S. Method of Grace (Excerpts)
CHOICE EXCERPTS from John
Flavel’s "The Method of Grace"
"My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." Php 4:19
O say with a melting heart—I have a full Christ,
and He is filled for me! I have . . .
His pure and perfect righteousness to justify me,
His holiness to sanctify me,
His wisdom to guide me,
His comforts to refresh me,
His power to protect me,
His all-sufficiency to supply me.
O be cheerful, be thankful—
Unbelief is man’s great sin, and condemnation is his great misery. How dreadful a sin is the sin of unbelief, which brings men under the condemnation
of the great God.
Condemnation is a word of deep and dreadful signification. It is a word whose deep sense and emphasis are
The Lord makes use even of your sins and infirmities to do you good. By these, He . . .
humbles you,
beats you off from self-dependence,
makes you admire the riches of grace,
makes you long more ardently for heaven,
causes you to entertain sweeter thoughts of death.
Does not the Lord then make blessed fruits to spring up from such a bitter root?
O what a hell will it be!
"For what is the hope of the hypocrite—when God takes away his soul?" Job 27:8
Nothing more aggravates a man’s damnation, than to sink suddenly into it from amid so many hopes and such high confidence of safety. For a man to find himself in hell when he thought himself within a step of heaven—O what a
hell will it be! The higher vain hopes lifted men up—the more dreadful must their fall be.
"The hypocrite’s hope shall perish!" Job 8:13
"The expectation of the wicked shall perish!" Proverbs 10:28
"That they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things." Titus 2:10
Your duty is to
How groundless is
realize that they are condemned already, it would be impossible for them to live in vanity as they do. And is their condition less dangerous because it is not understood? Surely not, but much more so! O poor sinners, perhaps you have found out a way to prevent your present troubles. It would be infinitely better if you could find out how to prevent eternal misery! But it is easier for a man to stifle conviction, than to prevent damnation. Your mirth prevents repentance and increases your future torment. O what a hell will theirs be—who drop into it out of all the sinful pleasures of this world!
"In hell, where he was in torment." Luke 16:23
As death takes the believer from many sorrows, and brings him to the vision of God, to a state of freedom and full satisfaction; so it drags the unregenerate
from all his sensual delights to the place of torment!
Death is the king of terrors—a serpent with a deadly sting to every man who is out of Christ.
How lamentable is the state of unregenerate persons! Were this truth heartily believed, we could not but mourn over them with the most tender compassion and sorrow. If our husbands, wives, or children are dying a natural death—how are our hearts rent with pity and sorrow for them; what cries, tears, and wringing of hands show the deep sense we have of their misery! O Christians, is all the love you have for your relatives spent upon their bodies? Are their souls of no value? Is spiritual death no misery?
The Christless and unregenerate world are
A man fast asleep in a house on fire, and while the consuming flames are round about him, having his imagination sporting itself in some pleasant dream, is a very accurate picture of the unregenerate soul.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
All the faculties of the soul are renewed by regeneration.
The understanding was dark—but now is light in the Lord.
The conscience was dead, or full of guilt and horror—but is now become tender, watchful, and full of peace.
The will was rebellious and inflexible—but is now obedient to the will of God.
The desires once pursued vanities—now they are set upon God.
Love once doated upon earthly things—now it is swallowed up in the infinite excellencies of God and Christ.
Joy was once in trifles—now his rejoicing is in Christ Jesus.
Fear once was about worldly things—now God is the object of his reverence, and sin the object of his dread.
The expectations were once only from this world—but now are from that to come.
Saints and sinners are wonders one to the other.
It is the wonder of the world to see Christians glorying in reproaches; they wonder that the saints run not with them into the same excess of riot. And it is a wonder to believers how such
the sinner from Jesus Christ and their everlasting happiness in Him.
How wonderful was the love of Christ the Lord of glory—to be so abased and humbled for us vile and sinful dust! It is astonishing to conceive that ever Jesus Christ should strip Himself of His robes of glory—to clothe Himself with the lowly garment of our flesh. If the sun had been turned into a wandering atom, if the most glorious angel in heaven had been transformed even into a fly—it
would be nothing compared to the abasement of the Lord of glory. This act of Christ’s love, is the astonishing wonder of the whole world!
One step beyond the state of this mortality
Christ cures all outward troubles in His people by death, which is their removal from the place of sorrows—to peace and rest for evermore. Then God wipes all tears from their eyes, and the days of their mourning are at an end. They then put off the garments and spirit of mourning, and enter into peace. They come to that place and state where tears and sighs are unknown.
What is guilt, but the obligation of the soul to everlasting punishment and misery? It puts the soul under the sentence of God to eternal wrath —the condemning sentence of the great and awesome God! Nothing is more dreadful and insupportable than this! Put all pains, all poverty, all afflictions, all miseries in one scale—and God’s wrath in the other; and you weigh but so many feathers against a ton of lead.
Grace never appears grace—until sin appears to be sin. The deeper our sense of the evil of sin—the deeper will be our apprehensions of the free grace of God in Christ.
Acceptance with God brings you to heaven hereafter, but assurance will bring heaven into your souls now! O, what a life of delight and pleasure does the assured believer live! What pleasure is it to him to look back and consider where he once was—and where he now is; to look forward, and consider where he now is—and where shortly he shall be!
"I was in my sins—I am now in Christ! I am in Christ now—I shall be with Christ, and that forever, after a few days!
The heart that receives Jesus Christ is in a frame of deep humiliation and self-abasement. O, when a man begins to apprehend the first approaches of grace, pardon, and mercy by Jesus Christ to his soul; when he is convinced of his utter unworthiness and desert of hell, and can scarcely expect anything from the just and holy God but damnation—how do the first dawnings of mercy melt and humble him!
"O Lord, what am I, that you should feed me and preserve me; that you should but for a few years spare me! But that ever Jesus Christ should love me, and give Himself for me; that such a wretched sinner as I should obtain union with his person, pardon, peace, and salvation by his blood! Lord,
deed be reconciled to me in his Son? What, to me —to such an enemy as I have been? Shall my sins, which are so many, so horrid, so much aggravated
beyond the sins of most men, be forgiven? O, what am I, vile dust, base wretch, that ever God should do this for me!"
Now for a soul to renounce and deny self, in all its forms, modes, and interests, as everyone does who comes to Christ; to disclaim and deny natural, moral, and religious self; and come to Christ as a poor, miserable, wretched, empty creature, to live upon His righteousness forever, is as
"No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." John 6:44
All the preaching in the world can never effect the new birth—unless a supernatural and mighty power goes forth with it. Let the angels of heaven
be the preachers,
As nothing can comfort a man that must go to hell at last; so nothing should deject a man that shall, through many troubles,
Conversion is
"I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Job 42:5-6
state by nature, and the course of your life under the influence of continual temptations and corruptions—how would your pride fall.
The crucifixion of sin does not consist in the suppression of the external acts of sin only; for sin may reign over the souls of men, while it does not break forth in open actions. Many a man shows a white hand who has a very foul heart.
"As many as I love I rebuke and chasten." Revelation 3:19
Are outward afflictions the ground of dejection and trouble? How do our hearts fail and our spirits sink, under the many smarting rods of God upon us! But our relief and consolation under them all is in Christ Jesus; for the rod that afflicts us is in the hand of Christ who loves us! His design in affliction is our profit. Hebrews 12:10. That design of His for our good shall certainly be accomplished—and after that no more afflictions forever! "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." Revelation 21:3. Thus two things are most evident:
1. Nothing can comfort the soul without Christ. He is the soul that animates all comforts; they would be dead without him. Temporal enjoyments, riches, honors, health, relations, yield not a drop of true comfort without Christ. Spiritual enjoyments, ministers, ordinances, promises, are fountains sealed and springs shut up until Christ opens them; a man may go comfortless in the midst of them all.
2. No troubles or afflictions can deject the soul which Christ comforts. "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." 2 Corinthians 6:10. A believer may walk with a heart full of comfort amidst all the troubles of the world. So that the conclusion stands firm—that Christ, and Christ only, is
"I give them eternal life, and they will never perish—ever! No one will snatch them out of My hand." John 10:28
The presence of Jesus Christ gives a more real and excellent glory to
Our eyes, like the disciples, are apt to be dazzled with the goodly stones of the temple, and in the mean time to neglect and overlook that which gives it the greatest honor and beauty.
pardon of that one sin.
As Jesus cures the guilt of sin by pouring out His blood for us; so He cures its dominion by pouring out His Spirit upon us. Justification is the cure of guilt; sanctification is
How unreasonable and wholly inexcusable in believers is the sin of backsliding from Christ. Have you found rest in Him, when you could not find it in any other? Did He receive you, and give peace to your soul when all other persons and things were physicians of no value? And will you after this backslide from Him? O what madness! No man in his right mind would leave the pure, cold, refreshing stream of a crystal fountain—to
"The one who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who refuses to believe in the Son will not see life; instead, the wrath of God remains on him." John 3:36
There are dreadful threatenings denounced by the Spirit in the word against all who refuse or neglect to come to Christ, which are of great use to engage and quicken souls in their way to Christ.
"You are complete in Him." Colossians 2:10
Christ is virtually and eminently all that
"You, then, who teach others,
O, it is far easier to study and press a thousand truths upon others, than to feel the power of one truth upon our own hearts! It is easier to teach others duties to be done, than duties by doing them.
Man, by the apostasy, has become a most disordered and rebellious creature, opposing his Maker—
as the First Cause, by self-dependence;
as the Chief Good, by self-love;
as the Highest Lord, by self-will;
and as the Last End, by self-seeking.
Thus he is quite disordered, and all his actions are irregular.
But by regeneration
this great change being, the renovation of the soul
after the image of God, in which—
self-dependence is removed by faith;
self-love, by the love of God;
self-will, by subjection and obedience to the will of God;
and self-seeking by self-denial.
The darkened understanding is illuminated,
the refractory will sweetly subdued,
the rebellious appetite gradually conquered.
Thus the soul which sin had universally depraved,
is by grace restored.