Chapter 19: Christian Perfection God may prefer your continued impenitence, and your damnation, to using any other influences than he does use to make you repent.
But for you to infer from this, that he does not wish you to yield to the influences he does use, is strange logic! Suppose your servant should reason so, and say, "I don't believe my master means I should obey him, because he don't stand by me all day, to keep me at work." Is that a just conclusion? Very likely, the master's time is so valuable, that it would be a greater evil to his business, than for that servant to stand still all day.
So it is in the government of God. If God were to bring all the power of his government to bear on one individual, he might save that individual, while at the same time, it would so materially derange his government, that it would be a vastly greater evil than for that individual to go to hell. In the same way, in the case of a Christian, God has furnished him with all the means of sanctification, and required him to be perfect, and now he turns round and says, "God does not really prefer my being perfect; if he did, he would make me so."
This is just the argument of the impenitent sinner, and no better in one case than the other.
The plain truth is, God does desire, of both, that in the circumstances in which they are placed, they should do just what he commands them to do.
2. They do not expect it themselves.
The great part of the church do not really expect to be any more pious than they are.
3. Much of the time, they do not even desire perfect sanctification.
4. They are satisfied with their hunger and thirst after righteousness, and do not expect to be filled.
Here let me say, that hunger and thirst after holiness is not holiness. The desire of a thing is not the thing desired. If they hunger and thirst after holiness, they ought to give
God no rest, till he comes up to his promise, that they shall be filled with holiness, or made perfectly holy.
5. They overlook the great design of the gospel.
Too long has the church been in the habit of thinking that the great design of the gospel is, to save men from the punishment of sin, whereas its real design and object is to deliver men from sin. But Christians have taken the other ground, and think of nothing but that they are to go on in sin, and all they hope for is to be forgiven, and when they die made holy in heaven. Oh, if they only realized that the whole framework of the gospel is designed to break the power of sin, and fill men on earth with all the fullness of God, how soon there would be one steady blaze of love in the hearts of God's people all over the world!
6. The promises are not understood, and not appropriated by faith.
If the church would read the Bible, and lay hold of every promise there, they would find them exceeding great and precious. But now the church loses its inheritance, and remains ignorant of the extent of the blessings she may receive. Had I time tonight I could lead you