Chiefest Sinners Objects of Choicest Mercy
What sadness will seize upon thee at the last, when God shall fix upon thee out of the crowd and point at thee! Luke 19:27: But those
My enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before Me. How solemnly will He execute every enemy at the last! They shall be brought out, shackled one by one, and Christ will sit and behold it.
"Lo, here is one of My enemies; I have found him out for all his fair hopes of escape." When men and angels shall say, "Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength; this is the man that set up other gods in his heart; that was so great a fool as to think his pleasure, riches, strength, and honor to be his god." Ah, fool with a witness, to think that a god could be of thine own making!
Chiefest Sinners Objects of Choicest Mercy This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. - 1 Timothy 1:15
1. Observation.
The salvation of sinners was the main design of Christ's coming into the world.
2. Observation.
God does often make the chiefest sinners objects of His choicest mercy.
For the latter, that God does so:
1. God has formerly made invitations to such.
See what a black generation they were in Isaiah 1, by the scroll of their sins. They were rebels, and rebels against Him that had nursed them. Verse 2: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me. And in this respect they were worse than the beasts they were masters of; the stupid ox and the dull ass outstripped them in ingenuity. Verse 3: The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel does not know, My people does not consider.
He calls upon heaven and earth to judge between them, verse 2. He appeals to men and angels, as a jury, to give their verdict whether these people had not been the most disingenuous and ungrateful people in the world. Or if by heaven and earth be meant magistrates and people, as in the prophetical style they are usually taken, God then appeals to themselves, to let their own natural consciences, and the common ingenuity their sins had left them, judge between Him and them.
He comes to charge them, verse 4, laden with iniquity. They had such great weights lying upon them that they were not able to stir; or laden with it, as some crab tree is with sour fruit. They had sprung from a wicked stock; they had corrupted one another by their society
and example, as rotten apples putrefy the sound ones that lie near them.
They had been incorrigible under judgments. God had used the rod again and again; but since there was no reformation, He was even weary of whipping them any longer. Verse 5: Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more. They were also so universally infected that there was no sound part about them, but running sores all over; both head and heart were infected—corrupt notions in the one, and corrupt affections in the other.
Or if you take it prophetically, the head signifies the chief magistrate, the heart the judges, and the feet the common people. The fire which had burned their cities had not consumed their lusts nor dried up their sins. Verse 7: Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire, your land strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. And had it not been for a small remnant, they had been as bad as Sodom and Gomorrah, verse
Their services were polluted, vain, and an abomination to Him, verse 13; a trouble to Him—His soul hated them; He was weary of them, verse 14—for they came with their bloody, murderous hands into God's presence.
Yet though He justly charged them with these horrid crimes, He gives them assurance of entertainment if they would return to Him.
Verse 18: Come now, and let us reason together. He would condescend to debate the case with them, when one would have
thought He should have said, "I will have nothing to do with such a crew as they." God loves to discourse with men about this argument of pardon, and He loves that men should hear Him speak concerning it. He would dispute them out of their sins into good and right apprehensions of His mercy.
So Isaiah 31:6: Turn ye unto Him from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted. Revolted—there is their sin; deeply—there is the aggravation of it; and being also children of Israel, a people of much mercy and miracles, there is another aggravation. Yet, Turn unto Him against whom you have thus sinned.
The great objection of a penitent is this: "I have sinned, and I know not whether God will receive me." Consider this: God knows thy sin better than thou dost, yet He kindly calls to thee, and promises thee as good a reception as if thou hadst never sinned.
So Jeremiah 3:1: They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? But thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to Me, saith the Lord.
Though thou hast been a common whore, and made all comers— every idol welcome—and been in league with many sins; yet upon thy return I will own thee. These are God's warrants for encouragement.
2. God has given examples of this in Scripture.
Adam, the ring-leader of all the rebellions of mankind in the world, had the promise of the Seed of the woman to break the serpent's head made to him. And in the genealogy of Christ he is called the Son
of God (Luke 3:38), not only in respect of creation—for so the devil is called the son of God—but in a nearer relation. Yet all that deluge of wickedness which has overflowed the world since the Fall sprang out of his loins.
Nay, Abraham, the father of the faithful, was probably an idolater in Ur of the Chaldees, and a worshipper of the sun and fire, as his fathers were (Joshua 24:2). Yet God makes a particular covenant with this man, presents him with a richer act of grace than any besides him had in the world—even that the Messiah, the great
Redeemer of the world, should come from his seed. This man is set up as the pattern of faith to others, and his bosom seems to be a great receptacle of saints in glory (Luke 16:22–23).
Israel's sins were as a thick cloud, yet this powerful Sun did melt them. Isaiah 44:22: I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions; and, as a cloud, thy sins. A sullen, gloomy morning often ends in a well-complexioned noon.
Manasseh is an eminent example of this doctrine.
His story, 2 Chronicles 33, represents him as black as a devil, if all the aggravations of his sin are considered.
[1] First. It was against knowledge.
He had a pious education under a religious father; an education usually leaves some tinctures and impressions of religion. No doubt the instructions his father Hezekiah taught him, and the exemplary holiness he had seen in him, were sometimes awakened in his memory and recoiled upon his conscience.
[2] Secondly. His place and station—a king.
The sins of kings are like their robes, more scarlet and crimson than the sins of a peasant. Their example usually infects their subjects. As they are not without their attendance in their progresses and recreations, so neither are they without followers in their vices and virtues.
[3] Thirdly. The restoration of idolatry.
Had he found the worship of the host of heaven derived to him by succession from his father, and the idols set up to his hand, the continuance of them would have had less of sin, because more of temptation. But he built again those high places and altars to idols after they had been broken down (v. 3), and dashed in pieces that reformation his father had completed.
[4] Fourthly. Affronting God to His very face.
He set up his idols, as it were, to nose God, and built altars in the house of the Lord, and in the two courts of His temple, whereof God had said He would put His name there forever (vv. 4, 5, 7). He brought in all the stars of heaven to be sharers in that worship which was due only to the God of heaven. What, could he find no other place for his idols but in the very temple of God? Must God be cast out of His house to make room for Baal?
[5] Fifthly. Murder.
Perhaps of his children, whom he caused to pass through the fire as an offering to his idol (v. 6). It may be it was only for purification; but he had the guilt of much innocent blood upon him, the streams
whereof ran down in every part of the city. 2 Kings 21:16: Moreover Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled
Jerusalem with blood from one end to the other.
[6] Sixthly. A covenant with the devil.
He used enchantments and witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit (v. 6). Yea, he had acquaintance with more devils than one, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards in the plural number.
[7] Seventhly. Other men's sins.
He did not only lead the people by his example, but compelled them by his commands. 2 Chronicles 33:9: So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom God had destroyed before the children of Israel.
Hereby he contracted the guilt of the whole nation upon himself.
[8] Eighthly. Obstinacy against admonitions.
2 Kings 21:10: God spoke to him and to his people, but they would not hearken, nor alter their course.
[9] Ninthly. Continuance in it.
He ascended the throne young, at twelve years old (v. 1). It is uncertain how long he continued in this sin. Torniellus thinks fifteen years; Bellarmine, twenty-seven; Kinchi, fifty years, reckoning but five years of his life after his restoration.
What a world of sin, and aggravations of it, were there in this man!
And yet God was entreated (v. 19).
3. The stock from which Christ came seems to intimate this.
God might have kept the stock from which Christ descended according to the flesh pure, and free from being tainted with any notorious crimes; yet we find sins of a crimson dye even among them.
There are no women reckoned up in Christ's genealogy but such as in Scripture are noted for looseness. Matthew 1:3: Tamar, who played the harlot with Judah her father-in-law (Genesis 38). Rahab, verse 5, the harlot of Jericho. Ruth, verse 5, a Gentile and a Moabitess, the root of whose generation was Lot's son by incest with his own daughter. Bathsheba, verse 6, David's adulteress. He chose these repenting sinners, out of whose loins Christ was to come, that the greatest sinners might not be afraid to come to Him.
Was David, whose Son our Savior is called, much better? It is true, he was a man after God's own heart, yet very notorious for that act of murder and adultery, and with more aggravating circumstances than usually are met with in acts of the like nature (2 Samuel 11). Uriah was a godly man, and had a sense of the condition of the church and nation whereof he was a member (v. 11); and such a man's bed David is not only content to defile, but he pollutes his soul with drunkenness (v. 13), lays snares for his life, not in a manly, but in a sly and treacherous manner. While he caresses him and shows him a fair countenance in his palace, he draws up secret instructions to Joab so to order the business that Uriah might be thrust into his
grave, and makes him the post to carry the commission for his own death (vv. 15–16).
After all this, he has no remorse when he hears of the loss of so godly and valiant a man, but wipes his mouth, and sweeps all the dirt to the door of providence (v. 25). Now Christ's stock being thus tainted was, one would think, an evidence that penitents, though formerly of the greatest pollutions, might be welcome to Him; and that as He picked out such out of whose loins to proceed, so He would pick out such also in whose hearts to reside.
4. It was Christ's employment in the world to court and gain such creatures.
The first thing He did, while in the manger, was to snatch some of the devil's prophets out of his service, and take them into His own
(Matthew 2:1): some of the Magi, who were astrologers and idolaters. When He fled from Herod's cruelty, He chose Egypt, the most idolatrous country in the world, for His sanctuary—a place where the people worshiped oxen, crocodiles, cats, garlic, putida numina, all kinds of riff-raff—to show that He often comes to sojourn in the blackest souls.
The first people He took care to preach to were seamen, who are usually the rudest and most debauched sort of men, as gaining the vices as well as the commodities of those nations they traffic with (Matthew 4:13). The inhabitants of those sea-coasts are said to sit in darkness (v. 16), in darkness both of sin and ignorance, just as the Egyptians were not able to stir in that thick darkness which was sent
as a plague upon them. And the country, by reason of the vices of the inhabitants, is called the region and shadow of death, a title properly belonging to hell itself.
To call sinners to repentance was the errand of His coming, and He usually delighted to choose such as had not the least pretense to merit (Mark 2:17): Matthew a publican, Zacchaeus an extortioner, stores of that generation of men and harlots, and very little company besides.
He chose His attendants out of the devil's rabble; and He was more Jesus, a Savior, among this sort of trash than among all other sorts of people, for all His design was to get clients out of hell itself. What was that woman whom He must needs go out of His way to convert?
A harlot (John 4:18); an idolater, for the Samaritans had a mixed worship, a linsey-woolsey religion, and upon that account were hateful to the Jews. She continued in her whoredom at the very time
Christ spoke to her, yet He made her a monument of His grace, and not only so, but the first preacher of the gospel to her neighbors (v.
29): Is not this the Christ? and an instrument to conduct them to Him, Come, see a man which told me all things, etc.
Was any more smutted than Mary Magdalene? Seven devils would make her sooty to purpose, and so many Christ cast out of her (Mark
16:9). Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He cast seven devils. This lustful devil He turns into a weeping saint.
What was that Canaanitish woman who had so powerful a faith infused? One sprung of a cursed stock, hateful to God, rooted out of the pleasant land—a dog, not a child. She comes a dog, but returns a child. Christ made this crab in a wilderness to bring forth fruit, even the best that heaven could afford, namely, the fruit of faith; and larger and better bunches of it than at that time sprouted out of any branches of the Jewish vine, so well planted and so often watered by Christ Himself.
When He comes to act His last part in the world, He saves a thief who was got to hell-gates, ready to be pushed in by the devil.
Do you find examples among the Pharisees? No. Dunghill-sinners take heaven by violence, while proud Pharisees lose it by their own righteousness. Scribes and doctors continue devils in the chair, while harlots commence saints from the stews, and the thief proceeds a convert on the cross.
Since there was but one whom in His own person He converted after He went to heaven, what was he? One that breathed out slaughter and threatenings against the church (Acts 9:1). To do so was as common with him, and as natural to him, as to suck in air and breathe it out again. This man, galloping to hell as fast as his mad rage and passion could carry him, He stops in his career, ordains a preacher out of a persecutor, and gives him as large a commission as He had given any of His favorites; for He makes him the chief apostle of the Gentiles.
What bogs and miry places did Christ drain and make fruitful gardens! What barren and thorny wildernesses did He change into pleasant paradises! He made subjects of vengeance objects of mercy.
He told the woman of Samaria, who lived in fornication, that He was the Messiah (John 4:25): The woman saith unto Him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am He—which He never discovered to the selfrighteous Pharisees, nor indeed in so many words to His disciples, until Peter's confession of Him.
5. The commission Christ gave to His apostles was to this purpose.
He bids them proclaim the promise free to all. Mark 16:15: Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. All the world, every creature. He puts no difference between men in this respect. Though you meet with them in the likeness of beasts and devils, never so wicked, never so abominable, as long as they are creatures, reach out the cup of salvation to them if they will drink; open the treasures of grace to them if they will receive them; indent with them for nothing but faith for justification, and profession of it for their salvation.
This commission is set out by the parable of a king commanding his servants to fetch the maimed, halt, and blind, with their wounds, sores, and infirmities about them (Luke 14:21, 23): Bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. Yea, and go out into the highways and hedges, and those loathsome persons,
those dregs of mankind, whom you shall find swarming with vermin, and lousing themselves under every hedge—bring them in. If they plead their rags and nastiness as unsuitable to My rank and quality, compel them; force them against their own natural inclinations and doubts, that My house may be filled.
God will have heaven filled with such, when self-righteous persons refuse Him. When you come to heaven, to sit down with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, you will find some—and a great many—that were once as filthy morally as these hedge-birds were naturally, who once had as many lusts creeping about them as there were frogs in Egypt.
Such a compulsion as this, spoken of here, there was in the primitive times by the power of the Spirit of grace. Two stage-players, who in their acting scoffed at the Christian religion, were converted and proved martyrs; one under Diocletian, the other under Julian.
6. The practice of the Spirit after Christ's ascension, to lay hold of such persons.
1. Some out of the worst families in the world.
One out of Herod's (Acts 13:1): Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.
Either Herod Antipas, who derided Christ before Pilate, or Herod Agrippa, who put James to death—whichever of these Herods it was, it was not likely that in such a family he should suck in any principles advantageous to the Christian religion. Being brought up with him,
he was either his playfellow when young, or his confidant when grown; yet out of the family of this wicked prince He calls out one, to make not only an object of His mercy, but an instrument of it to others—contrary to the force of education, which usually roots bad principles deep in the heart.
It is likely to this intent the Holy Ghost takes particular notice of the place of Manaen's education, when the families where the rest named with him were bred up are not mentioned. Some rude and rough stones were taken out of Nero's palace—some who were servants to the most abominable tyrant, and the greatest monster of mankind; one who set Rome on fire and played on his harp while the flames crackled about the city; who ripped up his mother's belly to see the place where he lay. Would any of the civiler sort of mankind be attendants upon such a devil? Yet some of this monster's servants became saints. Philippians 4:22: All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Caesar's household. To hear of saints in Nero's family is as great a prodigy as to hear of saints in hell.
God before had promised His grace to Egypt, the most idolatrous country. There He would have an altar erected (Isaiah 19:18–20): In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts; in that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt. And indeed the gospel was famous in Egypt, both at the Christian school at Alexandria and for many eminent lights.
2. Some out of the worst vices.
The Ephesians were as bad as any, such that Paul calls them darkness itself (Ephesians 5:8): For ye were sometimes darkness.
There was not only an eclipse, or a dark mask upon them, but they were changed into the very nature of night. They were great idolaters; the temple of Diana, adored and resorted to by all Asia and the whole world, was in that city (Acts 19:27): That the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth. And they cried up this statue they pretended fell down from Jupiter above
Christ, who was preached by Paul.
They were given to magic and other diabolical arts; yet many of these were weaned from their idol and their magic, and of darkness were made light in the Lord—which is more than if you saw a black piece of pitch changed into a clear piece of crystal, or a stone ascend into the nature of a glittering star.
Take a view of another corporation at Corinth, of as filthy persons as ever you heard of (1 Corinthians 6:11): such were some of you. After the apostle has drawn out a catalogue of their sins against the light of nature, and made the enumeration so full that very little can be added, he closes it with this expression, such were some of you. Not all, but some. But ye are washed, etc.
They were not merely persons who had committed some few acts of those sins, but such as had lived and conversed in them, and were grown into a settled course and habit of wickedness; so that sin had, as it were, taken possession of their very nature. They were become
the very filth, mud, and rubbish of hell itself. And yet from such did God make saints, and of such did Christ form angels of light out of devils.
Well then, how many flinty rocks has God dissolved into a stream of tears? How many hard hearts has He made to bleed and melt? That which is now pure gold has been earthy and polluted.
I shall only add this to the whole.
Great sins are made preparations by God to some men's conversion— not in their own nature (that is impossible), but by the wise disposal of God; which Mr. Burgess illustrates thus. As a child whose coat is but a little dirty does not have it presently washed; but when he falls over head and ears in the mire, it is taken off and washed immediately. The child might have gone many a day with a little dirt, had not such an accident happened.
Peter might have retained his proud and vainglorious humor, had he not fallen so foully in the denial of his Master; but when he fell into the jakes and puddle, it promoted his conversion—for so Christ calls it (Luke 22:32): And when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. It was conversion in a new edition, and you do not find him again in the same boasting vanity.
David's falling into the sin of murder and adultery was the occasion of the ransacking of his soul, which you do not find him so intent upon at another time. He digs all about to the very root (Psalm 51:5):
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. This sin had stirred and raked up all the mud in his heart, and
made him see himself an abominable creature. Therefore, verse 9, he desires God to hide His face from his sins; he was so loathsome he would not have any look upon him—fling all this mud out of my soul
—and prays more earnestly for a new heart and a right spirit.
So when a wicked man falls into some grievous sin, which his conscience frowns upon him and lashes him for, he looks out for a shelter which, in all his peaceable wickedness, he never did.
[2] Secondly. Why God does choose the greatest sinners, and lets His elect run on so far in sin before He turns them.
1. There is a more passive disposition in the greatest sinners than in moral or superstitious men to see their need.
This is because they have no self-righteousness to boast of. A man's blameless outward carriage, and freedom from the common sins of the times and places wherein he lives, many times proves a snare of death to him, and makes him more cold and faint toward Christ. He possesses himself with imaginations that Christ cannot but look upon him, though he never so much as sets his face toward Him.
Because such men are not drenched in those villanies wherein others wallow, their consciences sit quiet under this moral carriage, and gall them not by any sharp self-reflections. Therefore, when the threatenings of the law are denounced against such and such sins, these men wipe their mouths, being untainted from those sins that are thus cursed, and vainly glory in their gay and gaudy plumes. They bless God with the Pharisee, that they are not sinners of such a
scarlet dye, that they perform such and such duties; and so they go on without ever seeing a necessity of the new birth. By this means the strength of sin is more compacted and condensed in them.
Superstitious and formal men are hardly reduced to their right wits: partly because of a defect in reason, from which those extravagancies arise; and partly because those false habits and that spirit of error possessing their faculties render them incapable of more generous impressions. Besides, they are more tenacious of the opinions they have sucked in, which have gotten the empire and command over their souls. Such misguided zeal fortifies men against proposals of grace, and fastens them in a more obstinate inflexibleness to any converting motions.
This self-righteous temper is like an external heat gotten into the body, which produces a hectic fever, and is not easily perceived until it is incurable. Naturally, it is a harder matter to part with selfrighteousness than to part with gross sins; for the former is more deeply rooted upon the stock of self-love, a principle which does not depart from us without the loss of our very nature. It has more arguments to plead for it; it has natural conscience as a patron of it.
Whereas a great sinner stands speechless at reproofs, and a faithful monitor has a good second and correspondent of natural conscience within a man's own breast.
It was not so much the gross sins of the Jews against the light of nature, as the setting up of the idol of their own righteousness, that
was the block to hinder them from submitting to the righteousness of God (Romans 10:3).
Christ came to His own, and His own received Him not (John 1:11).
Those who seemed to have His peculiar stamp and mark upon them, who had their heads in heaven by some kind of resemblance to God in moral righteousness, being undefiled with the common pollutions of the world, yet received Him not. Meanwhile publicans and harlots got the start of them, and ran before them to catch hold of the tenders of grace (Matthew 21:31): Publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you.
It is as travelers who have loitered away their time in an alehouse, being sensible how the darkness of the night creeps upon them, spur on and outstrip those who were many miles on their way, and so reach their stage before them. So these publicans and harlots, who were at a great distance from heaven, arrived there before those who, like the young man, were not far from it.
Great sinners are more easily convinced of the notorious wickedness of their lives, and, reflecting upon themselves because of their horrid crimes against the light of nature, are more inclined to endeavor an escape from the devil's slavery. Their consciences fright and shake them into a compliance with the doctrine of redemption. Whereas those who by nature do the things contained in the law are so much a law unto themselves, that it is difficult to persuade them of the necessity of conforming to another law, and of parting with this selflaw in the matter of justification.
As metals of the noblest substance are hardest to be polished, so men of the most generous natural and moral endowments are more difficultly argued into a state of Christianity than those of more drossy conversations. Cassianus speaks very peremptorily in this case: Frequenter vidimus de frigidis et carnalibus ad spiritualem venisse fervorem; de lepidis et animalibus numquam.
2. To show the insufficiency of nature for such a work as conversion is, that men may not fall down and idolize their own wit and power.
A change from acts of sin to moral duties may be effected by natural strength, and by the prevalency of natural conscience; for the very same motives which led to sin—education, interest, profit—may, upon a change of circumstances, guide men to an outward morality.
But a change to the contrary grace is supernatural.
Two things are certain in nature.
[1] First. Natural inclinations never change except by some superior virtue.
A lodestone will not cease to draw iron while that attractive quality remains in it. The wolf can never love the lamb, nor the lamb the wolf; nothing can act otherwise than suitably to its nature. Water cannot but moisten; fire cannot but burn. So likewise the corrupt nature of man, being possessed with an invincible contrariety and enmity against God, will never suffer him to comply with God.
The inclinations of a sinner to sin, being strengthened by the frequency of sinful acts, have as great a power over him, and are as
natural to him, as any qualities are to natural agents. Being stronger than any sympathies in the world, they cannot, by a man's own power, nor by the power of any other nature equal to it, be turned into a contrary channel.
[2] Secondly. Nothing can act beyond its own principle and nature.
Nothing in the world can raise itself to a higher rank of being than that which nature has placed it in. A spark cannot make itself a star, though it mount a little upward; nor can a plant endue itself with sense, nor a beast adorn itself with reason, nor a man make himself an angel. Thorns cannot bring forth grapes, nor thistles produce figs, because such fruits are above the nature of those plants. So neither can our corrupt nature bring forth grace, which is a fruit above it.
Effectus non excedit virtutem suae causae. Grace is more excellent than nature, and therefore cannot be the fruit of nature.
This is Christ's conclusion (Matthew 12:33–34): How can you, being evil, speak good things?—not so much as the buds and blossoms of words, much less the fruit of actions. Men can no more change their natures than a viper can cast off its poison.
Now though what has been said is true, yet there is nothing man more affects in the world than self-sufficiency and independence upon any power but his own. This temper is as much riveted in his nature as any other false principle whatsoever. Man derives it from his first parents as the prime legacy bequeathed to his nature, for it
was the first thing discovered in man at his fall: he would be as God, independent of Him.
Therefore God, to cross this principle, suffers His elect, like Lazarus, to lie in the grave until they stink, that there may be no excuse to ascribe their resurrection to their own power. If a putrefied carcass should be brought to life, no one would imagine that it inspired itself with that active principle. God lets men run on so far in sin that they, as it were, unman themselves, that He may proclaim to all the world that we are unable to do anything of ourselves, at first, toward our recovery, without a superior principle.
The evidence of this appears if we consider:
[1] First. Man's subjection under sin.
He is sold under sin (Romans 7:14), and brought into captivity to the law of sin (v. 23). Sin is called a law, because it seems to have a legal authority over him. Man is not only a slave to one sin, but to many
(Titus 3:3), serving divers lusts.
When a man is sold under the power of a thousand lusts, every one of which has an absolute tyranny over him, and rules him as a sovereign by a law; when he is bound by a thousand cords and fetters, and carried where his lords please, against the dictates of his own conscience and the force of natural light—can anyone imagine that his own power can rescue him from the strength of these masters, who claim such a right to him, keep such force upon him, and have so often baffled his strength when he attempted to resist them?
[2] Secondly. Man's affection for them.
He does not only serve them, but serves them with delight (Titus 3:3). They are pleasures as well as lusts—friends as well as lords. Will any man willingly leave his voluptuousness, or forsake those sins that please and flatter his flesh? Will a man endeavor to flee from those lords whom he serves with affection, having as much delight in being bound a slave to these lusts as the devil has in binding him?
Therefore, when you see a man cast away his pleasures, deprive himself of those contentments to which his soul was once knit, and walk in paths contrary to corrupt nature, you may search for the cause anywhere rather than in nature itself.
No piece of dirty, muddy clay can form itself into a neat and handsome vessel; no plain piece of timber can fit itself for a building, much less a crooked one; nor can a man born blind give himself eyes.
God deals with men in this case as He did with Abraham. He would not give Isaac while Sarah's womb, in natural probability, might have borne him; but when her womb was dead, and age had taken away all natural strength of conception, then God gave him, that it might appear he was not a child of nature, but a child of promise.
I have been the more full on these two heads (which I design rather as things premised than as formal reasons), because these two principles—common honesty and self-sufficiency—are the great impediments to conversion, and are natural to most men.
[3] Thirdly. God does this for His own glory.
[1] First. His patience.
We wonder, when we see a notorious sinner, how God can let His thunders lie still by him, and His sword rust in its sheath. And indeed, when such persons are converted, they themselves wonder that God did not draw His sword and pierce their bowels, or shoot one of His arrows into their hearts, all that while.
But God, by such forbearance, shows Himself to be God indeed, and something in this act infinitely above such a weak creature as man is.
Hosea 11:9: I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man.
When God had reckoned up their sins before, and they might have expected the sentence after the reading of the charge, God tells them
He would not destroy them, He would not execute them, because He was God. If He were not God, He could not keep Himself from pouring out just vengeance upon them.
If a man inherited all the meekness of all the angels and all the men that ever were in the world, he could not bear with patience the extravagancies and injuries done in the world for the space of one day. For none but God, that is, one infinitely longsuffering, can bear with them.
There was not a sin committed in the world before the coming of Christ in the flesh, but it was a commendatory letter of God's forbearance. Romans 3:25 speaks of the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God. And there is not a sin committed before the coming of Christ into the soul, but it bears the
same testimony and gives the same record. The greater the number of sins that are past, and the greater those sins are, the more trophies are erected to God's longsuffering.
The reason why the grace of the gospel appeared so late in the world was to testify God's patience. The apostle takes special notice of this longsuffering toward himself, in God's bearing with such a persecutor: 1 Timothy 1:16, Howbeit, for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him.
This was Christ's end in letting him run so far: that He might show forth not a few mites, grains, or ounces of patience, but all longsuffering—μακροθυμίαν—longsuffering without measure or weight, as it were by wholesale; and this as a pattern—τύπον—to all ages of the world. A pattern is but a shadow in respect of the substance; it shows that all the ages of the world should never waste that patience of which, at that time, He had manifested but a specimen. A pattern, we know, is less than the whole piece of cloth from which it is cut; and an essay is but a short taste of a man's skill, not a full discovery of all his art.
So the first miracle Christ wrought, turning water into wine, was but a sample of that power which afterward appeared in greater works.
And the first miracle God wrought in Egypt, turning Aaron's rod into a serpent, was but a sample of that power which would produce far greater wonders. In the same way, this patience shown to Paul was
but a small essay of divine meekness, a little piece cut from that whole treasure of patience which God would be continually dispensing to sinners, and which would never be exhausted until the world itself ceased to be.
This sample or pattern extended but to a few years. Paul was but young—the Scripture calls him a young man (Acts 7:58), about thirty-six years of age—yet he calls it all longsuffering. Ah, Paul! many since have had far larger measures cut out of this patience, reaching not only to thirty, but to forty, fifty, or sixty years.
[2] Secondly. His grace.
It is partly for the admiration of this grace that God has appointed the day of judgment. It is a remarkable expression in 2
Thessalonians 1:10: When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe, in that day.
Has not Christ glory enough in heaven with His Father? Will He come on purpose to seek glory from such worthless creatures as His saints are? What is it that glorifies Christ in them? It is the gracious work He has wrought within them. The word used is ἐνδοξασθῆναι, to be inglorified in his saints—that is, glorified by something within them. They glorify Christ actively and objectively, as the creatures glorify the wisdom and power of God by affording matter for praise.
So the work of God in the saints affords matter of praise to angels and of admiration to devils.
The apostle uses two expressions: glorified and admired. To be glorified is the work of angels and saints, who shall celebrate His
praises, as nobles congratulate a prince after a great conquest. To be admired is what even devils and the damned shall do; for though their malice and misery will not allow them to praise Him, yet His inexpressible love, in making such black interiors so beautiful, shall astonish them. In this sense, things under the earth shall bow to the name of Jesus, that is, to the name of a Savior.
This is the name God gave Him at first (Philippians 2:9–10), and upon His exaltation it was confirmed (Hebrews 5:9), when, being made perfect—that is, exalted—He became the author of eternal salvation, having not only the name but the power of saving conferred upon Him. They shall confess that He is Lord (Philippians
2:11), that is, that He acted as a Lord indeed, prevailing over all the opposition that great sinners raised against Him.
The whole trial of the saints, and the sentence of their blessedness, shall be finished before that of the damned (Matthew 25:35, 44), so that the entire scene of His love, and the wonders of the work of faith, being laid open, may strike them with the greater amazement.
That this is Christ's design—to be thus glorified in His grace and power—appears by the apostle's prayer (2 Thessalonians 1:11–12), that the Thessalonians might be among those in whom Christ would be so glorified. Therefore he prays that God would fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness—that grace in which He so delights—and carry on the work of faith with power, that the name of Christ might be glorified in them, as in all His saints.
Ordinary conversion is an act of grace; Barnabas so interprets it (Acts 11:21, 23), when a great number believed. What abundance of grace, then, is expended in converting a company of extraordinary sinners!
It is the glory of a man to pass over an offense (Proverbs 19:11), that is, it manifests a quality which it is honorable for him to possess. If it is an honor to pass by an offense simply, then the greater the offense, and the more offenses that are passed by, the greater the glory must be, because the same gracious quality is displayed with greater strength and vigor. So it must argue a more exceeding grace in God to remit many and great sins in a man, than to forgive only a few and lesser offenses.
[1] First. The fullness of His grace.
He hereby shows that there is more grace in Him than there can be sin in us, or in the whole world.
He lets some sinners run mightily upon His score, to manifest that though they are beggared, yet His grace is not; that though they have spent all their stock upon their swinish lusts, they have not drained
His treasures—no more than the sun is emptied of its strength by exhaling the ill vapors of so many dunghills.
This was His design in giving the moral law. Finis operis—the event of the law—was to increase sin; but finis operantis—the intention of the Lawgiver—was thereby to glorify His grace. Romans 5:20:
Moreover the law entered, that the offense might abound; but
where sin abounded, grace did much more abound— ὑπερεπερίσσευσεν, it superabounded.
When the law of nature was, as it were, out of print, and so blurred that it could scarcely be read, God brought the moral law (the counterpart of the law of nature) into the world in a new edition.
Thereby sin received new aggravations, as being rebellion against clearer light, swelling and breaking over this mighty bank of the law laid in its way. Yet this served the fullness of His grace, which now had more abundant matter to work upon, and a larger field in which to sow its inexhaustible seed—grace rising higher than sin, and bearing it down before it; as the rolling tide of the sea rises higher than the streams of the river and beats them back with all their mud and filth.
It was mercy in God to create us; it is abundant mercy to make any new creatures after they had forfeited their happiness. 1 Peter 1:3 speaks of this as according to His abundant mercy—πολὺ ἔλεος, according to His much mercy. But it is overflowing, exceeding, abundant grace to make such deformed creatures new creatures; grace not only full, but more than full.
[2] Secondly. The freeness of grace.
None can entertain the imagination that Christ should be a debtor to sin, unless in vengeance; much less a debtor to the worst of sinners.
But if Christ should take only persons of moral and natural excellencies, men might suspect that He were, in some way or other,
engaged to them, and that the gift of salvation were limited to the endowments of nature and the good exercise of a man's own will.
But when He puts no difference between persons of the least and those of the greatest demerit—when He affects the foulest monsters of sin as well as the fairest children of nature—He builds triumphal arches to His grace upon this rubbish, and makes men and angels gaze with admiration upon these infinitely free compassions, when
He takes souls full of boils and sores into His arms.
For it is hereby manifest that the God and Lord of nature is no more bound to His servant, as touching the gift of salvation, when she carries it most smoothly with Him, than when she rebels against Him with the highest hand; and that Christ is at perfect liberty from any conditions but those of His own appointing—namely, faith—and that He can and will embrace the dirt and mud, as well as the beauty and varnish of nature, if they believe with the like precious faith.
Therefore it is frequently God's method in Scripture, just before the offer of pardon, to sum up the sinner's debts with all their aggravations, to convince them of their insolvency to satisfy so large a score, and also to manifest the freeness and vastness of His grace.
Isaiah 43:22–24: But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob; but thou hast been weary of me, O Israel… but thou hast made me to serve with thy sins; thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities.
When He had told them how dirtily they had dealt with Him, and how they had made Him, as it were, a slave to their corrupt humors— when neither they nor any creature else could expect anything but
fireballs of wrath to be flung in their faces, and that God should have dipped His pen in gall and written their mittimus to hell—He dips it in honey and crosses the debt. Verse 25: I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.
Could there be any merit here, when the criminal, instead of favor, could expect nothing but severity, there being nothing but demerit in him?
It is so free that the mercy we have abused, the name we have profaned—the very name for which we have deserved wrath—opens its mouth with pleas for us. Ezekiel 36:21: But I had pity for mine holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the heathen, whither they went. Not for their sakes. It is wholly free. He repeats their profaning of His name again and again, that grace might appear to be grace indeed.
This name He will sanctify, that is, glorify. How? Verse 25: In cleansing them from all their filthiness. His name, while it pleads for them, mentions their demerits, that grace may triumph in its own freeness.
Our sins against Him cannot deserve more than our sufferings for Him; and even these are not worthy of the glory which shall be revealed, Romans 8:18.
[3] Thirdly. The extent of His grace.
The mercy of God is called His riches, yea, the exceeding riches of grace. Now as there is no end of His holiness, which is His honor, nor any limits set to His power, so there is no end of His grace, which is
His wealth—no end of His mines. Therefore the foulest and greatest sinners are the fittest objects for Christ to manifest the abundant riches of His grace upon. For it must needs argue a more vast estate to remit great debts and many thousands of talents, than to forgive some fewer shillings or pence; that is, to pardon only smaller sins in men of a more unstained conversation.
If it were not for the turning and pardoning of mountainous sinners, we should not know so much of God's estate. We should not know how rich He is, nor what He is worth. He pardons iniquities for His name's sake; and who can spell all the letters of His name, or turn over all the leaves in the book of mercy? Who shall say to His grace, as He does to the sea, Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further?
As the heavens are of vast extension, like a great circle encompassing the earth, which lies in the midst like a little atom in comparison of that immense body of air and aether, so are our sins compared with the extent of God's mercy. Isaiah 55:9: For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Men's sins are innumerable, yet they are but ciphers when set against the vast sums of grace which are every day expended; for sins are finite, but mercy is infinite.
Therefore all the sins in the world put together cannot be of so large an extent as mercy; because each of them is finite, and all laid together cannot amount to infinite.
The gospel is entitled good will to men—to all sorts of men—with iniquities, transgressions, and sins of all sorts and sizes. God has stores of mercy laid up with Him. His exchequer is never empty.
Exodus 34:7: Keeping mercy for thousands—in a readiness to dispense it upon thousands of millions of sins, as well as millions of persons. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all that went before, have not wasted it. And if God were to proclaim His name again, it would be the same still; for His name, as well as His essence, is unchangeable.
His grace is no more tied to one sin than it is to one person. He has mercy on whom He will, and His grace can pardon what sins He will.
Therefore He tells them, Isaiah 55:7, that He will multiply pardons.
He will have mercy to suit every sin of yours, and a salve for every sore. Though your sin has its heights and depths, yet He will heap mercy upon mercy, till He makes it overtop your sin. He will be as good at merciful arithmetic as you have been at sinful. Though you multiply your sins by thousands, where repentance goes before, remission follows without limitation. When Christ gives the one, He is sure to second it with the other. Though aggravating circumstances be never so many, yet He will multiply His mercies as fast as you have multiplied your sins.
He has a cleansing virtue and a pardoning grace for all iniquities and transgressions. Jeremiah 33:8: And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me. It is thrice repeated, to show
that His mercy shall be as large as their sin, though there was not a more sinful nation upon the earth than they were. His justifying and sanctifying grace shall have as vast an extension; for He will both pardon and cleanse them. And why? Verse 9: That it may be to me a name of joy, a praise, and an honor before all the nations of the earth.
It is so great that self-righteous persons murmur at it, that such swine should be preferred before them; as the elder son was angry that his father should lavish out his kindness upon the prodigal more than upon himself (Luke 15:28).
[4] Fourthly. The compassionateness of it.
The formal nature of mercy is tenderness, and the natural effect of it is relief. The more miserable the object, the more compassionate human mercy is, and the more forward it is to assist. Now that mercy which in man is a quality, in God is a nature. How would the infinite tenderness of His nature be discovered, if there were no objects to draw it forth? It would not be known to be mercy unless it were shed abroad, nor to be tender mercy unless it relieved great and oppressing miseries. For mercy is a quality in man that cannot keep at home and be stowed under lock and key in a man's own breast— much less in God, in whom it is a nature. Therefore the greater the disease, the greater the compassion discovered to be wherewith God is so fully stored.
As His end in letting the devil pour out so many afflictions upon Job was to show His pity and tender mercy in relieving him (James 5:11),
so in permitting the devil to draw His elect into so many sins, it is the same end He aims at. And He is more pitiful in helping men under sin than under affliction; because the guilt of one sin is a greater misery than the burden of a thousand crosses.
If forgiveness is a part of tenderness in man, it is also so in God, who is set before us as a pattern of the compassion we are to show to others. Ephesians 4:32: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
The lower a man is brought, the more tender is that mercy which relieves him. Psalm 79:8: Let thy tender mercies speedily prevent us; for we are brought very low.
To visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to pardon their sins, is called mercy with this epithet of tender. Luke
1:77–79: Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us. And so indeed it is, when He visits the most forlorn sinners.
[5] Fifthly. The sincerity and pleasure of His grace.
Ordinary pardon proceeds from His delight in mercy. Micah 7:18:
Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy. Therefore, the more of His grace He lays out upon any one, the greater delight He takes in it, because it is a larger effect of that grace.
If He were not sincere in it, He would never mention men's sins, which would rather scare them from Him than allure them to Him. If He were not sincere, He would never change the heart of an enemy, and show kindness to him in the very act of enmity; for the first act of grace upon us is quite against our wills. Man is so far from being active in it, that he is contrary to it. In primo actionis it is thus with a man, though not in primo actu: for in the first act of conversion man is willing, though not in the first moment of that act. That God should bestow His grace upon us against our wills, and when He can expect no suitable recompense from us, evidences the purity of His affection. Though He endures so many contradictions of sinners against Himself day by day, yet He resolves to have them, and does seize upon them, though they struggle, fly in His face, and provoke
Him to cast them off.
It is so much His delight that it is called by the very name of His glory. Isaiah 58:8: The glory of the LORD shall follow thee—that is, the mercy of the Lord shall follow them close at the heels. When they call, it shall answer; when they cry, He will, like a watchful guardian servant, cry out, Here I am. So He never lets a great sinner, when turned into a penitent, wait long for mercy, though He sometimes lets him wait long for a sense of it. This mercy is never so delightful to Him as when it is most glorious; and it is most glorious when it takes hold of the worst sinners. Such black spots which mercy wears upon its face make it appear more beautiful.
Christ does not care to stay where He has no opportunity to do great cures suitable to the vastness of His power. Mark 6:5: And he could
there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk. He had not a suitable employment for that glorious power of working miracles. So when men come to Christ with lighter guilt,
He has but an under-opportunity, and with some disadvantage, to manifest the greatness of His charity. Though He has infinite grace and mercy, He cannot show more than the nature and exigence of the opportunity will bear; and so His pleasure does not rise so high as otherwise it would. Little sins, and few sins, are not so fit an object for a grace that would ride in triumph. Free grace is God's darling, which He loves to advance; and it is never more advanced than when it beautifies the most misshapen souls.
[3] Thirdly. The power of His grace.
The Scripture represents conversion as a wonderful work, and likens it to creation and to the resurrection of Christ from the dead.
[1] First. Creation.
Conversion, simply considered, is concluded by divines to be a greater work than creation; for God puts forth more power morally in conversion than He did physically in creation. The world was created by a word, but many words and many acts concur to conversion.
The heavens are called the works of God's fingers (Psalm 8:3); but the gospel, in the effects of it, is called the arm of the LORD (Isaiah
53:1). Men do not put forth their arm to a thing unless the work requires more strength than the fingers possess. It is the power of
God unto salvation, and the faith it works is begun and fulfilled with power (2 Thessalonians 1:11).
God created the world out of nothing. Nothing could not objectively contribute to His design, as matter does to a workman's intent; yet neither did it oppose Him, because it was nothing. As soon as God spoke the word, this nothing brought forth sun, moon, stars, earth, trees, flowers—all the garnish of nature—out of its barren womb. But sin is actively disobedient: it disputes His commands, slights His power, fortifies itself against His entrance upon the heart, and yields not an inch of ground without a contest. There is not only a passive indisposition, but an active opposition. His creating power drew the world out of nothing; His converting power frames the new creature out of something worse than nothing.
Naturally there is nothing but darkness and confusion in the soul.
We have not the least spark of divine light, no more than the chaos had, when God commanded light to shine out of darkness (2
Corinthians 4:6), who hath shined in our hearts. To bring a principle of light into the heart, and to set it up in spite of all the opposition made by the devil and by a man's own corruption, is a greater work than creation.
As the power of the sun is more seen in scattering thick mists that triumph over the earth and mask the face of the heavens, than in melting small clouds compacted of a few vapors, so it argues a greater strength to root out those great sins that are twisted and inlaid with our very nature, and are as dear to us as our right eye or
right hand, than to remove a few sins that have taken no deep root.
Every man by nature is possessed with a hatred of God, and opposes everything that would restore God to His right. Since the Fall he is filled with a desire of independency, daily strengthened with new recruits, and loath to surrender himself to the power and direction of another. It is therefore a more difficult thing to tame this unruly disposition in man's heart than to annihilate him and create him anew; as it is often easier for an artificer to make a new piece of work than to repair and patch an old one that is out of frame.
[2] Secondly. Resurrection.
Conversion is expressly called a resurrection. Ephesians 2:5: Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.
And the power that effects it is the same power that raised Christ from the dead—a mighty power that could remove the stone from the grave when Christ lay under the weight of the sins of the world
(Ephesians 1:19–20). So the greater the stone that lies upon a sinner, the greater is God's power to remove it.
If it is the power of God to regenerate nature, to put a new law into the heart, to qualify the will with a new bias to comply with that law, and to make those who could not endure the thoughts of grace unable to endure the thoughts of sin—then it is surely a greater power to raise a man from that death in which he has lain thirty or forty years, rotten and putrefied in the grave. For if conversion in its own nature is creation and resurrection, this must needs be creation and resurrection with an emphasis.
The more malignant any distemper is, the more fixed it is in the vital parts, and the more complicated with other diseases, the greater is the power required to cure it. A disease is more easily checked at its first invasion than when it has infected the whole mass of blood and become chronic. So it is a greater work to pull up one sin, or many sins, that have struck their roots deep and stood against the shock of many blustering winds of threatenings, than to remove a sin that is but a twig and newly planted.
[3] Thirdly. Traction, or drawing.
Drawing implies strength. If conversion be a traction, then more strength is required to draw one that is bound to a post by great cables, than one that is only tied by a few packthreads; one that has millions of weights upon him, than one that has but a few pounds.
[4] Fourthly. It is the only miracle Christ has left standing in the world, and that which most declares Him to be the Christ.
When John sent to know what He was (Luke 7:20), Christ returns no other account but a list of His miracles; and that which brings up the rear, as the greatest of all, is this: the poor are evangelized—οἱ πτωχοὶ εὐαγγελίζονται.
This is not to be taken actively, as merely the preaching of the gospel to them, but passively, as the powerful work of the gospel upon them.
They were not only addressed by it, but wrought upon by it, and became gospel-shaped people, transformed into its mould.
Otherwise it would bear no analogy to the other miracles. The deaf
heard, and the dead were raised; they did not merely receive exhortations to hear or live, but the effects were actually produced in them. So here the words signify not only the preaching of the gospel to the poor, but the mighty operation of the gospel in them.
It is not so great a work to raise many thousands slain in a battle, as to evangelize one dead soul. It is a miracle of power to transform a ravenous wolf into a gentle lamb, a furious lion into a meek dove, a filthy sink into a clear fountain, a stinking weed into a fragrant rose, a toad or viper into a man endowed with rational faculties and moral endowments; and so to transform a filthy swine into a king and priest unto God. In conquests of this nature does divine power appear most glorious.
It is some strength to polish a rough stone taken out of the quarry, and hew it into the statue of a great prince; but far more to make that statue a living man. Worse stones than these does God make children
—not only to Abraham, but to Himself—even the Gentiles, who were accounted stones by the Jews, and are so called in Scripture for their worship of idols.
What power must that be which can stop the tide of the sea and make it suddenly recoil? What vast power must that be which can change a black cloud into a glorious sun? This, and more, God does in conversion. He does not only take smooth pieces of the softest matter, but the roughest timber, full of knots, to plane and fashion it, that He may show both His strength and His skill upon it.
[4] Fourthly. Wisdom.
The work of grace, being a new creation, is not only an act of God's power, but also of His wisdom, as the natural creation was. As He acted in wisdom in contriving the platform of grace and in bringing
Christ upon the stage, so also in the particular distributions of it He acts according to counsel—and that infinite—the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11).
The apostle, having spoken in verse 9 of God's making known the mystery of His will in and through Christ, and in verse 11 of the dispensation of this grace in bestowing an inheritance, predestinated according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His own will, refers this counsel not to predestination alone, but to the whole work he had been describing—the revealing of Christ and the bestowing of the inheritance. And in verse 8, speaking of the pardon of sin in the blood of Christ according to the riches of God's grace, he adds, wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom. As there was abundance of grace set apart to be dealt out, so there was abundance of wisdom—indeed, all God's wisdom— employed in the distribution of it.
The restoring of God's image requires at least as much wisdom as the first creating of it. And the application of redemption, and the bestowing of pardoning and converting grace, is as much an act of God's prudence as the contrivance of it was an act of His counsel.
Grace, or a gracious man in respect of his grace, is called God's workmanship (Ephesians 2:10), ποίημα—not merely ἔργον: a work of art as well as of power; the operation of His mind as well as of His
hand. It is His poem, not a bare effect of omnipotency, but an intellectual masterpiece. A new creature is a curious piece of divine art, fashioned by God's wisdom to set forth the praise of the Framer, as a poem is composed by a man's reason and fancy to publish the wit and skill of the author.
It is great skill in an artificer, with a mixture of a few sands and ashes, by his breath to blow up so clear and diaphanous a body as glass, and to frame several vessels of it for several uses. It is not merely his breath that does it, for others have breath as well as he; but breath governed and directed by art. And is it not a marvelous skill in God to make a miry soul so pure and crystalline in a moment; to endue a swine with a divine nature, and by a powerful word to frame so beautiful a medal as a new creature is?
The more intricate and knotty any business is, the more eminent is a man's ability in effecting it. The more desperate the wound, the more honorable is the surgeon's skill in the cure. Christ's healing of a soul that is come to the last gasp, and given over by all for lost, shows more of art than the recovery of an ordinary sinner.
The apostle himself takes notice of the wisdom of God in his own conversion. When he relates the history of it, he breaks out into a hallelujah, and sends up a volley of praise to God for the grace he had obtained. And in that doxology he sets a special emphasis upon the wisdom of God (1 Timothy 1:17): Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever
and ever. He styles Him the only wise God—an attribute which he there singles out and peculiarly ascribes to Him.
This wisdom appears, [1] First, in the subjects He chooses.
We need go no further than the example in our text.
Our apostle appears to have been a man full of heat and zeal; and the church had already felt the smart of his activity, insomuch that they were afraid to come near him after his change, or to admit him into their company—imagining that his fury was not altered, but only disguised, and that he was changed from an open persecutor into a secret trepanner (Acts 9:26).
None can express better what a lion he was than he does himself (Acts 26:10–11): Many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them. And I punished them often in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities.
He seems also to have been a man of a high and ambitious spirit.
This persecuting zeal was probably carried on with such vigor to ingratiate himself with the chief priests, and as a means of advancing himself to preferment—for which he was furnished with parts and learning, and would not lack zeal or industry to attain it.
He likewise appears to have been of a proud disposition, as may be gathered from the temptation he afterward mentions (2 Corinthians
12:7), lest I should be exalted above measure. He repeats this twice in that verse, intimating that his natural temper inclined him to be lifted up by any excellence he possessed. And commonly God directs
His battery against that very sin which belongs most to our constitution.
Yet he was a man of a very honest mind, and forward in following whatever his conscience dictated. For what he did against Christ, he did according to the dictates of his conscience as it was then informed (Acts 26:9): I verily thought with myself—that is, in his conscience—that I ought (not merely that I might, but that it was his duty) to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
His error ruled him with the same authority that truth exercises where it reigns.
Now here the wisdom of God eminently appears—to lay hold of such a man, so tempered; one who had honesty to obey the dictates of a rightly informed conscience as well as an erroneous one; zeal to execute them; height of spirit to preserve his activity from being blunted by opposition; and parts and prudence for managing all these. To turn these affections and excellencies into a heavenly channel—to guide this natural heat and passion to serve and advance that interest which he formerly endeavored to destroy, and to propagate that gospel which he once persecuted—is an effect of admirable wisdom. It is like the skill of a rider who knows how to
govern the mettle of a headstrong horse and turn it to his own service.
[2] Secondly, this wisdom appears in the time.
As human wisdom consists not only in contriving designs, but also in timing actions, so does divine wisdom. God lays hold of the fittest seasons to bring His wonderful providences upon the stage. He has
His set time to deliver His church from her enemies (Psalm 102:13), and He has His set time also to deliver every particular soul whom
He intends to make a member of His church from the power of the devil.
He waits for the fittest season to manifest His grace (Isaiah 30:18):
Therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you.
Why? For the LORD is a God of judgment—that is, a God of wisdom —who orders all things for the greatest advantage, both of His own glory and the sinner's good. This timing of grace was singularly excellent in the conversion of Paul.
[1] First, in respect of himself.
There could not have been a fitter season to glorify grace than when Paul was almost at the length of his chain, near the brink of the sin against the Holy Ghost. For had he possessed a little more light, and committed out of malice what he did out of ignorance, he had been lost forever. He obtained mercy because he did it ignorantly (1
Timothy 1:13). As noted before, he followed the dictates of conscience; but had knowledge equaled his fury, the sin would have
been unpardonable. Christ allowed him to run to the very brink of hell before laying hold upon him.
[2] Secondly, in respect of others.
He is converted at the very time when he was going, full of rage, to spit out his poison upon the poor Christians at Damascus—armed with all the authority and credentials the high priest could give him, and promising himself great success from his zeal. And when he was almost at the journey's end, ready to execute his commission (Acts
9:3): And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus—about half a mile from the city, as Gulielmus Tyrius conjectures—at this very moment Christ grapples with him, overthrows all his mad principles, secures Paul from hell, and His disciples from their fears.
Behold the nature of this hawk changed, just as he was preparing to fasten upon the partridge.
Christ might have converted Paul sooner—when he had heard of His miracles; perhaps while Paul resided at Jerusalem during Christ's public ministry, for he was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel (Acts
22:3), who himself sat in the council (Acts 5:34). He might have converted him when he heard Stephen's eloquent and convincing defense (Acts 7), or when he beheld Stephen's constancy, patience, and charity in suffering—things sufficient to awaken even a moral man.
Yet Christ passes over all these occasions and allows him to kick against the pricks of miracles, admonitions, and arguments. Still, He keeps a special eye upon him. Saul is named where none else are
(Acts 7:58): The witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul. Again (Acts 8:1): Saul was consenting unto his death. Were there none else involved? The Spirit of God singles out Saul. Again (Acts 8:3): As for Saul, he made havoc of the church. Again (Acts 9:1): Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter—yet, as if to say, "He shall not do so long."
Was not this a fit season, when the devil hoped to ruin the church by him; when the high priests promised themselves success; when the church travailed with fear? Yet Christ frustrates all—sends the devil away ashamed of losing so active an instrument, defeats the expectations of the priests, calms the fears of His people, and sets
Paul immediately to preach Christ in the very synagogues that were to aid his cruelty (Acts 9:20, 22).
Did not Christ here show Himself to be a God of judgment? He watched from heaven for this very hour. His wisdom answered many ends at once and struck many birds with one stone: He slew Paul's sin, His people's fear, the priests' expectations, and the devil's hopes.
He triumphed over His enemies, secured His friends, saved Paul's soul, advanced His gospel by him, disappointed hell, and glorified
His grace.
[3] Thirdly, this wisdom appears in keeping up the credit of Christ's death.
The great excellency of Christ's sacrifice, wherein it transcends the sacrifices under the Law, is this: that it perfectly makes an atonement for all sins. It first satisfies God, and then calms the
conscience—both of which those legal sacrifices could not do (Heb.
10:1–2); for after them there still remained a conscience of sin.
The tenor of the covenant of grace, which God makes with His people, is founded wholly upon this sacrifice (Heb. 10:16–17): This is the covenant that I will make with them… and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now, where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. This covenant extends not only to lesser sins, for no limitation is expressed; therefore great sins are included also. Hence Christ satisfied for great sins, or else—if ever they be pardoned—there must be another sacrifice, either of Himself or of some other, which the apostle expressly denies upon the account of this covenant.
For if Christ's satisfaction were incomplete, there would still remain a remembrance of sin. As the covenant implies the completeness of Christ's satisfaction, so the continual fulfilling and application of the covenant implies the perpetual savor, force, and efficacy of this sacrifice.
Indeed, when God delivered Him up, He intended His death for the greatest sins. Romans 4:25: He was delivered for our offenses— παραπτώματα (paraptōmata), a word signifying not a mere stumble, but a fall; not a light fault, but a great transgression. If Christ's death were not satisfactory for great debts, then Christ must be too weak to perform what God intended by Him; and so infinite wisdom would be frustrated of its design—which cannot, nor ought to be, imagined.
Therefore God often takes the greatest sinners, to show—
[1] First, the value of this sacrifice.
If God should receive only men of lighter guilt, Christ's death might be suspected to be too low a ransom for monstrous enormities; sufficient to discharge smaller debts, but a penury of merit for talents. Such a suspicion would not suit the grandeur of Christ, nor the infiniteness of that mercy which God proclaims in His Word.
But the conversion of giant-like sinners credits the atonement made by Christ, and is a renewed approbation of the infinite value of it, demonstrating its full equivalency to God's demands. It bears an analogy to the resurrection of Christ, which was God's public acquittance to Him, evidencing the sufficiency of His payment. And the justification of every sinner is a branch of that acquittance given to Christ at His resurrection (Rom. 4:25): raised again for our justification.
It is also a particular acquittance to Christ for that individual soul committed to Him by the Father. All that power which works in the first creation of grace, or in the progress of regeneration, bears a proportion to that approving power manifested in Christ's resurrection (Eph. 1:19–20). The apostle prays (vv. 17–18) that believers might better understand that power which raised Christ— that is, the approving power of God concerning what Christ had done
—which He daily exerts in conversion and its effects.
For by raising any soul from death in sin, God evidences the particular value of Christ's blood for that soul, as by raising Christ He evidenced the general fullness of His satisfaction. This He will
continue to do to the end of the world (Eph. 2:6–7), that all grace in all ages might run through this channel, to put honor and credit upon Christ.
The greater the sin that is pardoned, and the greater the sinner that is converted, the more clearly appears the sufficiency of the price
Christ paid.
[2] Secondly, the virtue of this sacrifice.
Christ is a priest forever (Heb. 7:17), and therefore the virtue, as well as the value, of His sacrifice remains forever. He hath obtained eternal redemption (Heb. 9:12)—that is, a redemption of eternal efficacy.
As long as men receive venom from the fiery serpent, they may be healed by looking upon the antitype of the brazen serpent, though many ages have passed since He was lifted up. Those stung all over, as well as those bitten in only one part, may by believing draw virtue from Him as diffusive as their sin.
Thus, the continual conversion of men guilty of extraordinary sins proclaims to the world that the fountain of Christ's blood is inexhaustible; that its virtue is not spent nor drained, though so much has been drawn from it for more than five thousand years—for the cleansing of sins committed before His coming, and sins committed since His death.
This evidences that His priesthood now is as efficacious as His sufferings on earth were valuable; and that His merit rises as far
above our iniquity as His person rises above our nothingness. He can wash the tawny American as well as the moral heathen, and make the black Ethiopian as white as the most virtuous philosopher.
God sometimes fastens upon the worst of men to adorn the cross of Christ, making them eminent testimonies of the power of His death.
He made his grave with the wicked (Isa. 53:9)—or, as the Hebrew may be rendered, He gave the wicked (not "grave") and the rich in his death. Thus God makes men wallowing in sinful pleasures, bound to the profits and blandishments of the world, to come to Christ and submit to Him, that they may stand as witnesses in all ages of the virtue of His sufferings.
[4] Fourthly, for the fruitfulness of this grace in the converts themselves.
The most rugged souls often prove most eminent in grace after conversion, as the most orient diamonds—naturally rough—become the most bright and sparkling when cut and polished. Men frequently grow most in stature after sharp and shattering agues.
It increases, [1] Thankfulness.
Converts only are fit to show forth the praises of Christ, 1 Pet. 2:9:
That you should show forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; ἀρετάς, the virtues (or excellencies) of Christ. The end why God sets men at liberty from prisons and dungeons, and from fear of death and condemnation for
great sins, is that they may be fitted, and gain a commodious standing, to publish to the world the virtues of Him; that is, the mercy, meekness, patience, bounty, truth, and other royal perfections of Christ.
Men at their first conversion receive the grace of God with astonishment; for it is θαυμαστόν, 1 Pet. 2:9, most amazing at the first appearance of it; as the northern nations that want the sun for some months in the winter are ready to admire it exceedingly when it appears in their horizon: for the thickness of the foregoing darkness makes the luster of the sun more admirable.
But suppose a man had been all his lifetime like a mole under ground, and had never seen so much as the light of a candle, and had a view of that weak light at a distance, how would he admire it when he compares it with his former darkness? But if he should be brought further, to behold the moon with its train of stars, his amazement would increase with the light. But let this person behold the sun, be touched with its warm beams, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing those rarities which the sun discovers, he will bless himself, adore it, and embrace that person that led him to enjoy such a benefit. And the blackness of that darkness he sat in before will endear the present splendor to him, swell up such a spring-tide of astonishment, that there shall be no more spirit in him.
God lets men sit long in the shadow of death, and run to the utmost of sin, before He stops them, that their danger may enhance their deliverance.
We admire more when we are pulled out of danger than when we are prevented from running into it. A malefactor will be more thankful for a pardon, when it comes just as he is going to be turned off. If there be degrees of harmony in heaven, without question the convert thief on the cross warbles out louder notes than others, because he had little time to do it on earth; and his engagements are the greater, because Christ took him in His arms when he was hanging over hell.
When Paul wrote this epistle to Timothy, he was about fifty-five years of age, and yet those twenty years run out since his conversion had not stifled his admiration, nor damped his thankfulness for converting grace. Take a prospect of it in this chapter, vv. 12–13: And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has enabled me, for that He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious.
I thank Christ Jesus our Lord. He seems to set his sin and God's mercy in opposition. I was injurious, but I obtained mercy. I was a blasphemer, but I obtained, etc. I—mercy. Who would imagine but that, of all persons, He should have passed by me, while He had taken this or that polished Pharisee, this or that doctor of morality?
But that He should overlook them, and set His eye upon me—so injurious, such a blasphemer, such a persecutor! A great sinner, when he reflects upon his sin, wonders that a butt was not made at him.
You find that no apostle gives such epithets to the grace of God as our apostle does. None is so seraphical in his admiring expressions:
riches of grace, exceeding riches of grace, abundant grace, riches of glory, unsearchable riches of grace. He never speaks of grace without an emphasis. Single grace, and single mercy, would not serve his turn.
[2] Love and Affection.
Mary Magdalene, out of whom Christ had cast seven devils, was most early in her affection, to bestow her provision of spices upon the dead body of her Savior. The fire of grace cannot be stifled, but will break out in glory to God. This is such a grace as man in innocence could not have exercised in such a height; because now the sinner is not only in his own sight unworthy of pardon, but worthy of the greatest hatred and punishment.
You scarce find yourselves possessed with greater affection to any than those who have been instruments to free you from your sinful fetters. How often do you bless them, could pull out your eyes for them, and think all ways too little to manifest the sense of your obligations to them! And does the instrument carry away all? Surely
God has the greatest sacrifice of affection, when the convert considers that His powerful grace was the principal agent to draw him out of this spiritual mire.
As when a present is sent to you, you show a courtesy to the servant, but the chief part of your kindness is devoted to the master that sent him. What flames of love, raptures of joy, transports of affection, boilings of courage for God, are in a young convert! The soul is most courageous for God at first conversion, because it is then most stored
with comforts; and is so struck into amazement at the marvelous light which darts upon him, that he is ambitious to be a martyr for God presently; Heb. 10:32: After that you were illuminated, you endured a great fight of afflictions. Grace is not only attended with afflictions, but bestows a courage upon a convert to endure them.
The soul then thinks it is able to undergo anything for God, who has bestowed so much grace upon it.
A Christian has the greatest love to Christ at the first turning to Him: for since the horror of all his sins, and the natural ugliness and deformity of that which he has served so long, comes with a full sense upon him; and since the admirable excellency of Christ shines upon him (which is a sight he was never acquainted with before); the greatness of the danger he was in, and the incomparable love which beams upon him from his believing a Savior, fills his affection with full sails.
Thus do men, who have been tossed in a dangerous tempest, afflicted with the darkness of the night as well as their danger, rejoice and welcome the rising sun in the morning, which dispels their tumultuous fears as well as those gloomy shadows.
God permits a man's sins to abound, that his love after pardon may abound too; Luke 7:47: Her sins, which are many, are forgiven: for she loved much. ὅτι, therefore: it is the consequent, not the cause, of remission. And this interpretation agrees best with the following words: To whom little is forgiven, the same loves little. It is more consonant to reason that where there are greater mercies, there
should be greater returns of affection. Remission of sins is the greatest evidence of God's love, and therefore should be the greatest incentive of ours.
And indeed Christ never appears to a penitent with a more comely air in His countenance than upon the removal of great judgments, or the pardon of great sins. Isa. 4:2: In that day shall the Branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely, for them that are escaped of Israel. In that day
—in what day? After great judgments, v. 1, and in the foregoing chapter, in purging away great filth, v. 4. The Branch, Jesus, appears most lovely when He comes laden with the fruit of grace, with the sanctifying juice of His blood; as a ripe bunch of grapes looks pleasantly in a thirsty traveler's eye.
This convert Paul was more affectionate to Christ than any of the other apostles: for when he could not look upon Him, he is enamored of His very name, and delights to express it no less than five hundred times (as I remember some have numbered it) in his epistles—more proportionably than Peter, James, and John did in what they wrote.
[3] Service and Obedience Such will endeavor to redeem the time, because their former days have been so evil, and to recover those advantages of service which they lost by a course of sin. They will labor that the greatness of their sin may be answered by an extension of their zeal. Such will be almost as much ashamed to do only common service, as they are now ashamed of their scarlet sins. As men, the further they go backward,
the greater leap they usually take forward. Grace instructs a man in holiness out of gratitude.
Titus 2:12 declares, The grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, that we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. Grace teaches us. The greater the grace, the more pressing is the instruction; as it increases gratitude, it increases service.
That Peter, who had been so criminal in denying his Master and adding perjury to his perfidiousness, was as active in service as he had been in apostasy. He laid the first stone of the Christian church among the Jews after Christ's ascension. He preached the first sermon to them and charged them directly with his Master's murder,
Acts 2. He was also the spokesman in all business described in the first six chapters of the Acts.
He laid also the first foundation of the Gentile church. For God, in a vision, revealed to him the calling of the Gentiles, passing by all the other apostles, to whom it was not known except by Peter's relation,
Acts 15:7: Men and brethren, you know how that a good while ago, God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. "A good while ago" refers to the time of Matthew 16:18, when Christ said, Upon this rock I will build my church. He was chosen by God to this purpose, that is, separated from the rest of the apostles and adorned with this prerogative. Great sins did not make Christ change His resolution.
Never was there an apostle who had been brought up under Christ's wing that proved so active an instrument as Paul, who had been so bitter an enemy. He labored more abundantly than all, 1 Corinthians
15:10. In matters of obedience he would not ask counsel of flesh and blood, Galatians 1:16: Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. He was quick in his obedience. He had endeavored to weaken
Christ's kingdom; he now endeavors to enlist men in His service. He had breathed out threatenings; he now breathes out affections. He could even spend and be spent for the interest of his Savior. And usually we find converted souls most active in the exercise of that grace which is most contrary to that which was their darling sin.
[4] Humility and Self-Emptiness Christ chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty,
1 Corinthians 1:26–27, that nothing should be attributed to their worth and dignity, but to His grace and mercy. Were the gospel discovered only to the wise, they would look upon it rather as a discovery made by the optics of their own reason. And if God bestowed His grace only upon men of unspotted conduct, they would think it a debt God was obliged to pay them, rather than a free act of grace.
As God reveals knowledge to the simplest, Matthew 11:25, so He manifests grace to the most sinful; and as Christ blessed His Father for the one, so no doubt He returns the same thanks for the other.
Such great sinners receive all from God and therefore have more
reason to hang down their heads. Others may sometimes cast many a loving look upon their own righteousness, and like Nebuchadnezzar boast, Is not this great Babylon that I have built? They glory in their good acts and their freedom from the common pollutions of the world.
But those who were fallen headlong into the mire, and were defiled all over, have no cause to boast. For God did not find them worthy, but made them so. They brought nothing but dirt and rags, not worthy of washing; yet God chose to extract glory out of their worthlessness, to the praise of His own grace. Such are sensible that God was not their debtor, but they His, and that there was nothing in them to oblige Him to bestow the least mite of mercy upon them.
Therefore we do not find one of these mountainous sinners in Scripture ascribing their conversion to their own strength or merit.
As no apostle was so God-magnifying, so none was so self-vilifying as Paul. Though he was the greatest apostle, he accounted himself less than the least of all saints, Ephesians 3:8: Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints. He might have placed himself equal to the least, which would have been great humility; but he is more humble still, less than the least, even less than one fit only to be a doorkeeper in the house of God.
He esteems himself not only unworthy of the office of an apostle, but even of the name, 1 Corinthians 15:9: Not worthy, not only to be, but to be called an apostle. And why? Because of his former sin: because
I persecuted the church of God. The remembrance of his great sin before conversion kept him humble.
And in verse 10, when he had briefly mentioned his abundant labor, he immediately corrects himself: Yet not I, but the grace of God. He attributes both his being a Christian and all his actions to the same cause: By the grace of God I am what I am. So also Galatians 1:16, he ascribes everything to grace: It pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His
Son in me. Revelation, not acquisition.
[5] Bewailing of Sin, and Self-Abhorrency for It When men are first translated out of darkness into the kingdom of Christ, and begin to know Christ truly, the ways of their former ignorance become very bitter and uncouth to them. The very disproportion and unsuitableness of those ways to the sweetness of that grace which they now taste from the hand of Jesus is an offense to them, and hateful to their thoughts. Therefore, the more sin a man has run into before his return to God, the more he sees the vileness of his own nature, and consequently the more he abhors himself.
Ezekiel 36:31: Then shall you remember your iniquities, and shall loathe yourselves. When? Verse 29: when God has accomplished the promise of saving them from all their uncleanness. They shall remember with abhorrency what was their own sin, and shall enjoy what is purely God's.
The time of pardoning great sins is the time of great self-loathing.
Such often prove the holiest persons, because they have had more experience of the evil of sin.
Such are ashamed of their sins not only at the instant of their conversion, but afterwards, every time they remember them.
Romans 6:21: What fruit had you then in those things whereof you are now ashamed? "Now," that is, at the time when Paul wrote to them. The very shame of their sins still clung to them, though they had been converted before. The more they grew in experimental knowledge of God and His goodness, the more a holy shame for sins committed in their natural condition was stirred in their consciences, and they could not but blush every time they considered how defiled they had been toward God.
Now the greater the shame, the greater the hatred of the occasion of that shame, and the more exact the watchfulness against it. As a man who has fallen into a deep slough through some stumble or oversight, when he travels that way again cannot but remember the condition he was in, and therefore walks more carefully lest he meet with the same mishap.
Whose heart was more melted by mercy than Mary Magdalene's? All the Pharisees whom Christ converted never poured out such showers of tears. How she uses all her former instruments of sin as servants to her repentance. Her eyes, which had inflamed so many hearts and been snares to catch men, she makes conduits to convey her penitential tears to her Savior's feet. Her hair, which had consumed
so much time in curious dressing, she uses as a towel to wipe them.
The ointment she had used to adorn herself and gratify the senses of her lovers, she pours out to embalm her Lord. Her lusts should have no more of her choicest things; her Savior should have all. She would keep them not so much for her own use as for His.
[6] Faith and Dependence [1] At present, in the instant of the first act of faith
Great sins make us appear in the court of justification sub forma impii, with a naked faith, when we have nothing to merit acceptance, but much to deserve the contrary. Romans 4:5: believes on Him that justifies the ungodly. The more ungodly the sinner, the more elevated is that faith which lays hold on God.
Thomas's unbelief was very great, for he refused to give credit to all the testimonies of the disciples concerning Christ's resurrection. But when he became sensible of his sin, and was so graciously dealt with by his Savior, he put forth a stronger act of faith than any of the rest,
John 20:28: My Lord and my God! His faith was not satisfied with a single "my"; he ascribes to Christ the highest titles, and his heart grasps Him more closely and affectionately than the others.
The man who was born blind and cured by Christ owned Him and exercised faith before the Pharisees, John 9:33: If this man were not of God, he could do nothing. And afterward, verse 38: He said, Lord,
I believe, and he worshiped Him. But when Christ comes to speak
with him more particularly (verses 36–38), his faith is more fully expressed.
When Christ comes to deal personally with a great sinner, one who has labored under diseases naturally incurable, such a one often exerts a stronger faith than others. It is then, Lord, I believe—and it is a faith accompanied with adoration.
[2] In Following Occasions Pardoning such great sins, and converting such great sinners, is the best credential letter Christ brings with Him from heaven. Men naturally would scarcely believe Him for His own sake, but for His works' sake they would, because they are more led by sense than by faith. This Christ knew when He bids His disciples believe Him for the works' sake, that He was sent by God, and that the Father and He are united in this work of grace, as well as in all other works (John
14:11): Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; or else believe Me for the very works' sake.
Therefore, when those who have been partakers of this converting grace stagger and doubt afterward, they give the greatest affront to Christ. For their unbelief is not only against His person, but against His work also. In such a case, He has far more reason to say to them than He did to His disciples (Matt. 17:17), How long shall I be with you?—what should I stay to do such great works as these, and yet not be believed?
Such great sins pardoned and escaped make men take faster hold of Christ afterward. As a man who has lately escaped from a deep lake, wherein were many serpents, crocodiles, and venomous creatures, and who has no sanctuary from their fury but by hanging upon a small branch—when he looks down and sees them gaping for him, ready to devour him if he should fall within their reach, he will summon up all his strength to hold fast that branch. In such a day the Branch of the Lord is beautiful and glorious indeed.
Certainly, when the soul went out to Christ in so desperate a condition, with the whole load of guilt and discouragement upon it, resolved to venture upon Him, come what would, and then found acceptance—this was the boldest adventure of faith. Scripture frequently calls it boldness.
It is therefore the greatest encouragement to come to Christ upon any occasion whatsoever afterward. This first act of faith is of so noble and generous a quality that it is set as the pattern of all succeeding acts of faith (Heb. 3:14): the beginning of your confidence—τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς ὑποστάσεως (tēn archēn tēs hypostaseōs), the primary and foundational act of confidence.
Though there is greater strength in the habit of faith after conversion, yet the first exercise of it upon Christ is the boldest and most vigorous, because it was exercised for the saving of life, when the soul saw no recovery by any way but Christ alone; and the most noble, because it was put forth under the discouragement of such mountains of guilt.
This first act also gave Christ the greatest honor, for it was an act of greater confidence in Him than any subsequent act could be. If you put forth such a daring act of faith when all your sins hung about you, and you had neither a Hur nor an Aaron to hold up your hands, with much more confidence may you come now, having proved how successful your first faith was. So when temptations assault you, and the devil with all his black legions besets you round about, you are not in a worse condition than at first—when your sins did not only besiege you, but possessed you. Such a soul may well say, If I exercised faith when the devil held all the strongholds within me, now it is but to rise up and act the power of that same faith again.
3. In Case of Corruptions and Unmastered Sins I have great corruptions; but the power which raised Christ raised me when I had greater stones upon me—stones wherewith I had even wearied God Himself. And now, when they are fewer, though still too great, shall I despair of that power which wrought greater miracles for me, and rolled away my gravestone when I could not stir myself?
4. In Case of Desertion I will venture to go to God, let Him frown and strike if He will; for I once went to Him when I was His sworn enemy, when there was not a greater hater of Him in the world than I, and yet He received me. I am not worse now than I was then; for now I love Him and desire to please Him. Therefore I will press into His presence again and try the success of my first faith.
Such men's faith is usually a more generous faith, because it has less of the principle of reason to support it. It is like that of Abraham's, believing in hope against hope (Rom. 4:18, παρ' ἐλπίδα ἐπ' ἐλπίδι).
It is a faith exercised against mighty and mountainous opposition— sins so great as might otherwise discourage the soul and establish distrust of the promises of God.
God receives no more glory from the faith of any, than from that of the greatest sinners when brought to repentance; for in such faith
His grace shines most brightly, His power most evidently, and His mercy most triumphantly.
[7] Fear and Reverence Such will never despise the riches of that goodness and patience which have been shown to him (Rom. 2:4), because they have led him to repentance; and he will not provoke that goodness which is conducting him to the enjoyment of all the fruits of repentance, to cast him off.
There is forgiveness with You, says David (Ps. 130:4), that You may be feared, or worshiped. If God should set a mark of death upon every iniquity, who could stand in His presence, or have any hope to be heard? But because He is a God of forgiveness, therefore He is reverenced. The more forgiveness He bestows upon any, the more He is feared. After a man's return to God, his fear of God is increased upon a more ingenuous account; for he fears God and His goodness
(Hos. 3:5), whereas before he feared God and His power, God and His justice. The Jews there spoken of shall fear the goodness of the
Lord the more, because the sin He has pardoned was so great— namely, the crucifying of the Son of God—which, according to their fathers' wish, lay upon the heads of all their posterity.
God's goodness once tasted makes ingenuity afraid to offend Him.
Self-interest also makes men afraid to provoke that mercy which formerly relieved them, lest it should now dismiss them from His favor.
When a man was in the deep dungeon, where the fetters of sin entered into his very soul and bound him under the terrors of the law; when mercy stepped in, delivered him, and poured oil into his wounds—he will be afraid to provoke that mercy to leave him in the same condition in which it found him, and from which it drew him.
He will be loath to be numbered again among the crew of transgressors and the bank of galley-slaves, from which he has been redeemed. He that has tasted the bitterness of sin will fear to commit it; and he that has felt the sweetness of mercy will fear to offend it.
For the Sake of Others, to Engage Them to Come to Christ Every conversion of a great sinner is a new copy of God's love; it is a renewed proclamation of the transcendency of His grace. Even when we were dead in sins, He made us alive together with Christ (Eph.
2:5–6). God quickened those rank sinners who were as black as darkness itself, and raised them into a state of light. Why? Verse 7 tells us: that in the ages to come He might show forth the exceeding
riches of His grace—τὸ ὑπερβάλλον πλοῦτος τῆς χάριτος (to hyperballon ploutos tēs charitos).
It was a picture God drew of His own heart and exposed to the view of the world, that men might learn, from the gracious entertainment and high advancement of such sinners, how liberal He is and ever will be in the distribution of His grace—so that penitent sinners of the greatest stain might be encouraged in all ages to rely upon Him.
This was God's design in Paul's conversion, as he declares in this chapter, verse 16: For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first
Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting. Paul is set up as a banner, a white flag, to invite rebels to treat with God and return to their loyalty. As every great judgment upon a notorious sinner is like hanging a man in chains to deter others, so every conversion is not only an act of mercy to the convert, but an invitation to the spectators.
This is the argument David uses when he pleads for the joy of salvation (Ps. 51:12–13): Then will I teach transgressors Your ways.
He resolves that Jerusalem should ring with it, that sinners, seeing the multitude and long train of God's tender mercies, might fly into His arms to partake of the same grace. For every great conversion is like a sea-mark, guiding others into a safe harbor.
Indeed, David speaks the same in Psalm 32:5–6, thought to be written upon the same occasion as Psalm 51. When he had been forgiven (v. 5), he declares what the effect upon others would be (v.
6): For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto You in a time when You may be found—judging it the fittest season to come when
God is dispensing mercy.
We see the same effect when Christ was on earth. When He called Matthew (Mark 2:14), the very next report is that many publicans and sinners sat down with Him and followed Him (v. 15). Many of the same tribe were encouraged by the kindness shown to one of their fellows.
As when a physician enters a house full of sick persons and cures one that is desperate, it encourages the rest to trust his skill.
When Christ gives an experiment of His art upon any sinner near you, it is a call from heaven, not only to awaken your astonishment, but to stir your emulation to come to Him. As the conversion of the Gentiles was to provoke the Jews to jealousy (Rom. 11:11), so these conversions are designed to awaken others.
Indeed, such conversions move men more rationally than outward miracles can move the senses. To see such a change wrought in a soul
—out of a devilish disposition into a renewed nature—is a standing miracle. If men do not believe in Christ after seeing such living wonders, it aggravates their impenitence as much as any miracle
Christ wrought aggravated the obstinacy of the Jews (Matt. 21:32).
There is not one great sinner you have seen take heaven by violence, but God records it as a yet—ἔτι (eti)—against all your unbelief (Acts
9:1). How many such yets may Christ bring against you, upon the account of others converted round about you? Luke uses this word of
Paul because, in the preceding chapter, he had recorded the successful progress of the gospel in Samaria and Jerusalem; yet Paul persisted in his persecuting fury against such clear testimonies.
Had you lived in Christ's own days and seen His miracles among the Jews, you would think you could never have been so dull as they were. Yet I tell you, the success of Christ's grace upon the souls of men—which you have often witnessed—is a greater miracle, by Christ's own testimony, than most of those He wrought on earth.
Greater works than these shall you do (John 14:12), which He speaks chiefly of the success of their converting ministry. Therefore your impenitence bears as great an aggravation as the perversity of the Jews.
Let every such conversion of a great sinner be a ground of hope to you, and a spur at your side.
Practicability of God's Commands Such conversions also evidence that God's commands are practicable, and that His yoke is not burdensome. Men naturally think God a hard master, whose commands are impossible; but when they see men who lay soaking in sin for many years renewed by grace, running with delight in the ways of God, they may reason with themselves, Why may not I obey as well as such a one?
Men will not believe without miracles (John 4:48). Therefore the standing miracles God has left in the world are the extraordinary conversions of men—even of the worst of men—so that others may be
convinced of the power of the gospel and the strength of His grace, by seeing its admirable effects upon those once most unlikely. For many times, conversion itself begins in admiration.
USE [1] Instruction This doctrine manifests the power of the gospel.
Nothing shows more clearly the heavenly authority of the Christian religion, and the divine efficacy of the Word, than the sudden conversion of notorious sinners—that a man should enter the Church a tiger and return a lamb.
It is this little stone which is instrumental to lay lusts, more giantlike than Goliath, groveling in the dust.
That Paul, mad with rage against the Christians, should, after an arrest in his journey, embrace a religion he had hated; a Pharisee changed into a preacher; a persecutor commencing a martyr; that one of eminent abilities, in favor with the Sanhedrin, should flee from expected preferment and patronize a doctrine despised in the world, and attended with poverty, misery, cruel scourgings, and death—these are wonders indeed.
Whenever you see such effects, take them as new credentials from heaven, to maintain the credit of the Word, and to assert the authority of that conclusion Paul lays down in Romans 1:16, that it is the power of God unto salvation. God gains a reputation for the gospel, and the power of Christianity is displayed, when it can in a moment change persons from beasts to men, from serpents to saints.
[2] Groundlessness of Despair Do not despair of others when you reflect upon your own crimes, and consider that God never dealt with a baser heart in the world than yours once was. Was not Paul as unlikely to prove a convert as any relation of yours that now wallows in his blood? Who would have thought that Onesimus should run from his master and be caught in Christ's arms?
Neither despair of yourself. Shall any soul in anguish, and covered with penitential blushes, think itself cast out of the riches of God's affectionate grace? Shall any man so blaspheme the merciful bowels of Jesus Christ as to flee to a knife, a halter, or a deep well for relief?
Though you were in hell, David tells you God is with you even there in His essential presence; yes, though you were hell itself—for where the devil dwells, there is hell—yet if the soul throbs, sighs, and groans under it, His infinite grace will break down the door and come in upon you. We know that neither she who had seven devils, nor he who had a legion, were strong enough to keep Christ out.
[3] Comfort If God has made you, who were a great sinner, the object of His mercy, you may be assured of several comforts.
1. The continuance of His love.
He pardoned you when you were an enemy; will He leave you now that you are His friend? He loved you when you had erased, in great measure, His image and likeness from your soul; will He hate you
now, since He has restored that image and drawn it anew with fresh colors? He justified you when you were ungodly; will He now cast you off, after He has taken such pains with you, and written within you a counterpart of His own divine nature in the work of grace?
Were His bowels first moved when you had no grace, and will they not move more strongly now that you have grace?
Would the father embrace his son when his garments smelled of draff and swine, and will he cast him off after he has clothed him with a royal robe?
Did Pharaoh's daughter pity Moses when he lay in a filthy, pitchcovered ark, and will that charitable lady despise him when he is clothed and adorned?
[2] Secondly. Supplies of His Grace You had a rich present of His grace sent to you when you could not pray for it; and will He not much more give you whatever is needful when you call upon Him? He was found by you when you did not seek Him; and will He hide Himself from you when you are inquiring after Him?
A wise builder does not begin a work when he is not able to finish it.
God considered, before He began with you, what cost you would stand Him in, both of merit in Christ and grace in you; so that the grace He has given you is not only a mercy to you, but an obligation upon Himself, since His credit is engaged to complete it. You have more unanswerable arguments to plead before Him now than you
once had—namely, His Son, His truth, His promise, His grace, His name—whereas before you had no interest in any of these.
To what purpose has God called you and washed you, if He did not intend to supply you with as much grace as will bring you to glory?
To what purpose should a creditor forgive part of a debt and imprison the debtor for the rest? Has God given you Christ, and will
He withhold anything else? Supplies for your needs and grants of your desires are but like a few grains of pepper that the grocer adds as an overplus to many pounds.
[3] Thirdly. Strength Against Corruptions Can molehills stand against Him who has leveled mountains? Can a few clouds withstand the melting force of the sun, which has dissolved those black mists that overspread the face of the heavens?
No more can the remnants of your corruption stand against His power, which has thrown down the great hills of the sins of your natural condition and dissolved the thick fogs of your unregeneracy.
You can neither doubt His strength nor His love. Amor gaudet in maximis. He has done the greatest, and will He withdraw His hand from doing the least?
When Moses slew the Egyptian, it is said (Acts 7:25) that he supposed his brethren would have understood that God intended by his hand to deliver them. Moses was a type of Christ. Has Christ overthrown a whole army of Egyptians who not only pursued you but held you in slavery? Has He drowned them all in the Red Sea? And
will you not gather from this that He intends also to be your deliverer from the scattered troops that remain?
[4] Thirdly. Exhortation 1. To those with whom God has so dealt 1. Glorify God for His Grace Admiration is all the glory you can give to God for His grace, since you can add nothing to His essential glory. Christ will come at the last day to be admired; send your admirations beforehand to attend
Him at His coming.
Who made you differ from another? Was it not God? Let Him therefore have the glory. If He made you differ from others in the enjoyment of His mercy, do you also differ from others in sounding forth His praise. If you have an angel's state, it is fitting that you should have an angel's note.
If David, when he considered the glorious heavens God had made for man, cried out so affectionately, "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" (Psalm 8:4), surely when you consider the work of grace
God has wrought in you, you may with astonishment cry out the same. What is man that You are mindful of him? What is such a toad, that You should take him into Your bosom?
There is not a grace in you but is more glorious than the sun with all its regiments of stars, and more like God than that great fountain of light with all its splendor. It is something of that heaven which is
more glorious than all the visible heavens, and which lies beyond the reach of the natural eye.
Oh, what is man that You are thus mindful of him—to make one who was a hell by sin become heaven by grace!
The pardon of even one act of sin makes us forever debtors to God, since a single sin renders us liable to eternal torment and includes hatred of God. What then is it to remit such vast sums, if to pardon one sin is itself a miracle? To pardon many sins committed against a suffering Christ—who invited us and repeated His invitations after they were rejected—is a miracle of the greatest magnitude, something beyond a miracle.
How small would Jacob's expression concerning temporal mercies —"I am less than the least of all thy mercies" (Genesis 32:10)—seem here! A great sinner, when converted, should say, "I am less, less, less than the least of all this mercy."
David asks, "What shall I render?" (Psalm 116:12). Such a soul would answer, "I can render nothing—but praise, blessing, amazement, astonishment. That is all I can render, and even that is not enough."
Had you chosen God first, it would have been kindness in Him to respond. But God chose you first, when there was nothing lovely in you—when He saw you among the most deformed creatures in the world. There was no likeness between God and you. Similis simile amat is a rule in nature; but here it is otherwise: Deus optimus diligit hominem pessimum.
This astonished even the disciples, who could not understand why Christ manifested Himself to them (John 14:22). Perhaps you alone were snatched from your family, while wrath fell upon the rest. Has
He not cut down many cedars in morality and chosen you—a thorn, a shrub—to adorn heaven? Are there not many damned who were not guilty of your sins?
How wonderful that such a black firebrand should be made a statue fit for glory! He might as easily have written your name in His black book as in His white. Is it not admirable mercy for a provoked God to take pains with stiff-necked sinners, to beat down mountains of proud imaginations, and to raise up a temple for Himself?
If mercy had knocked only once or twice, you would have dropped into hell. But mercy would not cease knocking. Perhaps your sins were so great that, had you gone but a little further, you would have been irrecoverable; but God set bounds to the proud waves, saying,
"Thus far shall you go, and no further."
[2] Secondly. Often Call to Mind Your Former Sin It has been the former custom of the saints of God. When Matthew reckons up the twelve apostles (Matt. 10:3), of whom he was one, he remembers his former state—Matthew the publican—though none of the other evangelists call him so in that enumeration.
1. It Makes Us More Humble Thoughts of pride cannot lodge in us when the remembrance of our rags, bolts, and fetters is frequently renewed. What was there in your former life but misery, to move God to show mercy to you?
Though Paul had a greater manifestation than any we read of—nay, greater than Christ Himself had, for we do not read that Christ was wrapped up into the third heavens—yet how frequently does Paul remember his sin of persecuting, to keep humiliation in exercise and to stop the growth of pride.
2. It Will Make Us Thankful A sense of misery heightens our obligation to mercy. Men at sea are most thankful for deliverance when they consider the danger of the foregoing storm. A long night makes a clear morning more welcome.
3. It Will Make You More Active in the Exercise of That Grace Which Is Contrary to Your Former Sin Christ asked Peter three times whether he loved Him (John 21), tacitly putting him in mind of his late sin, and drawing from him a threefold exercise of love proportionable to his threefold denial.
4. It Will Be a Preservative Against Falling into the Same Sin Again Perhaps Christ pressed that threefold demand of Peter's love to renew his repentance for his apostasy, as the best antidote against falling into the same sin again. Therefore Peter was grieved when he was asked the third time—not so much, perhaps, because of any suspicion his Master had of his fidelity, as because of the just cause of jealousy his fall had given.
At this third question, calling to mind his denial, he renewed his grief for his former unworthy conduct. Look back then upon your former sin, but do it with anger and shame: to strengthen your detestation, to strangle your former delight in it, and to magnify the mercy of God who has delivered you from it.
When the Corinthians grew proud of their spiritual gifts, the apostle beats down their swelling plumes by giving them a review of their accursed state (1 Cor. 12:2): "You know that you were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols." When a convert frequently considers what he once was in his unregenerate state, he would not,
for all the honors, profits, and pleasures of the world, return to that state again—so great a delight does he take in the work of the new creature.
Second Branch of Exhortation: To Those in a Doubting Condition Objection The main objection such persons make is the greatness of sin.
"Oh! There was never such a great sinner in the world as I am. If you ransack all hell, you will not find such another. Surely God will never pardon me; my sins are too great to be forgiven."
Such language sometimes drops from men, partly urged by the devil —to disparage that royal Prince Jesus, who came to destroy his works and to maintain enmity between God and man by filling the creature with jealous thoughts of the Creator—and partly from a man's own conscience, acting upon those legal principles written in the heart by nature, which direct and condemn upon non-observance, but reveal nothing of pardoning grace.
This was the first act of natural conscience in Adam after he had sinned: he had no thoughts of forgiveness, but studied only how he might flee from the presence of God.
If such speeches are persisted in, they discredit your Creator and argue you to be of Cain's posterity, who told God to His face (Gen.
4:13) that his sin was greater than could be forgiven. I will briefly reason with such a person.
Answer 1 Are you indeed the greatest sinner? I can hardly believe it. Did you ever sin at the rate Paul did? Were you ever possessed with such fury?
Surely there have been some as great sinners as you—bad as bad can be. If you were to examine the names of all those now in heaven and ask them what sins they committed before God showed them mercy,
I cannot think but you would find many who would match you, and exceed you too. You cannot charge yourself with any black circumstance but you would find some who would cry out, "I was in the same condition, and worse!"
What do you think of Christ's murderers, who resisted the eloquence of His sermons and the power of His miracles? When His death darkened the sun, shook the earth, split the rocks, and tore the veil of the temple in two, not one heart among that murderous crew showed saving relentings—yet were not some of these converted by Peter's sermon, and is not their pardon recorded by the Spirit of God?
Have not some of God's greatest favorites been the greatest sinners?
Did not Adam draw upon himself the guilt of all his posterity, and may he not in some sense be charged with the sins of all mankind?
Yet to this very person was the first promise of the gospel made—and that before any sentence was pronounced against him (Gen. 3:15).
Answer 2 Suppose you are the greatest—will staying away from Christ make your sins any smaller? Are you so rich as to pay this debt out of your own revenue? Do you hope for another surety? Did any man or angel promise to satisfy for you?
Will complaining of a heavy burden, without seeking its removal, ease the back that bears it?
Answer 3 Are your sins great? Is not staying away from Christ making them greater? Does not God command you to come to Christ? And is not delay a greater act of disobedience than your complaints of sinfulness are acts of humility?
Have you not load enough already, but must you add unbelief—black as all your other sins together? Is not refusal of mercy itself provocative?
You are mad if you think your sin will decrease by trampling upon Christ's heart and spurning His compassion. You have sinned against justice, against wisdom, against providence—will you now rob God of the opportunity to show the riches of His grace by refusing the blood of His Son, which His wisdom contrived and His love offers?
Who persuades you to stay away from Christ? Does God? Show me His warrant for it. Since you cannot, I am sure it is your own corrupt heart and the devil in league together.
May you not say of the devil, far more truly than Ahab said of Micaiah, "He never prophesies good concerning me"? Indeed, he never did, nor ever will.
Will you further blacken yourself by following the devil's counsel rather than obeying God's command? If your sin is great, let it multiply your tears—but never stop your progress to Christ.
[4] Fourthly. If Your Sins Were Less Than They Are, You Might Not So Easily Believe in Christ as Now You May If you will not believe while your sins are great and your heart corrupt, I dare assure you that if your heart were not corrupt and your sins small, you would not believe; for you would be apt to trust in your own heart and rely upon your own righteousness rather than believe in Christ.
Great sins, and a bad heart felt and bewailed, are rather an advantage, as hunger is an incentive to a man to seek food. If men had clean hearts, it is likely they would dispose of them otherwise, and rather think Christ should come to them. Poverty should make men more importunate, not more modest.
To say, I will not come to Christ because I have great sins, is as if one should say, I will never have anything to do with happiness if it is offered, because I am very miserable; I will go to no surgeon because my wound is so great; I will eat no bread because I am exceedingly hungry and likely to starve. This is ill logic, and so it is with you to argue, Because I am filthy, therefore I will not go to the fountain to be washed, or to think you must be sanctified before believing.
Since, therefore, you have—as you yourself confess—no righteousness to trust in, you should be all the more easily persuaded to cast yourself upon Christ, seeing there is no other way.
If you are afraid of drowning under these mighty floods that roll upon you, you should do as men ready to perish in the waters: they catch hold of whatever is nearest to them, though it be their dearest friend. There is none nearer to you than Christ, nor any such a friend. Catch hold of Him therefore.
[5] Fifthly. The Greatness of Your Sin Is a Ground for a Plea Turn your sins into arguments, as David does in Psalm 25:11:
"For it is great."
Some translate it, Though it be great; and the Hebrew word ַרב (rav) will bear both senses. The psalmist uses two arguments: God's name and the greatness of his sin—and both are as valid now as they were then.
You may go to God with this language upon your lips:
Lord, my filthiness is great; therefore there is greater need of Your washing me. My wound is deep; therefore the necessity of a plaster is the greater.
What charitable man in the world would not hasten medicine rather than refuse it? What earthly physician would say, The disease is great; therefore there is no room for my skill? And shall God be less charitable than man?
Dogs are filthy and foul, yet they may claim crumbs.
You may also plead the argument of God's name. Sinners may plead for grace on the account of God's glory—that is, the glory He will receive by it. His wisdom is displayed in serving His own ends by His greatest enemy; His power in conquering sin; His grace in pardoning it. Show Him His own name (Exod. 34), and see whether He will deny a single letter of it.
If your disease were not so great, Christ's glory would not be so illustrious. The pardon of such sins magnifies the mercy and skill of your Savior. The multitude of devils in Mary Magdalene is recorded to show the power of Him who expelled them and wrought so remarkable a change.
Are your sins the greatest? God, who loves to advance His free grace in the highest manner, will gladly take the opportunity to have so great a sinner follow the chariot of it, and to manifest thereby its uncontrollable power.
Use David's argument again from Psalm 39:12. When in verse 8 he prays that God would deliver him from his transgressions, in verse 12 he urges this plea—that he was a stranger. I see no reason why it may not be yours also. If your sins are great, you are more alienated from God than the ordinary rank of men.
Lord, You command us to show kindness to strangers, to love our enemies. Will You not use the same mercy toward a stranger, and show the same love to so great an enemy as I am? The greater my enmity, the more glorious will be Your love.
Plead Therefore [1] First. The Infiniteness of God's Mercy It is strange if your debts should be so great that the exchequer of the King of kings cannot discharge them. Why should the apostle say that God is rich in mercy (Eph. 2), and call it great love, if it were spent only upon little sins, or if any debts could exhaust it? Surely an infinite God cannot be finitely rich.
If God is rich in mercy, He is surely infinitely rich. You cannot think that any who have reached heaven before you have drained His treasures; for then His mercy would be finite, not infinite. They would not be unsearchable riches if the sins of all the world could find the bottom of them.
God looks upon His grace as the greatest part of His estate. He calls it His riches, a title He gives to no other attribute. Now riches are not meant to lie by and rust, but to be laid out and traded with; and the more they are traded with, the more wealth they bring in. God does not delight to hoard these riches for no use, for omne bonum est sui diffusivum—every good diffuses itself. The greater the goodness, the more diffusive it is.
God loves to distribute His wealth upon His own terms, and to venture out riches of grace that He may receive returns of riches of glory. So if you come to God, you have all His estate at your service.
Until you can be as sinful as God is merciful, as evil as God is good, do not think your iniquities can check an Almighty goodness.
Mercy bears the greatest sway in God's name (Exod. 34:6–7). There is but one expression of His power, two of His justice, but nine or ten of His mercy. His power attends His mercy as well as His justice; so that on mercy's side against justice there are five to one—great odds indeed.
Plead then with God: Lord, it is said in Your Word (Prov. 3:28), "Say not to your neighbor, Go and come again, and tomorrow I will give, when it is in the power of your hand to do it." Should a man refuse his neighbor when he has the gift by him? And shall the merciful God deny me the mercy I beg upon my knees, when He has it all stored by Him?
Must I forgive my brother seventy times seven, and shall I be more charitable to man than infinite mercy will be to me? Shall Your justice alone speak, and Your mercy be silent? Have You not said that You blot out transgressions for Your own sake (Isa. 43:25), and blot out iniquities like a thick cloud (Isa. 44:22)? Is there any cloud so thick as to resist the melting power of the sun—and shall a cloud of sin resist the power of Your mercy? Has not mercy as much strength and eloquence to plead for me as justice has to accuse me?
Have Your bowels no rhetoric? Who can resist the persuasive eloquence of His own bowels?
[2] Secondly. Christ's and God's Intent in His Coming Was to Discharge Great Sins He was called Jesus, a Savior, because He would save His people from their sins. And do you think some of His people's sins were not as great as any in the world? To save only from small iniquities would not have been a work suitable to so glorious a name.
Nor can we imagine that Christ entered into such strict bonds with His Father merely to be a surety for small debts. Had this been His intent, He would have placed limits in the prayer He taught His disciples, commanding them to ask, Forgive us our little sins. But He teaches them to pray, Forgive us our trespasses, without measure or exception.
He never asked how many or how great the sins were of those who came to Him. Upon faith, He simply said, Your sins are forgiven you.
Plead therefore with Christ: You came to do Your Father's will, which was that none who come to You should be cast out. You have said this, and You must not only say it, but do it. Will You draw me with the cords of a man—when I could not come unless You drew me—and then beat me back with a frown?
[3] Thirdly. Christ's Death Was a Satisfaction for the Greatest Sins Christ's death was a satisfaction for the greatest sins, both ex parte facientis (on Christ's part) and ex parte acceptantis (on God's part).
God could accept no satisfaction but what was infinite (Heb. 10:12): one sacrifice for sins forever. Not one sin, but sins; not small sins, but sins without exception.
Yes, all sin is cleansed (1 John 1:7)—and all includes great as well as small.
Satan once appeared to a sick man and displayed a long catalogue of his sins, concluding from it that he must be eternally damned. The sick man, strengthening himself with Scripture, bade the devil write over the catalogue in large letters: "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). The devil immediately left him.
Can your sins be greater than Christ's merit? Can your offenses outweigh His sacrifice? It would be strange if the malignity of sin were as infinite as the virtue of His death.
Christ satisfied for all the saints who ever entered heaven. Place your sins in the balance with theirs—surely they do not outweigh them. He was a propitiation for the sins of the whole world; are your sins as great as the sins of the whole world?
Was not Christ charged with as great sins as yours when He hung upon the cross? Or are your individual sins heavier than all those of which the prophet speaks: "The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:6)?
Then plead the death of your Savior. Say: It is written that it is a joy to a righteous man to perform judgment; shall it not be far more a joy to the righteous God? Behold, here I present the atonement my
Savior has made. If it is not enough, I am content to perish; but if it is, then do me justice with joy, and discharge my transgressions.
If it be objected that you once rejected this satisfaction, answer: His satisfaction was made for such sins as these; otherwise none would be saved, for who did not at first refuse it? Christ Himself shall be my Advocate.
[4] Fourthly. Christ Is Able to Take Away Great Sins Did Christ ever allow anyone who came to Him with a great infirmity to depart without healing? Did He ever dishonor Himself by allowing it to be said that a disease was too great for His power?
Why then should any sin be too great for Him to pardon? He forgave sins with as much ease as He healed bodies. Your sins are forgiven you was no harder for Him to say than Rise, take up your bed, and walk.
Have you seven devils? Suppose a legion—six thousand six hundred sixty-six—He cast out as many from one man. Can He not as easily dispossess a soul? If you had ten thousand legions, Christ would not lose the opportunity of so glorious a conquest.
Were it not for such objects, we would not know whether He could save to the uttermost (Heb. 7:25). What is that power for, if not to be exercised upon the hardest cases?
Suppose the scroll of your sins reached from earth to heaven—would it exceed the reach of Christ's saving power? That word uttermost
stands against all your objections.
If you bore the sins of all the damned in hell, you could not bring either His grace or His power to a standstill. His blood is of such virtue that, were it applied to a devil, it would make him an angel.
What is either a great disease or a small one to omnipotence, which cures all by the same word?
But, says the soul, I do not question His power, but His will.
Therefore— [5] Fifthly. Christ's Nature Leads Him to Show Mercy to the Greatest Sinners Some question whether Christ will pardon them, because they look upon Him as a hard Master who will not easily forgive. But Christ gives another character of Himself, Matt. 11:28–29, when He exhorts men to come to Him. He tells them they must not judge Him to be of a rugged and implacable nature, but meek and gentle—πραΰς καὶ ταπεινὸς τῇ καρδίᾳ—meek and lowly in heart.
Meekness is chiefly seen in the pardoning of injuries, not in keeping them in memory to beget and cherish revenge. And the greater the provocation, the more transcendent is that meekness which passes it by.
Did Christ ever upbraid any with their offenses, or strike them in the face with their former extravagancies? In Luke 7:44, Christ makes a narrative of Mary's acts of kindness toward Him, but not a syllable of
her foul transgressions. Are your sins so great? Surely Christ, who delights in His compassions, will not lose such an opportunity of evidencing both His power and His pity upon such a subject. For if there can be no greater sinner than you suppose yourself to be, He is never likely to have a more seasonable occasion for it, should He pass you by.
[6] Sixthly. Christ Was Exalted by God upon This Very Account Heb. 7:25: Wherefore He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him. The phrase is σῴζειν εἰς τὸ παντελές—to save completely, to the uttermost.
How comes Christ to be so able to save to the uttermost? Because He ever lives to make intercession for them. For whom? For those who come to God by Him. And for what purpose does Christ live in heaven now, but to intercede?
Would the Father's love to Him, and the greatness of His interest with God, be discovered by granting only small requests—the pardon of a few little sins? Christ is consecrated Priest by the oath of God,
Heb. 7:28. Would God put Himself to an oath for a light matter, a thing of little moment?
Compare this with Heb. 6:16–18. Men swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is the end of all strife. God, willing more abundantly to show to the heirs of promise the immutability of His
counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that they might have strong consolation.
But what strong consolation could there be if only small debts were remitted? Men do not ordinarily strive with God, or doubt His willingness to forgive lesser sins; they suppose that will be done of course. The great contest between God and doubting sinners concerns His willingness to pardon great debts, scarlet sins.
Therefore, to bring this controversy to a full end, God bound Himself by an oath that Christ should be a Priest forever, that all strife between Him and believing sinners might cease.
For whom is this strong consolation founded upon God's oath? Heb.
6:18: for those who flee for refuge. And the cities of refuge were not appointed for petty faults, but for blood, to protect the offender from the avenger.
Shall I add further: God is best pleased with Christ when He makes intercession for the greatest transgressors.
Suppose you had been one of Christ's murderers, and had given your voice against Him. You might think this a more crimson sin than any you have committed. Yet Christ prayed for their pardon while He hung upon the cross.
And God gives this as a reason for exalting Him, Isa. 53:12: Because He poured out His soul unto death. Why should He bear sin at all, if God had no intention to pardon it? And because He was numbered among the transgressors—which the evangelist understands of His being crucified with thieves (Mark 15:28)—His making intercession
for transgressors must be understood especially of His prayer upon the cross.
If God exalted Him for this, would God now be pleased with Christ if He ceased to intercede for sinners of the same kind? Or would Christ answer the end of His exaltation if He were unwilling to continue that work?
Tell God that He sent Christ to bless you, Acts 3:26, in converting you. And desire Christ to do His office.
[7] Seventhly. Christ Is Entrusted by God to Give Out His Grace to Great Sinners Christ is God's Lord Almoner for the dispensing of redemption and the riches of His grace. To whom? Not to the righteous, for they have no need of it, but to sinners, and especially to those who have the greatest necessity.
He would be an ill steward who, being entrusted by his lord to bestow his alms upon the poor, should overlook the most miserable, indigent, and necessitous persons when they crave it of him, and instead relieve those who have not such great and crying wants.
Christ is a Priest for ends of the same nature as the legal, typical priests were. They were to have compassion, Heb. 5:2, μετριοπαθεῖν
—to measure out their compassion—to order the sacrifice according to the nature of the sin of the person who presented it. So Christ, by virtue of His office, is to measure out His grace according to the
greatness of a man's necessity, as manna was to be gathered according to every one's wants.
Conclusion of the Exhortation Well then, to conclude this exhortation: embolden yourself to draw near to Christ. This is the Apostle's use of all his foregoing doctrine,
Heb. 10:19 and following. God requires not a heart without sin, but a heart without guile. Who needs more boldness than great sinners?
And the Apostle sets no limits to it.
Let us, who have been as great sinners as any, resolve to do as those did in Jeremiah, Jer. 3:22. They had both a command and a promise.
Return—there is the command. I will heal—there is the promise.
Immediately they reply, We will come to thee. They seem to snatch the promise out of God's mouth.
How will these quick and ready converts rise up in judgment against your slowness and dullness? Shall they do this upon one promise, and when you have all the promises in the Book of God repeated to you, shall God hear no other answer but this: We will not return, or we dare not come, we dare not believe thee?
Did God give but one promise to Adam, and did he embrace it and live upon it all his life—for we read of no more than that of the Seed of the woman breaking the serpent's head—and will you not return when you have so many promises filling every page of Scripture?
Have you not a world of precedents? Did not God take up all His saints from the dunghill, with all their rags, and clothe them? Were
any of them born princes and sons of heaven? Alas, every man at first sued for a Savior in the right of a sinner, and all pleaded in the court of heaven in formâ pauperis. Were they not debtors? And could they do anything that might make God cross out one of those sums they owed Him?
Oh, think not then that you can dam up that torrent of love which has flowed so freely into the world for so many ages. Though your disease be grievous, yet it is not irrecoverable, provided you go to the Physician. He can, with a breath, burn up your corruption as soon as dissolve the creation.
Christ can turn the muddiest water into such wine as can please the heart both of God and man. As you have been vessels of sin, if you will now be vessels of repentance, God will make you brimful of mercy.
Plead not therefore your own unworthiness. Man's unworthiness never yet hindered the flowing of God's kindness. It is too weak a bank to stop the current of God's favor. The greater your unworthiness, the greater advantage free grace has to manifest its uncontrollable excellency.
That man dishonors God who sets his sin above God's goodness, or his unworthiness above God's condescension. You cannot do God a greater pleasure than to come to Him to be made clean.
When He reckons up your sin, it is not with an upbraiding, but with a compassionate sigh, Jer. 13:27. He longs for the time of your returning, and minds you of your sin that you may the sooner seek a
remedy. He wonders that you will continue in so filthy a condition so long.
USE IV. Caution 1. Think not your sins are pardoned because they are not so great as those God has pardoned in others.
This is ad suam consolationem aliena numerare vitia—to number other men's sins for one's own consolation.
Consider that God cast off Saul for lesser sins than David committed.
Evil angels were cast off for one sin. A few small sands may sink a ship as well as a great rock. Your sins may be pardoned, though as great as others', but then you must have equal qualifications with them. They had great sins, so have you; but have you as great a hatred and loathing of sin as they had?
2. Let not this doctrine encourage any person to go on in sin.
If you now suck such poison out of this doctrine, and boast of that name God proclaims, Exod. 34:6–7, take the cooler along with you, and remember that it is one part of His name, by no means to clear the guilty. He never intended those mercies for sinners as sinners, but as penitent. Penitents, as such, are not guilty, because repentance is a moral revocation of sin, and always supposes faith in Christ.
There is forgiveness with God, Ps. 130:4, but it is that He may be feared, not despised. God never intended mercy as a sanctuary to
protect sin.
(1) It is disingenuous to do so.
Great love requires great duties, not great sins. Freeness of grace should make us increase holiness in a more cheerful manner. What high ingratitude is it to be inclined to sin because God is inclined to pardon; to have a frozen heart toward Him because He has a melting heart toward you? What, to kick against Him because He has bowels, and to be wicked because God is good? To turn grace itself into wantonness.
Is this to fear His goodness? No; it is to trample upon it—to make that which should excite you to holiness a bawd to your lust, and God
Himself a pandar to the devil.
If you thus slight the design of this mercy, which you can never prize at too high a rate, it is certain you never had the least taste of it. If you had, you could not sin so freely; for when grace enters, it makes the soul dead to sin, Rom. 6:1–2. The Apostle answers such a consequence with a God forbid.
(2) It is foolish.
Would any man be so simple as to set his house on fire because he has a great river running by his door, from which he may have water to quench it? Or wound himself because there is an excellent plaster which has cured several?
(3) It is dangerous.
If you lose the present time, you are in danger of losing eternity.
There are many in hell who never sinned at such a presumptuous rate. He is merciful to the penitent, but He will not be unfaithful to His threatenings. If you are willing to receive grace, you may have it
—but upon God's conditions. He will not pin it upon your sleeve whether you will or no. This is to make that which is the savor of life become the savor of death to you.
See what an answer Paul gives to such an imagination, Rom. 3:8: Let us do evil, that good may come; whose damnation is just. He takes, as it were, a handful of hell-fire and flings it in their faces.
Let but Deut. 29:18–19 stare you in the face, and promise yourself peace in this course if you can: Lest there should be among you a root that bears gall and wormwood. And it comes to pass, when he hears the words of this curse, that he blesses himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of my heart.
As His goodness is great, which you despise, so the wrath will be the hotter which you treasure up. Though great sins are occasions of great grace, yet sin does not necessitate grace.
Who can tell whether God would ever have shown mercy to Paul, had he done against knowledge what he did ignorantly?
Repentance must come first. See the order, Acts 3:19: Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. First
repentance and conversion, then justification. This grace is given only to penitent sinners.
You know not whether you shall repent; but you may know this: if you do not repent, you shall be damned. As there is infinite grace to pardon you if you repent, so there is infinite justice to punish you if you do not. The gospel binds us to good behavior as much as the law.
FINIS
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Man's Enmity to God, by Stephen Charnock, D. D., Copyright ©
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