You have lately believed in Jesus, beloved friends, and have “passed from death unto life.” A new peace fills your heart, and new motives control your actions. Old sins have lost their power, and old pleasures their charm. You find delight in reading and prayer, and in assembling with the people of God. “And now,” say you, “the work is all done; I believe in Jesus, and I have ‘everlasting life.’” Not so, my brother, my sister. You have believed on Jesus, but that is only the beginning of a new and endless life. Although the work of the Son of God on the cross for you is infinitely perfect and complete, the work of the Holy Spirit in you is only just begun.
Has He implanted in your soul the “incorruptible seed” only that it may lie hidden there? Nay, it must push aside “every weight,” and rise above the surface a young green shoot; then the tender “blade, then the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear.”
Again, having passed through the “strait gate” and entered on the narrow way “that leadeth unto life,” the world is behind you, and your Father’s house is before you; and, although the road leads up hill and downhill, sometimes over rough and thorny places, and there are foes on either hand, yet there is a palace, a crown, and the King Himself at the far end of it. But you must ever run the race, and fight the good fight of faith, if you would wear the victor’s crown.
Listen, then, to a few words from one whom God has led by a dark and stormy way. “For when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away.” But “He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.”
As in the natural, so in the spiritual world, it is in the “great waters” that we see the works of the Lord, and “his wonders in the deep.” He has given life from the dead, and speaks to you now in these feeble lines. Read them prayerfully, ponder them well. May God the Spirit write them on each heart and conscience in indelible lines!
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” “Desperately wicked!” Do we all believe this? Many who read these pages are moral, upright, and amiable, and have been shielded, perhaps, by parental love from every sight and sound of evil. They have received the Saviour, and this, as a top stone of excellence, seems to perfect the already blameless character. Well, God says to you (for “there is no respect of persons with Him”) that “ the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” Man seeks to discover some redeeming quality in the blackest character, for indirectly he shrinks from the terrible truth. But every now and then a rent in the veil discovers the corruption within. God says of every heart “desperately wicked,” and “deceitful above all things”—trying to deceive God, deceiving its fellow, but most of all itself. “I the Lord search the heart, and try the reins, of the children of men.”
It is best, dear friends, to accept God’s sentence about ourselves. We must learn the lesson. Some learn it in deep exercise of soul at the time of conversion, and others by bitter experience afterward; but it is better to receive this solemn truth about ourselves as we receive the Lord Jesus, namely, in the way of faith. Through God’s grace, you have received Jesus; but, if you have not learned this truth about yourself, you do not yet know all that He is for you, nor can you rightly value all that He has done.
For if we are vile, guilty, and helpless in ourselves, what can we do but cast ourselves at the feet of Him who “receiveth sinners,” trusting only in His precious blood, which cleanseth from all sin. Oh! that precious name, Jesus, mighty to save.
“Without one thought that’s good to plead,” Jesus must be—will be—all in all to us. “Lord, glorify Thyself in me,” will rise from the depths of our whole being, and we shall say with Paul, “not I, but Christ. Christ liveth in me, and the life that I live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” He lived down here for us. He “died for our sins, and rose again for our justification,” and now at God’s right hand He pleads for us.
“He who washed us in His blood
Safe will bring us home to God.”
But now we are passing onwards along the path Jesus once trod, and He has given us His name, His Spirit, His presence to be with us all the way through, for He is a loving, gracious Friend as well as a glorious Saviour. Can we think on these things, and our hearts not “burn” with grateful love to Him. “For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead. And that he died for all, that they which live should not live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them and rose again.” Love and obedience go together. Our Lord Himself has said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” and “He that keepeth my commandments, he it is that loveth me.”
To be continued.