Lord said unto him, Arise and go into the city, and it shall he told thee what thou must do.... And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man; but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink.” And so in darkness he is led into Damascus, blind for three days and nights, neither eating nor drinking, but realizing in his darkness the truth of all that he had experienced. And so this soul is born again. He, who had never known Jesus on earth, knew Him now in the glory of God. What rapture must have filled his soul when he realized that he was saved: the awful darkness of three days and nights passed, and heaven on earth begun!
Do you remember when you were converted? What happiness filled your soul! The angels of God seemed to be your companions, and heaven seemed to shine about your pathway. To know for a certainty that your sins were forgiven, and that you were saved from hell and sure of heaven. You seemed too happy for earth and you longed to be with Christ.
The Man and His Life
And now this terrible sinner is saved, and his life for God begins. The life has to be lived; the life that was useless without Christ has now immense possibilities before it. God had revealed His Son in him so that he might preach Him among the heathen. His only glory now was in the cross of his Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world was crucified unto him, and he unto the world. He was to bear witness to all men of what he had seen and heard and known. He was to go far hence to the Gentiles, their great apostle, to make known the unsearchable riches of His grace, Who had called him out of darkness into His marvelous light. He was the earthen vessel to be filled with heaven’s light. He was always to bear about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in his body. He was a living man, to be always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be manifest in his mortal flesh.
Such was to be his life. Before his conversion he had been like a beautiful statue, fair in, the eyes of men, but lifeless. Now the Spirit of God had given him eternal life, and all the powers of his mind and body were working for the good of man and the glory of God. The aspirations of his life were all heavenward — “That I may know him.” The love that had saved him filled him with unspeakable rapture, and found expression in some of the loftiest thoughts that ever filled the heart of man. Listen to his wondrous words, “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Would you not rather be able to say this than be the King of England? No angel could ever enter into these deep things of God. He knew what no angelic being could ever know — the rapture of a soul forgiven. The glory of his salvation gave depth and purpose to his life, “For to me to live is Christ.” And the transforming power of this heavenly life made Christ so real to him, that he could “with open face behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord, and be changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord,” What marvelous realities are these! A man on earth, by faith, sees the man Christ Jesus in the glory of God, and knows that before He ascended into heaven, He had borne his sins on the cross, and that it needed this atoning work of the Lord Jesus, for the putting of them away, before He entered into that glory.
Paul lived for eternity and not for time, and while all men sought their own, he sought the things which are Jesus Christ’s. The world had no hold upon him at all; he was passing through it, but ever as he went he was “pressing towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” That was his goal, and the world would call in vain to him. The earthly honors that were once so dear to him, he “counted dung that he might win Christ.” He weighed everything by the Cross of Christ. He would have all men gaze upon that cross, and estimate there the real value of earthly and heavenly things. The effect of that cross is to minimize man and magnify God. There the world is judged, and although the haughty Jew might stumble there, and the philosophic Gentile sneer, yet still Christ crucified is the power of God, and the wisdom of God. With his back to the world and his face to the cross, and the power of the salvation of his crucified Saviour filling his soul, his challenge rings through all the universe — the challenge of a man in Christ, “I determined not to know anything among you [Corinthians], save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” And had he not chosen the “good part”? Had the world any better thing to offer? “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for those that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” He knew these things; he had seen the Saviour and heard His voice, and his heart was beating with the infinite certainties and possibilities of everlasting life. What did it matter to him that five times his poor body was beaten with thirty-nine stripes, or that he was scourged with rods three times, and once stoned, and three times shipwrecked, and that he had passed through perils on land and sea; that he had suffered weariness and pain, and hunger and thirst: that he had been cold and naked. It was all for Christ, it was all for Christ! He could glory in his sufferings and he could glory in the fact that God had so signally honored him as to take him up into the third heaven, and let him hear unspeakable things it is not lawful for man to utter. Yes, whether on earth upon the thorny paths of Christian life and experience, or whether in Paradise listening to the unspeakable things of God, he learned the lesson that God would teach him, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
Ah! you may say we cannot all be like Paul; we may not all know Christ as he did. If you have Paul’s faith you will have Paul’s happiness. If you live Paul’s life you will have his triumphs. “For me to live is Christ” is real today in the history of God’s people.
(To be concluded next month D.V.)