Clues #41-50
Clues of the Maze: Honest Faith - #41-50 41. Anchorage and Root-hold of Faith When the Bible is fully accepted as God's own revelation of himself, the mind has come to a quiet anchorage; and this is no small gain. A safe resting-place is an urgent need of the soul. To find a sure foot-hold somewhere, men have tried to rest in an infallible church, or in their own supposed infallible reason. Of two earnest brothers one became a Papist, and another an infidel. We do not feel attracted to either haven, if haven either of these can be called: we prefer for our own part to cast anchor once for all in an infallible revelation. Drifting about must be injurious to character, and fatal to influence: root-hold is essential; here then is ours. When first the anchor goes down, or the root strikes, little can be known of the anchorage or the soil, compared with that which will be discovered by the test of experience. Thousands are quietly moored in the Fair Havens of Scripture; myriads are growing and bearing fruit in the garden of the Lord. Their witness is assuring, but our own experience will bring the most satisfactory conviction.
Down goes the anchor: the rootlets embrace the soil.
42. Sin disturbing Faith
Accepting Holy Scripture as God's revelation of himself, we now know more of him for practical purposes than we could have otherwise known, and especially upon one matter not hitherto mentioned. Our conscience (for which we are most grateful, for our struggle upward would be hopeless without it, if indeed it could ever have been thought of) reminds us that we are not quite beginning life, for we have already proceeded some distance, and that not altogether as we might desire to have done. With a sigh, our memory holds up sundry records which we cannot look upon with composure. We may not have been the worst of men, but we are sorry that there should be any worse than we are. We have possibly steered clear of the rocks of vice, but into the whirlpool of indifference we have hitherto been drawn. We have not done our best; and we begin to suspect that our best might not have been so very good if we had wrought it. Happily this divinely-inspired Book treats largely of the subject of sin, and of the effectual method by which the guilty can be purged of their defilement, and equipped for clean walking in the future. Here then we shall learn how the imperfect may dare to rely upon the Perfect, how the offender may venture to trust in him whom he has offended. Happy is the man who has been born to such knowledge, and to the possibilities which already are discerned within it!
43. Prayer suggested When a new discovery, either of danger or advantage, bursts upon a devout man, he is led to address God in some form or other. He prays, or he praises, as the case may be; and this comes of very proper and natural instincts, especially when they are intelligently based upon the faith which is found within the soul. Since we see that God has increased our knowledge by revealing himself through a Book; and since we hear that he has cleared up a dark and difficult point, which might have hindered faith, it becomes us to praise him. This done, we should set about reading that priceless writing of his with earnest prayer to him for help to our understanding, that we may perceive its meaning, and for strength to our will that we may obey its precepts. The Book is for our use, not for our amusement. It behoves us to handle such a gift after a worthy manner. It is not to be played with, but to be put to most earnest, immediate, and continued use. It professes to be meant for guidance in this life as well as for instruction as to the next: it must not therefore be laid aside as a pillow for some distant day of death, but we must ask God to make it our present instrument for righteous living, our daily tutor in the art of shunning evil and attaining good.
44. Removal of the great Obstacle to Faith
Concerning the consciousness of evil in the past of our lives, and the tendency to wrong-doing in our nature, the Bible is very clear, and it is most admirably explicit as to God's way of removing this barrier to our future progress. In Holy Scripture we see a most wise and gracious method for the putting away of guilt, without injury to the divine justice. The atonement offered by the Lord Jesus, who is the essence of the revelation of God, is an eminently satisfactory solution of the soul's sternest problem. Our feeling is that God, the universal Ruler, must do right, and must not, even for mercy's sake, relax the rule that evil done must bring evil as its consequence. We would not, when in our best frame Of mind, for our own little sake, wish to have this sanatory law abrogated. Sin ought to be punished: let the rule stand, come what may of us. An unrighteous God would be the most terrible of conceivable evils. Sin linked with reward, or divorced from ill consequences, would be the death of the great principle of righteousness, which is the aspiration of all perfect moral sanity. Scripture proposes no abolition of law, or relaxation of penalty; but it reveals the plan of substitution: the offended Judge bears in his own person the consequences of the offence of rebel man; He assumes human nature, that in His own person human sin may be visited with chastisement; He bears the burden of human transgression, and concerning Him we read these self-evidently divine words, "The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed." The whole transaction of substitution, descending to death upon the shameful tree, and rising into resurrection and ascension, is a great marvel: it cannot be a fiction, it surpasses all invention; it is the fact of facts. Carefully studied, looked at, weighed, the sacrifice of Himself by the Son of God carries into many minds a conviction not to be resisted, and works a peace only to be conceived by those who enjoy it. Accepting the sacrifice which God has accepted, we ourselves are accepted of the Lord.
45. God's Method of Mercy
Forgiveness of sin through an atonement satisfies a dim but true decision of humanity in favour of justice—a decision which is well nigh unanimous in all races. Even the unenlightened conscience of the savage heathen will not rest till the sword is bared, and a victim has fallen. Man as a rule dares not approach God without a sacrifice. The more enlightened mind is not content without a measure of explanation as to the need and result of sacrifice: such explanation is given in the inspired Scripture, given with great amplitude. The vicarious death of the Son of God, when understood and accepted, yields such peace to the believer that he feels as much at ease as if the law had never been broken. By the death of the divine Victim the law is so vindicated that it stands higher in the veneration of the universe than if its full punishment had been exacted. The heart is therefore quieted once for all upon sound principles to which conscience gives its full assent. Jesus has put away sin by an atonement which is the marvel of eternity, and there is no more cause for dread to the believer than Samson had reason to be afraid when the dead lion lay at his feet full of honey.
46. Faith's earliest Work The dread of guilt being removed by faith in God as he is revealed in Christ Jesus, the mind is overwhelmed with gratitude for the great love displayed in the gift of the great Propitiation, and it is moved to an intense hate of the evil which required such a Sacrifice. This immediately initiates a purgation, the like of which the heart had never known. In the blaze of divine goodness the pleasure once felt in sin is dried up, and utterly evaporated; and out of the midst of that consuming fire there leaps forth a new-born passion for righteousness, born of the immortal flame of infinite love. This becomes a motive force for a higher life, surprising to the receiver, who is amazed at the joy and the hope which abound within him. The stronger the faith in the revealed Propitiation, the fuller the rest, and the more intense the energetic desire for perfect holiness. To trust God is now an instinct, and to rely upon the Lord Jesus Christ becomes a joy, as we read his cheering words, "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me."
47. Faith delights in a plain Gospel
It is a matter for deep gratitude that the gospel is as plain as a pike-staff. If it had been intended to be a secret remedy for an elite few, it might have been recondite and philosophical; but it is meant for the poor, the illiterate, and the undeveloped; and therefore it must needs be what it is—simplicity itself. Thank God, the gospel does not lend itself to quackery! To hear our fashionable thinkers talk, one might suppose the gospel to be an exclusive and aristocratic system for their excellencies to amuse themselves with, whenever they might condescend to develop it a little further. We are glad to find it in the Scriptures in the form of a plain, common-sense, perfect doctrine, which has saved its millions already, is saving multitudes at the present moment, and will save its myriads, when all its superfine critics are mouldering in their graves.
Sometimes faith has great need of patience, when it is pestered with objections against a system which is everywhere in grand operation, and proving itself by its results. Why do not these objectors raise an outcry against the sun? Why not deny that he gives either light or heat?
48. Faith's Discovery When the new-born faith has wondered for a while, she asks herself the question, "Whence am I? How came I into the heart?'' The answer which she receives from the Book, and also from her own consciousness is—This is the operation of God. The Holy Spirit must have wrought this faith, which is so new, so vivid, so potent, so much above the ordinary range of the mind. If this be so, a new source of reliance is opened up. The man says, "God has actually begun to operate upon my nature, and as he is unchangeable, he will carry on this work, and complete it." Thereupon God-reliance enters on a fertile country, a land which floweth with milk and honey. The Holy Alliance is an actual fact. The Father must have drawn, or the man would not have come to Christ; and herein is love. The Christ has made a complete atonement for sin; and herein is love. The Holy Ghost has wrought faith, and its blessed consequences; and herein is love. The believing heart is introduced into a new relation to God; it has reached an unexpected nearness to him; it has received the first-fruits of the power which it desired to rely upon. That same Spirit, who is evidently in the heart, is declared to be an abiding Comforter, a Sanctifier, an inward and effectual Teacher: this makes the future quite another thing from what it had ever threatened or even promised to be. The revelation of the Book has become a revelation within the heart; the man believes after a higher fashion, and is girt with a strength which his most sanguine hopes had never dreamed of realizing.
49. Faith's Change a radical one
Trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ for complete salvation, and being assured that he is thereby saved, the believer comes under a new master-principle. Before he knew himself to be redeemed by Christ he laboured for his own salvation; that is to say, his every embryo virtue had self for its aim. He acted or abstained from action, was just or generous, praised God or prayed to him, with the one design of benefiting himself. How little of the essence of virtue could be found in deeds proceeding from such a motive! Yet from that motive the worker could not be set free with any safety, unless by saving him the Lord could lift him beyond need of seeking self-salvation, and then could cause him to pursue things noble and benevolent from pure love of God and man. It is natural that while a man is in danger he should look mainly to his own safety; hence nature itself is at first the enemy of unselfish virtue. But when the man's best interests are graciously secured, and he is set above all hazard, he looks beyond himself to his Deliverer, and regulates his life not by selfishness but by gratitude. This is a grand uplifting of our manhood from servile fear to filial love. No mere animalism will ever understand a passion like that of Xavier—
"My God, I love thee; not because I hope for heaven thereby, Nor yet because who love thee not Must burn eternally.
"Thou, O my Jesus, thou didst me Upon the cross embrace; For me didst bear the nails, and spear, And manifold disgrace "And griefs, and torments numberless, And sweat of agony;
Yea, death itself; and all for me Who was thine enemy.
"Then why, O Blessèd Jesu Christ, Should I not love thee well? Not for the hope of winning heaven, Nor of escaping hell."
In grateful love we have a fulcrum for the moral lever; a principle noble and elevating, potent to produce works of infinitely more value than any which can come from the slavish dread of punishment, or the mercenary hope of reward.
50. Faith and the Nature of Christ No idea of the Lord Jesus Christ approaches to correctness which does not see in his one person the two natures of God and man united. In that person, wherein were blended, but not confused, the Godhead and the Manhood, a practical faith has its most ample help. Jesus sympathizes with the condition in which the struggler after excellence finds himself, for he also was tempted in all points like as we are; he knows the difficulties which grow out of the infirmities of flesh and blood, for he felt sickness and pain, poverty and hunger, weakness and depression. It is a great gain in a human career, a specially suitable assistance, to have an unlimited power at one's side sympathizing with our weakness. Nor is the advantage less in the other direction, for here is a Man, bound to us by relationship and affection the most intense, who is not only tender to the last degree of our suffering nature, but is also as wise as he is brotherly, and as mighty to subdue our faults as he is gentle to bear with our frailties. His Manhood brings Jesus down to us, but united with the Divine nature it lifts us up to God. The Lord Jesus thus not only ministers to our comfort, but to our betterment, which is the greater concern of the two. Could faith believe in a Being more answerable to all our needs, more helpful to our noblest longings? Allied to Jesus, we confidently aspire to such likeness to our Creator as it is possible for a creature to bear.