099. The Most Fit Book For A Wounded Conscience.

XCIX ‘The Most Fit Book For A Wounded Conscience.’

‘BEFORE I had gone thus far out of these my temptations, I did greatly long to see some ancient godly man’s experience, who had writ some hundred of years before I was born. For, those who had writ in our days I thought (but I desire them now to pardon me) that they had writ only that which others felt, or else had, through the strength of their wits and parts, studied to answer such objections as they perceived others were perplexed with, without going down themselves into the deep. Well, after many such longings in my mind, the God in whose hands are all our days and ways, did cast into my hand one day a book of Martin Luther; it was his Comment on the Galatians — it also was so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece if I did but turn it over. Now I was pleased much that such an old book had fallen into my hands; the which, when I had but a little way perused, I found my condition, in his experience, so largely and so profoundly handled, as if his book had been written out of my own heart. But of particulars here I intend nothing. Only this, methinks, I must let fall before all men, I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon the Galatians (excepting the Holy Bible) before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience.’

Now, since very few of you can possibly have access to Luther’s Comment on the Galatians, I propose to give up the whole of this evening hour to that great Reformation book. I shall stand aside to-night and I shall let Martin Luther speak to you as he spoke to John Bunyan.

Take first, then, what Luther taught and what Bunyan felt and experienced about Sin.

‘Sin in Holy Scripture,’ says Luther, ‘signifies far less the outward act, than the sinful spirit that lives and works deep down in the bottom of the sinner’s heart. According to the universal teaching of Holy Scripture, the sinful heart is the true seat, and the real source, of all our evil. And, then, more than that, Holy Scripture looks on our Unbelief as being the real spring of all our evil, both inward and outward. “The Holy Ghost shall convince the world of sin,” says our Lord, “because they believe not on Me.” According to Holy Scripture faith alone justifies, and unbelief alone condemns.’

Therefore, says Luther, wherever you find a sin, the unbelief of the heart is always at the root of that sin. And then, like all Scripture, and like all spiritual experience, Luther adds that

‘our unbelief and our sin are so deeply rooted in our depraved hearts that they are never wholly eradicated in this life. Even the best saints are continually falling into sin through unbelief and an evil heart. Abraham fell, Isaac fell, Jacob fell. And so on, all down the Holy Scriptures. And all these sins of God’s saints are recorded in the Holy Scriptures in order that we may take comfort and may not despair. If Jacob, and Aaron, and David, and Peter fell, and rose again, so may we rise again like them. They rose again by repentance, and by faith, and by prayer, and so may we,’ says Luther. Now, I can imagine John Bunyan walking in the fields, with some dashes in his conscience, and with these strong passages out of Luther taking possession of his heart for the first time.

There is nothing on which Luther is more Pauline and more powerful than on the Law, and on our right use of the Law.

‘Understand,’ he is continually saying, ‘that Moses is not intended to be your saviour. You will never save yourself by the deeds of the Law. The Law is intended to have the very opposite result. For the divine intention of the Law is, to begin with, to show us ourselves. Its first function is to reveal to us our hopeless sinfulness and our estate of condemnation. Nay, not only does the Law reveal to us our hopeless sinfulness, it mightily increases our sinfulness, and it mightily deepens and darkens our despair.’ The Law enters, says Luther’s master in divinity, in order that the offence may abound. Moses with his Law is most terrible to us, Luther is always saying. There never was the like of Moses for terrifying our consciences and tyrannising over our hearts, he is always threatening and thundering against us. Moses and his Law never have had one single word of comfort, or of hope, to say to any poor sinner. Let every well-taught Christian man, then, learn to reason with the Law in this way, says Luther.

‘Let every well-taught Christian man dispute with the Law, and say to it: O thou so severe and so inflexible Law! thou wouldst fain set up thy seat of judgment in my guilty conscience! Thou wouldst fain summon up all thy witnesses against me! Thou wouldst fain sentence me as I deserve! But keep thee to thy proper office. Lay all thy terrors upon my sinful heart, and upon my evil life. But come not near my tender conscience. For thou must know that Christ, thy Master and mine, has Himself died for me. He has Himself settled all my accounts for me. And in Him I have, and I am righteously entitled to have, peace of conscience and a quiet mind. He has led me wholly out of thy jurisdiction, and He has placed me down in an estate of salvation, in which estate there is no condemnation. I am now the subject of a kingdom in which there is nothing but forgiveness, and peace, and joy, and health, and love, and everlasting life. Tell the Law that if it has anything in any way to say to thee now, it must say all that to thee through Christ. Say to it that thou art now stone dead to every one and to everything but Christ.’ That Gospel doctrine concerning the Law was very marrow and fatness to Bunyan’s soul. And then after he had thoroughly mastered all that out of Paul and out of Luther Bunyan puts it all to us in his own dramatic way, when he shows us Christian going out of the right road and wandering astray under the thunders and the earthquakes of Sinai, till Evangelist found him and spoke to him with such a severe countenance concerning his all but fatal error.

Out of a thousand passages about Christ in Luther’s writings Bunyan would read this a thousand times.

‘Christ, then, is no Moses. Christ does not speak from Sinai. No weapons in His hands are seen, nor voice of terror heard. Christ is not a hard master who will compel the uttermost farthing. Christ comes to all sinners full of grace and mercy; both able and willing to save. Christ is nothing but infinite grace and goodness. Be sure that you always paint Christ to yourself in His true and correct colours. It is the very top and complete crown of Christian truth to be able to define and describe Christ aright, and that especially in the season of sin and guilt and condemnation. Hold fast, at all times, by Paul’s description and definition of Christ. Now Paul’s true description and definition is this: He loved me, and gave Himself for me. For myself,’ says this true Pauline preacher and true pastor of souls;

‘for myself, I have much difficulty in always holding this divine definition of Christ which Paul gives to all believers. When I was a young man,’ says Luther,

‘I was so drowned in unscriptural and anti-evangelical error that my heart trembled at the very name of Christ, for I was taught to think of Him as an angry judge; whereas He is our Redeemer and our Saviour. Christ is joy and sweetness to every trembling and broken heart. Christ is the true and faithful lover of all those who are in trouble and anguish because of sin. He is the merciful High Priest of all miserable and fearful sinners. Let us learn to practise this distinction; and not in sacred words only, but in life and in experience, and with a warm inward feeling. For where Christ is rightly understood and held by, there must needs be joy of heart and peace of conscience. And that because He is our reconciliation, and our righteousness, and our peace, and our life, and our whole and complete salvation. In brief, whatsoever the afflicted conscience desires, that it finds in Christ abundantly and continually.’ In brief, says Luther; but instead of being brief he dwells upon Christ in that way at all length and in every sermon and comment of his. Spurgeon was like Luther his forerunner when he said that what his faultfinders complained of concerning his sermons was quite true; wherever he took his texts it did not matter, he straightway made across country to Jesus Christ. Spurgeon could not be brief when he came to Christ, and neither could Luther, and neither could Bunyan. ‘O methought, Christ! Christ! There was nothing and no one now but Christ before my eyes!’

You all know what a supreme and what a universal place Faith holds in the Bible, and especially in the New Testament, and especially in Paul’s Epistles. Well, faith holds an equally supreme and universal place in all Luther’s writings. And rightly so. For there is nothing in all the world so necessary to us as faith, and there is nothing so little understood by us.‘Especially that word faith put me to it,’ says Bunyan. And it was Luther who first and fully cleared up this supreme matter of faith to Bunyan. I take this passage on faith not from his Comment on the Galatians, but from his Christian Liberty, which is the finest thing that Luther ever wrote, and one of the foundation documents of our evangelical divinity:

‘Now since these promises of God are such words of holiness, and truth, and righteousness, and liberty, and peace, and are so full of universal goodness, the soul which cleaves to them with a firm faith is so united to them as to be penetrated and saturated with all their sweetness. For if the mere finger-touch of Christ’s clothes was so healing, how much more does that most spiritual touch of pure faith communicate to the soul all that stands in the divine word concerning Christ. In this way therefore the soul through faith alone is from the Word of God justified, sanctified, endued with truth and peace and liberty, and filled full with every good thing. There is this incomparable virtue in faith also, that it unites the soul to Christ as the wife is united to her husband; by which “mystery,” as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul are made one for ever. Now if they are made one for ever, and if the most perfect of all marriages is accomplished between them (for our human marriages are but feeble types of this one great marriage), then whatsoever Christ possesses, all that the believing soul may take to itself and hold as its own; just as whatever belongs to the soul Christ takes to Himself and holds as His own. Now Christ, our husband, is full of grace, and life, and salvation; and the soul is full of sin, and death, and condemnation. But let faith step in, and then our sin and our death and our hell itself will all belong to Christ; and all His grace and life and salvation will all belong to us. In all this the delightful sight is seen of our victory, and salvation, and redemption. When our Bridegroom, by the wedding ring of faith, takes the sins of the soul and makes them all His own, then must all our sin and death and hell be swallowed up in the stupendous conflict our Husband holds with all our enemies. For His righteousness rises far above all our sins; and His life is now far more powerful than is our last enemy; and His great salvation is the conquest of our very hell itself. My Beloved is mine, the soul sings, and I am His. Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

I wish I could put into your believing hands the whole of Luther’s incomparable treatise Concerning Christian Liberty. And especially I wish I could put into your hands those fine pages, those truly exquisite pages, on faith as it is the fulfilling of the whole law of God. But I must not withhold from you this great passage about Grace which one was reading aloud in a prayer-meeting in London at a quarter to seven one evening when John Wesley, on hearing it, had his eyes opened, and immediately entered into light and life.

‘Grace has this distinction,’ writes Luther, ‘that it signifies the favour and the affection of God, through which He pours Christ and His Spirit into our hearts. And though our sinfulness remains in us more or less all our life on earth, nevertheless grace does so much for us that we are regarded as fully and entirely justified before God. For His grace does not divide itself, and parcel itself out, but it receives us at once and wholly into the divine favour for the sake of Christ. You can understand, therefore, the seventh chapter of the Romans, where Paul so reproaches himself as a sinner, and yet in the eighth chapter goes on to say that there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. On account of our indwelling sin we are still sinners; but because of our faith and trust in Christ, God is favourable to us, and will act toward us according to our faith in Christ till our sin is completely mortified from within us.’

Returning to the Galatians we find Luther saying;

‘There is nothing in all the world more precious than this doctrine of grace. For they who understand this doctrine know that sin, and death, and all our other afflictions and calamities, as well of the body as of the soul, do work together for good. Moreover, they know that God is then most near to them, when they think Him furthest off. And that He is then most full of mercy and of love to them, when they think Him to be most offended and most angry with them. Also, they know that by grace they have an everlasting righteousness laid up for them in heaven, even when they feel in themselves the most terrible terrors of sin and death and hell. But this cunning knowledge is not learned,’ says Luther, ‘without many and great temptations.’

Hazlitt says that the only specimen of Burke is all that he ever wrote. And so I will say of Luther on the topics I have just touched. At the same time, I must sum up this shamefully meagre specimen of Luther’s riches, and I will do so with quoting to you one or two of the things he says about the right use of some of the Pronouns. Commenting on Paul’s words — Jesus Christ, which gave Himself for our sins, Luther says:

‘Weigh well every word of Paul, and especially weigh well this pronoun our. For thou wilt easily believe that Jesus Christ gave Himself for the sins of Peter and Paul; but it is a different thing to believe that He gave Himself for thine invincible, infinite, and horrible sins. But be sure to exercise thyself diligently in this pronoun our; and this single syllable, being rightly believed, will swallow up all thy sins. Only, to do this when we are in the conflict with unbelief, is, of all things, the most hard and difficult. I speak this by experience,’ says Luther. And, again, on Paul’s further words — The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me, Luther asks:

‘But who is this me? It is even I, Martin Luther, a wretched and a condemned sinner. This word me is full of saving faith,’ he says. ‘He who will utter aright this little word me shall be a good advocate and disputer against all the accusations of the law, and of his own conscience. For Christ delivered up for me neither sheep, nor ox, nor gold, nor silver, but Himself, and that entirely and wholly for me. Yes even for me, who am such a wretched and miserable sinner. Say me then with all thy might, and print this pronoun me indelibly in thine heart. Not doubting, no — not for one moment, but that word is written for thee, to make it thy very own and to make Christ and His death for sin thy very own also.’ And in yet another place Luther teaches us that

‘all the religion of the Psalms lies in the right use of the personal pronouns, I, and Me, and Thou, and Thee.’

‘I never can separate the two names of Paul and Luther,’ says Coleridge in his English Divines. And again, ‘How dearly Luther loved Paul, and how dearly would Paul have loved Luther!’ exclaims Coleridge. But not more, I will add, than John Bunyan loved him. For much as has been said and written by Coleridge and by many others in praise of Luther, there is nothing that excels the classical text of this evening’s discourse:

‘Methinks I must let this fall before all men, I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon the Galatians (excepting the Holy Bible), before all the books I have ever seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience.’