'Hold fast till I come.' - Our Lord.
Chapter 28 - EMMANUEL'S LAST CHARGE TO MANSOUL:
CONCERNING THE REMAINDERS OF SIN IN THE REGENERATE
'Hold fast till I come.' - Our Lord.
There are many fine things in Emmanuel's last charge to Mansoul,
but by far the best thing is the answer that He Himself there supplies
to this deep and difficult question, - to this question, namely, Why
original sin is still left to rage in the truly regenerate? Why does our
Lord not wholly extirpate sin in our regeneration? What can His
reason be for leaving their original sin to dwell in His best saints till
the day of their death? For, to use His own sad words about sin in His
last charge, nothing hurts us but sin. Nothing defiles and debases us
but sin. Why, then, does He not take our sin clean out of us at once? He
could speak the word of complete deliverance if He only would. Why,
then, does He not speak that word? That has been a mystery and a
grief to all God's saints ever since sanctification began to be. And the
great interest and the great value of Emmanuel's last charge to
Mansoul stands in this, that He here tells us, if not all, then at least
some of His reasons for the policy He pursues with us in our
sanctification. Dost thou know, He asks, as He stands on His chariot
steps, surrounded with His captains on the right hand and the left -
Dost thou know why I at first did, and do still, suffer sin to live and
dwell and harbour in thy heart? And then, after an O yes! for silence,
the Prince began and thus proceeded:
Dost thou ask at Me why I and My Father have seen it good to
allow the dregs of thy sinfulness still to corrupt and to rot in thine
heart? Dost thou ask why, amid so much in thee that is regenerate,
there is still so much more that is unregenerate? Why, while thou art,
without controversy, under grace, indwelling sin still so festers and so
breaks out in thee? Dost thou ask that? Then, attend, and before I go
away to come again I will try to tell thee, if, indeed, thou art able and
willing to bear it. Well, then, be silent while I tell thee that I have left
all that of thy original sin in thee to tempt thee, to try thee, to humble
thee, and to thrust, day and night, upon thee, what is still in thine
heart. To humble thee, take knowledge, take warning, and take
forethought. To make thee humble, and to keep thee humble. To hide
pride from thee, and to lay thee all thy days on earth in the dust of
death. I tell thee this day that in all thy past life I have ordered and
administered all My providences toward thee to humble thee and to prove thee, and to make thee dust and ashes in thine own eyes. And I
go away to carry on from heaven this same intention of My Father's
and Mine toward thee. We shall try thee as silver is tried. We shall sift
thee as wheat is sifted. We shall search thee as Jerusalem is searched
with lighted candles. I tell thee the truth, I shall bend from heaven all
My power which My Father has given Me, and all My wisdom, and all
My love, and all My grace. What to do, dost thou think? What to do but
to make thee to know and to acknowledge the plague of thine own
heart. The deceitfulness, that is, the depth of wickedness, and the
abominableness, past all words, of thine own heart. I do not ascend to
My Father, with all things in My hand, to make thy seat soft, and thy
cup sweet, and thy name great, and thy seed multiplied. I have far
other predestinations before Me for thee. I have loved thee with an
everlasting love, and it is to everlasting life that I am leading thee. And
thou must let Me lead thee through fire and through water if I am to
lead thee to heaven at last. I shall have to utterly kill all self-love out of
thy heart, and to plant all humility in its place. Many and dreadful
discoveries shall I have to make to thee of thy profane and inhuman
self-love and selfishness. Words will fail thee to confess all thy
selfishness in thy most penitent prayer. Thy towering pride of heart
also, and thy so contemptible vanity. As for thy vanity, I shall so
overrule it that double-minded men about thee shall make thee and
thy vanity their sport, their jest, and their prey. And I shall not leave
thee, nor discharge Myself of My work within thee, till I see thee
loathing thyself and hating thyself and gnashing thy teeth at thyself for
thy envy of thy brother, thy envy concerning his house, his wife and
his man-servant, and his maid-servant, and his ox, and his ass, and
everything that is his. Thou shalt find something in thee that shall
allow thee to see thine enemy prosper, but not thy friend. Something
that shall keep thee from thy sleep because of his talents, his name, his
income, and his place which I have given him above thee, beside thee,
and always in thy sight. It will be something also that shall make his
sickness, his decay, his defamation, and his death sweet to thee, and
his prosperity and return to life bitter to thee. Thou shalt have to
confess something in thyself - whatever its nature and whatever its
name - something that shall make thee miserable at good news, and
glad and enlarged and full of life at evil tidings. It will be something also that shall give a long life in thy evil heart to anger, and to
resentment, and to retaliation, and to revenge. For after years and
years thou shalt still have it in thine heart to hate and to hurt that man
and his house, because long ago he left thy side, thy booth in the
market, thy party in the state, and thy church in religion. As I live,
swore Emmanuel, standing up on the step of His ascending chariot, I
shall show thee thyself. I shall show thee what an unclean heart is and
a wicked. I shall teach to thee what all true saints shudder at when
they are let see the plague of their own hearts. I shall show thee, as I
live, how full of pride, and hate, and envy, and ill-will a regenerate
heart can be; and how a true-born man of God may still love evil and
hate good; may still rejoice in iniquity and pine under the truth. I shall
show thee, also, what thou wilt not as yet believe, how thy best friend
cannot trust his good name with thee; such a sweet morsel to thee
shall be the mote in his eye and the spot on his praise. Yes, I shall show
thee that I did not die on the cross for nothing when I died for thee;
when I went out to Calvary a shame and a spitting, an outcast and a
curse for thee! Thou shalt yet arise up and fall down in thy sin and
shalt justify all my thorns, and nails, and spears, and the last drop of
My blood for thee! Yea, thou shalt remember all the way which the
Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble
thee, and to prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart, and
whether thou wouldest keep His commandments or no.
It is also, the still tarrying Prince proceeded - it is also to keep
thee wakeful and to make thee watchful. Now, what conceivable estate
could any man be put into even by his Maker and Redeemer more
calculated to call forth wakefulness and watchfulness than to have one
half of his heart new and the other half old? To have one half of his
heart garrisoned by the captains of Emmanuel, and the other half still
full of the spies and the scouts and the emissaries of hell? Nay, to have
the great bulk of his heart still full of sin and but a small part of his
heart here and there under grace and truth? Here is material for
fightings without and fears within with a vengeance! If it somehow
suits and answers God's deep purposes with His people to teach them
watchfulness in this life, then here is a field for watchfulness, a field of
divine depth and scope and opportunity. There used to be a divinity
question set in the schools in these terms: Where, in the regenerate, hath sin its lodging-place? For that sin does still lodge in the
regenerate is too abundantly evident both from Scripture and from
experience. But where it so lodges is the question. The Dominican
monks, and some others, were of opinion that original sin is to be
found only in the inferior part of the soul, but not in the mind or the
will. Which, I suppose, we shall soon find contrary both to Scripture
and reason and experience. Old Andrew Gray speaks feelingly and no
less truly concerning the heart, when he says, 'I think,' he says, 'that if
all the saints since Adam's day, and who shall be to the end of the
world, had but one deceitful heart to guide they would misguide it.'
What a plot of God, then, it is to seat grace, a little saving grace, in the
midst of such a sea of corruption as a human heart is, and then to set a
sinful man to watch over that spark and to keep the boiling pollutions
of his own heart from extinguishing that spark! Well may Paul
exclaim: Yea, what carefulness it calls forth in us; yea, what
indignation; yea, what fear; yea, what vehement desire; yea, what zeal;
yea, what revenge! And, knowing to what He has left our hearts, well
may Emmanuel say to us from His ascending steps, 'Watch ye,
therefore; and what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!'
It is to keep thee watchful and to teach thee war also, the Prince
went on. Bishop Butler is about the last author that we would think of
going to for light on any deep and intricate question in the evangelical
and experimental life. But Butler is so deeply seen into much of the
heart of man, as also into many of the ways of God, that even here he
has something to say to the point. 'It is vain to object,' he says in his
sober and sobering way, 'that all this trouble and danger might have
been saved us by our being made at once the creatures and the
characters which we were to be. For we experience that what we are
to be is to be the effect of what we shall do. And that the conduct of
nature is not to save us trouble and danger, but to make us capable of
going through trouble and danger, and to put it upon us to do it.' The
Apostle Peter has the same teaching in a passage too little attended to,
in which he tells us that we are set here to work out our own
salvation, and that our salvation will just be what, with fear and
trembling, or, as Butler says, with trouble and danger, we work out. No
man, let all men understand, is to have his salvation thrust upon him.
No man need expect to waken up at the end of an idle, indifferent, inattentive life and find his salvation superinduced upon all that. No
man shall wear the crown of everlasting life who has not for himself
won it. As every man soweth to the Spirit so also shall he reap. As a
soldier warreth, so shall he hear it said to him, Well done. And as a
sinner keeps his heart with all diligence, and holds it fast till his King
comes, so shall he hear it said to him, Thou hast been faithful over a
few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. If thy sins, then,
are left in thee to teach thee war, O poor saint of God, then take to thee
the whole armour of God; thou knowest the pieces of it, and where the
armoury is, and, having done all, stand!
And dost thou know, O Mansoul, that it is all to try thy love also?
Now, how, just how, do the remainders of sin in the regenerate try
their love? Why, surely, in this way. If we really loved sin at the deepest
bottom of our hearts, and only loved holiness on the surface, would
we not in our deepest hearts close with sin, give ourselves up to it, and
make no stand at all against it? Would we not in our deepest and most
secret hearts welcome it, and embrace it, look out for it with desire
and delight, and part with it with regret? But if, as a matter of fact, we
at our deepest and most hidden heart turn from sin, flee from it, fight
against it, rejoice when we are rid of it, and have horror at the return
of it, - what better proof than that could Christ and His angels have
that at bottom we are His and not the devil's? And that grace, at
bottom, has our hearts, and not sin; heaven, and not hell? The
apostle's protesting cry is our cry also; we also delight in the law of
God after our most inward man. For, after our saddest surprises into
sin, after its worst outbreaks and overthrows, such all the time were
our reluctances, recalcitrations, and resistances, that, swept away as
we were, yet all the time, and after it was again over, it was with some
good conscience that we said to Christ that He knew all things, and
that He knew that we loved Him.
'O benefit of ill! now I find true
That better is by evil still made better;
And ruined love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater,
So I return rebuked to my content,
And gain by ill thrice more than I have spent.'
Yes; it is a sure and certain proof how truly we love our dearest friend, that, after all our envy and ill-will, yet it is as true as that God is in
heaven that, all the time, maugre the devil of self that remains in our
heart, - after he has done his worst - we would still pluck out our eyes
for our friend and shed our blood. I have no better proof to myself of
the depth and the divineness of my love to my friend than just this,
that I still love him and love him more tenderly and loyally, after
having so treacherously hurt him. And my heavenly friends and my
earthly friends, if they will still have me, must both be content to go
into the same bundle both of my remaining enmity and my increasing
love; my remainders of sin, and my slow growth in regeneration. So
when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas,
lovest thou Me more than these? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou
knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him again the second time,
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord;
thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him the third time,
Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? Peter was grieved because He
said unto him the third time, Lovest thou Me? And he said unto Him,
Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee!
And, to sum up all - more than your humility, more than your
watchfulness, more than your prayerfulness, more than to teach you
war, and more than to try your love, the dregs and remainders of sin
have been left in your regenerate heart to exalt and to extol the grace
of God. In Emmanuel's very words, it has all been to make you a
monument of God's mercy. I put it to yourselves, then, ye people of
God: does that not satisfy you for a reason, and for an explanation, and
for a justification of all your shame and pain, and of all your bondage
and misery and wretchedness since you knew the Lord? Is there not a
heart in you that says, Yes! it was worth all my corruption and
pollution and misery to help to manifest forth and to magnify the
glory of the grace of God? You seize on Emmanuel's word that you are
a monument of mercy. Somehow that word pleases and reposes you.
Yes, that is what out of all these postregeneration years you are. You
would have been a monument to God's mercy had you, like the thief
on the cross, been glorified on the same day on which you were first
justified. But it will neither be the day of your justification nor the day
of your glorification that will make you the greatest of all the
monuments that shall ever be raised to the praise of God's grace; it will be the days of your sanctification that will do that. Paul was a
blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious at his conversion, but he
had to be a lifetime in grace and an apostle above all the twelve before
he became the chiefest of sinners and the most wretched of saints.
And though your first forgiveness was, no doubt, a great proof of the
grace of God, yet it was nothing, nothing at all, to your forgiveness to-
day. You had no words for the wonder and the praise of your
forgiveness to-day. You just took to your lips the cup of salvation and
let that silent action speak aloud your monumental praise. You were a
sinner at your regeneration, else you would not have been
regenerated. But you were not then the chief of sinners. But now. Ah,
now! Those words, the chief of sinners, were but idle words in Paul's
mouth. He did not know what he was saying. For, what has horrified
and offended other men when it has been spoken with bated breath to
them about envy, and hate, and malice, and revenge, and suchlike
remainders of hell, all that has been a breath of life and hope to you. It
has been to you as when Christian, in the Valley of the Shadow of
Death, heard a voice in the darkness which proved to him that there
was another sinner at the mouth of hell besides himself. There is no
text that comes oftener to your mind than this, that whoso hateth his
brother is a murderer; and, communicant as you are, you feel and you
know and you are sure that there are many men lying in lime waiting
the day of judgment to whom it would be more tolerable than for you
were it not that you are to be at that day the highest monument in
heaven or earth to the redeeming, pardoning, and saving grace of God.
Yes, this is the name that shall be written on you; this is the name that
shall be read on you of all who shall see you in heaven; this name that
Emmanuel pronounced over Mansoul that day from His ascending
chariot-steps, a very Spectacle of wonder, and a very Monument of the
mercy and the grace of God.