HERE is, I believe, a preparedness of heart that makes this precious Scripture fall with sweetness and rest upon some ears. And by this preparedness of heart, I mean a felt need. What is the use of coming to those who are going on calmly and quietly, caring for none of these things, and saying to them, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life?” They care nothing for it.
It is to them just as though, on a calm summer’s day, when the sun is shining and all around looking fair, I were to take out a lifeboat to a ship in full sail, going merrily with the breeze, and beseech the crew to avail themselves of the lifeboat. What do they care for the lifeboat? they think far more of their own fine vessel, they laugh to scorn my offers.
But if the sky darkens, the wind rises boisterously, the waves grow bigger and bigger, and, on some unseen rock the vessel springs a leak and begins to fill, if all skill, all energy is hopeless, and only a watery grave is before them, what will the crew think of the offer of the lifeboat then? Will they despise, will they reject it? No! no! How thankfully they avail themselves of it, each one only too anxiously awaiting his turn to go in her and be saved.
And thus it is with the safety God has provided, the eternal security He offers. When a man finds out for the first time that he is a lost sinner, that hell is before him, when his sins come crowding in upon him, and seem ready to sink him lower and lower; then when lie has found out that he is lost, if you come and tell him the message that comes from the heart of God Himself, it is good news for him.
It is a wonderful thing then for him to see that God has shown His heart perfectly for him to look at, and to find only love there; love for the poor guilty sinner, though hatred of his sin.
It is not a question of the number of sins that you have committed that renders you lost, but the fact that you are a sinner before God.
How many sins did Adam commit for God to turn him out of Paradise? And if God would not let Adam stay in Paradise, because he had committed one sin, do you think He will let you into heaven, if you have even one sin on you? He will not!
If you have only one sin upon you, the Lord must have come down from heaven and died to put away that one sin, before you could go into heaven. You could not get rid of that one sin by any effort of your own. And if it be a “faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” what is the good of your trying to make yourself a saint first? It is no good.
God has tried man in every way, and has found no good in man. If you have not found out that you are lost, you are not in a condition to be saved.
People do not believe they are lost. They do not like to own it. A man will call himself a miserable sinner; but you go and tell him he is a miserable sinner, and see what he will say to you?
If a man really believed he were lost, do you think he would go on in his sins and refuse the Saviour? No, no. If a man really believed it, he would be down on his knees crying for mercy.
I ask you, my reader, has the Spirit of God ever so worked in your heart, that you have found out, in the presence of God, that you are lost? If not, I warn you, you will find it out some day; and if you do not find it out now when there is a Saviour, you must find it out when there is no longer a Saviour, but only a judge.
When men find out that they are lost, what a happy thing it is to tell them of a Saviour who came to seek and to save them; to tell them that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
When I see the world as the object of God’s love, I am filled with wonder and exclaim, “What a world for God to love, a world that hunted Him who was the expression of that love out of it; that would not have Him in it at any price, when He came in lowly grace, doing good to all!”
The Lord Jesus came into man’s world to show man what God is. If there was a lame man in His path, He caused him to leap; if there was a blind man, He gave him sight; if there was a deaf man, he opened his ears; if there was a dead man, He raised him to life again. He was life in the midst of death; and yet man hunted Him out of his world, and so now He has gone back into His own world of light and glory, and flung wide open the gates of that world, saying, “Though you would not have me in your world, yet I will have you in my world, and none shall turn you out of it!”
Such is the love of the heart of God! Christ has gone back to the Father now, the first-begotten from the dead. If I look at the life coming down, it is “the only begotten of the Father.” If I look at the life going up, when He has got you and me, it is “the first-begotten from the dead.” Christ is the first fruits, afterward we that are Christ’s—we that have been begotten again.
It is almost past talking about, this love coming down. Look at the Lord’s gracious dealings with this man Nicodemus in our chapter, He takes him on step by step, puts the ax to the root of that religious tree, and says, Nicodemus, you must be born again. Then takes him on, and explains His meaning, takes him to a picture book, as it were, and shows him the camp of Israel in the wilderness; shows him it was a look that gave life to those who were bitten by the fiery serpents, a look at the lifted up brazen serpent; shows him, too, that the Son of Man must be lifted up for the eye of faith to look at Him.
But first there is the Father’s love. Not only must the Son be lifted up, but He was lifted up in consequence of the Father’s love who gave His Son.
Man says, “If I could only love God!” You are all wrong my friend, it is God who loves you! You are trying to force love out of your heart for God; you will never melt your heart in that way. The only way of melting your heart is believing the love of God for you.
He gave His Son. The Father gave His only Son.
It was God that thought of you, and God who has done the whole thing Himself, all that is necessary for your salvation. It was God’s will and Christ’s work, and now we have the Holy Ghost’s witness to it.
As water rises to its own level, so the love of God comes down to this world of sinners and takes hold of them, and then carries them up till it finds a resting-place for them where it started from—in the very heart of God.
“Whom he predestinated,” there is the love of God in eternity, “them he also called; and whom He called, them he also justified,” that are in time; “and whom He justified, them He also glorified,” that is in eternity again.
It starts this beautiful circle in eternity, with God’s foreknowledge and predestination, and ends in glory with Himself in eternity again, What a relief it is to turn from men’s trying to work their way back to God, to the simplicity of God’s gospel, that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever (that is, anybody that likes) believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
This love of God addresses itself to everybody and says, Anybody that likes may have, not only the negative thing—sins forgiven, but the positive thing—eternal life.
I love to turn my eyes to that cross of God’s beloved Son and say, There is every claim of God against me met entirely, by the precious blood of Jesus, the One He Himself provided to meet those claims.
Has your eye, my reader, ever turned to Calvary. Many a time your eye has turned in on yourself. How many times have you looked around, like the man in the 73rd Psalm, and seen the wicked prospering instead of the righteous. But have you ever looked up like the man in the 63rd Psalm, and been satisfied.
You have looked within and found sin, you have looked around and found confusion, but have you ever looked up and seen that man up there, the God-man Christ Jesus, seated on the throne of glory.
I see aim on the cross, and I know He bore my sins there. I see Him in the grave, where man sealed His tomb and set a watch in order to keep Him in. Poor wretched man, this, is your heart, and what a heart! They rolled a great stone to the mouth of the grave, to try to keep him in the bowels of the earth, if they could!
I love to follow Him on three days after, and see that great stone rolled away. That He might get out? Far be the thought; but that they might look in, those poor trembling disciples, that you and I might look in and see an empty grave. Yes, there is an empty grave, and an empty cross, and a filled throne, and the One who had my sins upon Him on the cross is in glory now without them. Where are they, then? God says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed their transgressions from them.”
Can my sins be brought back on Christ? They cannot! Can they be brought back on me, then? Impossible!
You think something will be done if you believe. No, nothing will be done, if you believe; something has been done, and there remains no more to do, God is telling you about what has been done now. “Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified.” All that believe. Scripture does not say a word about feelings. It is he that believeth. Every one who trusts to his feelings makes a mistake, like Isaac, the first we hear of who trusted to his feelings. He felt, and thought it was his son Esau, and it was Jacob.
Have you ever thanked God for what He has done for you. You may have thanked him for daily mercies, but have you ever gone down on your knees and said from a full heart, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift!” If you never have done so before, the Lord give you, my reader, as you lay down this paper, to bend to His love now, while He still offers it to you so fully, so freely, before the day when bend to him you must, not then to His love, not to the voice of tender beseeching as now, but to the voice of His wrath, for when the great day of His wrath is come, who shall be able to stand?
W. T. P. W.