Waiting for an Inward Change.

NOT long since a man, inquiring of a child whom he met the way to a certain street, got this brief and unlooked-for reply, “You are in it, sir.”
Now in a similar way there are many souls (through ignorance, no doubt) wanting to reach that which has already reached them. They are longing for an inward change, and deeply troubled because they have not had one; and yet, strange as it may appear, the change they expect would never be wished for if a change had not already taken place. From the slumber of sin they have been aroused by the Spirit of God, and are now wide awake to the bitter consequences of their guilty, godless course. This surely is a change, and a great one, but it is not what they are looking for. They expect some sort of happy change, which they vainly hope will give them peace about their sins; and hence they are always kept occupied with their own feelings instead of with Christ.
The exercises of a young person in the north of Ireland were of this type. After years of indifference, though brought up carefully by Christian parents, she was awakened by the Spirit of God to a sense of her lost condition. Deep indeed were the exercises she passed through before she found peace with God; her great trouble being that she had not had an inward change. In the middle of the night she would rise from her bed and peep into her mother’s room, fearing that the Lord’s coming might have taken place, her parents gone, and she left outside the door of mercy. Indeed, her anxiety increased to such an extent that, for want of sleep, her physical strength gave way, and for some days she was forced to keep her bed.
I inquired if she had ever before been thus troubled and distressed about her state before God, and she freely owned that such exercises were altogether new to her; and yet, marked as the change was, it was not the change she looked for, not the change she would fain have rested upon could she have found it. It is true she had heard of Jesus as a Saviour for sinners, doubtless longed to call Him hers, and to find peace through Him, but she expected to find it, and everything else her soul craved for, in this longed-for change.
Now, reader, what was her mistake in all this? She was trying to get, by a happy inward change, what alone can be found in an outside finished work, i.e. in the work of Christ upon the cross.
How many there are who are doing this! They are seeking for peace by a change within, whereas it is really the change within which makes them, seek for peace.
Let us consider this a little more closely.
Man is naturally an enemy to God, and his carnal mind enmity itself against Him (see Romans 5:10; 8:710For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10)
7Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. (Romans 8:7)). He has no fear of God before his eyes (Rom. 3:1818There is no fear of God before their eyes. (Romans 3:18)). He seeks not after God (Rom. 3:1111There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. (Romans 3:11)), for he desires not the knowledge of His ways (Job 21:1414Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. (Job 21:14)). He counts God as his enemy, and would, if he could, get rid of Him altogether. As it is, he says in his heart, “No God” (Psa. 14:11<<To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.>> The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. (Psalm 14:1)), the wish being father to the thought. In this state he neither fears “wrath” as the judgment due to his sins, nor seeks for peace with God about them. But when the Spirit of grace works effectually in the soul, what a change is brought about! The careless one is made to feel his guilt, and to review the whole of his relationship with God, and condemning thoughts of self take the place of hard thoughts about Him.
But great as such a change may be, it is never to become the ground of peace for a guilty conscience. That alone which meets the claims of God against us can really give peace to us. When a man of business finds by taking stock and auditing his books that he is practically a bankrupt, from that moment, if he is honest, his anxiety and distress will commence. Nor does he dream that any happy change of mind in him will meet the difficulty. His one thought is, “Where is the money to come from?” How are my heavy arrears to be met?” And it is only when some near relative or friend at last steps in and pays the whole debt, that his anxiety and misery are changed to comfort and peace of mind.
Yet how many, we repeat, are looking for a happy change within to assure them of salvation from coming judgment, and of peace with a holy God, instead of seeing that it is the blood of Christ, as God has declared its value, that cancels the debt of sin, shelters from judgment, and gives the guilty conscience peace! Such souls, like the young woman just referred to, want to find satisfaction in the joy which they expect the Spirit will produce in them, whereas the Spirit wants them to be satisfied with what Christ has done on the cross for them, and this by assuring them that God is satisfied therewith. It was the “God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant” (Heb. 13:2020Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, (Hebrews 13:20)). “Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 4:25; 5:125Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (Romans 4:25)
1Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: (Romans 5:1)).
In reality, then, we may say that there are two great changes wrought in the soul of a believer. The first is by the Holy Spirit, who makes us feel our sinfulness and the consequent need of a Saviour. The second is effected when we see by faith that oar Lord Jesus Christ has perfectly met our need by dying for our sins upon the tree, and that the full penalty has been borne by Him; and when we see that God has declared His satisfaction in that work by raising Him from the dead.
One is a change from hardened indifference to penitent anxiety, and usually called repentance; the other a change from soul-trouble about our sins to joy and peace through believing on Him who bore them for us. Or to put it more briefly: the first is through the Spirit’s work in us; the second through the Saviour’s work for us. In one I am disturbed because “born of the Spirit”; in the other I have “peace through the blood.”—Reader is this peace yours?