and life-giving) hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1
His unrisen and His risen life is only that between the sun at dayspring and
at noon. Let us rejoice at the remembrance of His risen life as the truest, the
fittest, the most blessed for us. The more that we realize our own mortality,
the more let us feel the preciousness and the suitableness of His immortality
as the risen One; and the more let us realize the identity between us and
Him, in virtue of which not merely we shall rise, but we have risen with
Him.
6. The joys of the risen life. In the tomb the Man of sorrows left all His
sorrows, as He left all our sins. There they were buried with Him. At His
resurrection His full joy began; and in the Psalms this connection between
His resurrection and His joy is more than once proclaimed. In the sixteenth
the two things are placed very strikingly together; for after it is said, "Thou
wilt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption," it is added, "Thou wilt
show me the path of life (resurrection); in Thy presence is fullness of joy"
(see Psalm 30:3-5; 116:3-7). For Him resurrection was joy, not merely
because it ended His connection with death, but because it introduced Him
into the fullness of joy,-a joy peculiar to the risen life, and of which only a
risen man can be capable. Into the joy of His risen life we in some measure
enter here by faith; but the fullness of that risen joy is yet in reserve for us,
awaiting the resurrection of the just, when the body as well as the head shall
have done with tribulation and with death for ever.
7. The hopes of the risen life. We are "begotten again to a lively (or living
and life-giving) hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1
Pet 1:3). With Christ's resurrection and with His risen life our "hope" is
connected,-a "hope" which contains and imparts "life" here; a "hope"
which, like a flower from the bud, opens out into the fullness of the glorious
life hereafter. The hope of which we are partakers through the risen life of
the second Adam far transcends any hope which the unrisen life of the first
Adam could have given. It is the hope of an inheritance, a kingdom, a city, a
glory, such as belongs only to the risen offspring of the second Adam, such
as can be possessed only by the redeemed and the risen. The resurrection of
the Son of God is to us the earnest and the pledge of this blessed hope.
Hence our watchword is, "Christ in us, the hope of glory."
For the Church of God, the words "He is risen" are full of health and
gladness. The more that we dwell upon our Surety's resurrection, the more
shall we realize the life and immortality which have been brought to light
by His gospel. The oftener that we visit His empty tomb, and see for
ourselves that He is not here, He is risen, the more shall we be penetrated
by that wondrous truth that we are risen with Him, and that this fellowship
in resurrection is as truly the source of spiritual life, health, and holiness, as
of joy unspeakable and full of glory.
For each sad sinner, still buried in the grave of sin, the words contain a
gospel,-glad tidings of great joy. The empty tomb of Jesus gives forth a
voice which reaches to the very ends of the earth. Everlasting life through
Him who died and rose again; forgiveness and righteousness and
reconciliation through the accepted work of the great Substitute, finished on
the cross, but sealed and attested by resurrection; peace with God through
Him who left the tomb. and went up to the Father's right hand, as at once
the maker and the giver of peace;-all this we preach, without condition or
restriction, to a world lying in wickedness, that each condemned one may
hear and live! Through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of
sins! Take the free pardon now; and in taking it, exchange at once, without
one moment's delay or uncertainty, life for death, liberty for bondage,
Sonship for alienation, joy for sorrow,-a hope that maketh not ashamed, for
heaviness here and eternal despair hereafter. He is risen, sinner, He is risen!
Go, deal with this risen Christ; go, transact the great business for eternity
with Him; go, receive life and blessings at His hands: for truly He is the
same Savior still as when, by the sea of Galilee, He said to sinners, as far
off as you can be, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest."
Chapter Nine
The Pardon and the Peace Made Sure
hrist for us," the obedient in the room of the disobedient, is the first
part of our message. His assumption of the legal claims, which
otherwise would have made good against us, is the security for our
deliverance. That deliverance becomes an actual thing to us immediately
upon our consenting to allow Him to undertake our case.
"Christ in us" is the second part of our gospel. This second is of mighty
moment, and yet is not to be confounded with the first. That which is done
for us is not the same as that which is done in us. By the former we are
constituted righteous, by the latter we are made holy. The one is properly
the Gospel, in the belief of which we are saved; the other, the carrying out
of that gospel in the soul.
Christ "for us" is our justification. "Christ in us, and we in Christ," is our
holiness. The former is the external substitution; the latter, the internal
energy or operation, taking its rise from the former, yet not to be
confounded with it, or substituted for it.
Christ the substitute, giving His life for ours upon the cross, is specially
the object of faith. The message concerning this sacrificial work is the
gospel, the belief of which brings pardon to the guilty.
God has given us this gospel not merely for the purpose of securing to us
life hereafter, but of making us sure of this life even now. It is a true and
sure gospel; so that he who believes it is made sure of being saved. If it
could not make us sure, it would make us miserable; for to be told of such a
salvation and such a glory, yet kept in doubt as to whether they are to be
ours or not, must render us truly wretched. What a poor gospel it must be,
which leaves the man who believes it still in doubt as to whether he is a
child of God, an unpardoned or a pardoned sinner! Till we have found
forgiveness, we cannot be happy; we cannot serve God gladly or lovingly;
but must be in some bondage or gloom.
This is the view of the matter which Scripture sets before us; telling us
that salvation is a free, a sure, a present gift. "He that believeth is justified"
(Acts 13:39). "He that believeth hath everlasting life" (John 3:36). The
Bible gives no quarter to unbelief or doubting. It does not call it humility. It
does not teach us to think better of ourselves for doubting. It does not
countenance uncertainty or darkness.
This was the view taken of the subject by our fathers, from the
Reformation downwards. They held that a man ought to know that he is
justified; and that it was Popery to teach uncertainty, or to set aside the full
assurance of faith, or to hold that this sureness was not to be had from the
beginning of a man's conversion, but only to be gathered up in process of
years, by summing up his good feelings and good deeds, and concluding
from his own excellences that he must be one of the elect, a man in favor
with God. Our fathers believed that the jailer at Philippi rejoiced as soon as
he received the good news which Paul preached to him (Acts 16:34). Our
fathers believed that, "being justified by faith, WE HAVE peace with God"
(Rom 5:1), and that the life of a believing man is a life of known pardon; a
life of peace with God; a life of which the outset was the settlement of the
great question between himself and God; a life in which, as being a walk
with God, the settlement of that question did not admit of being deferred or
kept doubtful: for without felt agreement, without conscious reconciliation,
intercourse was impossible.
All the Reformation creeds and confessions take this for granted;
assuming that the doctrine of uncertainty was one of the worst lies of
Popery, 1 the device and stronghold of a money-loving priesthood, who
wished to keep people in suspense in order to make room for the dealings of
priests and payments for pardon. If assurance be the right of every man who
believes, then the priest's occupation is at an end; his craft is not only in
danger, but gone. It was the want of assurance in his poor victims that
enabled him to drive so prosperous a trade, and to coin money out of the
people's doubts. It was by this craft he had his wealth, and hence the hatred
with which Rome and her priests have always hated the doctrine of
assurance. It took the bread out of their mouths. If God pardons so freely, so
simply, so surely, so immediately upon believing, alas for the priesthood!
Who will pay them for absolution? Who will go to them to make sure that
which God has already made sure in a more excellent way than theirs?
Romanists have always maintained that assurance is presumption; and it
is remarkable that they quote, in defense of their opinion, the same passages
which many modern Protestants do, such as, "Work out your salvation with
fear and trembling"; the apostle's expression about being "a castaway"; "Let
him that thinketh he standeth"; and the like.
One of them, in reasoning with one of the English Reformers, speaks of
"the presumptuous opinion of the certainty of grace and salvation, contrary
to that which St. Paul counselleth, Philippians 2:12"; and the great Romish
controversialists give the following reasons against assurance, which we
abridge and translate:
(1) No man certainly ought to disbelieve God's mercy and Christ's merits;
but on account of his own imperfections, he ought to be fearful about his
own grace, so that no one can certainly know that he has found favor with
God. 2 It is not expedient that men should have certainty about their own
grace; for certainty produces pride, while ignorance of this secret preserves
and increases humility.(3) Assurance is the privilege of only a few favored
ones, to whom God has revealed the singular benefit of the pardon of their
sins.(4) The most perfect men, when dying, have been humbled because of
this uncertainty; and if some of the holiest men have been uncertain, is it
credible that all believers ought to have assurance of their justification?(5)
The best men fall from faith; therefore there can be no assurance.(6) The
following passages confute the error of assurance: 1 Corinthians 10:12; 2
Corinthians 6:1; Romans 11:20; Philippians 2:12.
Such are the Popish arguments against assurance, and the conclusion to
which the Council of Trent came was: "If any man shall say that justifying
faith is confidence in the mercy of God, who remitteth sins for Christ's sake,
or that it is by such confidence alone that we are justified, let him be
accursed."
Old John Foxe, who three hundred years ago wrote the history of the
martyrs, remarks concerning the Pope's Church that it "left the poor
consciences of men in perpetual doubt" (volume 1. page 78).
This is a true saying. But it is true of many who earnestly protest against
the Church of Rome. They not only teach doctrines which necessarily lead
to doubting, and out of which no poor sinner could extract anything but
uncertainty; but they inculcate doubting as a humble and excellent thing; a
good preparation, nay, an indispensable qualification, for faith. The duty of
doubting is in their theology much more obligatory than that of believing.
The propriety and necessity of being uncertain they strongly insist upon; the
blessedness of certainty they undervalue; the sin of uncertainty they
repudiate; the duty of being sure they deny.
This same John Foxe, after showing that a man is saved not by working,
but by believing, gives us the following specimen of "the horrible blindness
and blasphemy" of the Church of Rome: "That faith wherewith a man
firmly believeth and certainly assureth himself, that for Christ's sake his
sins be forgiven him, and that he shall possess eternal life, is not faith, but
rashness; not the persuasion of the Holy Ghost, but the presumption of
human audacity." The above extract is from a Popish book of the time, and
is a fair specimen of the Romish hatred of the doctrine of assurance. Its
language is almost the same as that employed by many Protestants of our
day.
The Romanists held that a man is to believe in the mercy of God and the
merits of Christ, but that this belief brought with it no assurance of
justification; though possibly, if the man lived a very holy life, God might
before he died reveal His grace to him, and give him assurance; which is
precisely what many Protestants hold.
In opposition to this, our forefathers not only maintained that a man is
justified by faith, but that he ought to know that he is justified, and that this
knowledge of justification is the great root of a holy life. The Romanists did
not quarrel with the word assurance; they did not hold it to be impossible:
they held that men might get it, nay, that some very holy men had got it. But
they affirmed that the only means of reaching the grace of assurance was by
a holy life; that with the slow development of a holy life, assurance might
develop itself; and that in the course of years, a man by numbering his good
deeds, and ascertaining the amount of his holiness, might perhaps come to
the conclusion that he was a child of God; but perhaps not. They were very
strenuous in contending for this life of religious suspense, sad and dismal as
it must be; because conscious justification, such as Luther contended for,
shut out priesthood and penance; giving a man the joy of true liberty and
divine fellowship at once, without the intervention of another party or the
delay of an hour.
This conscious justification started the man upon a happy life, because
relieved from the burden of doubt and the gloom of uncertainty; it made his
religion bright and tranquil, because springing so sweetly from the certainty
of his reconciliation to God; it delivered him from the cruel suspense and
undefined fears which the want of assurance carries always with it; it
rescued him from all temptations to self-righteousness, because not arising
from any good thing in himself; it preserved him from pride and
presumption, because it kept him from trying to magnify his own goodness
in order to extract assurance out of it; it drew him away from self to Christ,
from what he was doing to what Christ had done; thus making Christ, not
self, the basis and the center of his new being; it made him more and more
dissatisfied with self, and all that self contained, but more and more
satisfied with Jesus and His fullness; it taught him to rest his confidence
towards God, not on his satisfaction with self, not on the development of his
own holiness, not on the amount of his graces and prayers and doings, but
simply on the completed work of Him in whom God is well pleased.
The Romanists acquiesced in the general formula of the Protestants, that
salvation was all of Christ, and that we are to believe on Him in order to get
it. But they resisted the idea that a man, on believing, knows that he is
saved. They might even have admitted the terms "justification by faith,"
provided it was conceded that this justification was to be known only to
God, hidden from the sinner who believes. They did not much heed the
mere form of words, and some of them went apparently a long way to the
Protestant doctrine. But that which was essential to their system was, that in
whatever way justification took place, it should be kept secret from the
sinner himself, so that he should remain without assurance for years,
perhaps all his life. Unconscious justification by faith suited their system of
darkness quite as well as justification by works. For it was not the kind of
justification that they hated, but the sinner's knowing it, and having peace
with God simply in believing, without waiting for years of doing. No doubt
they objected to free justification in the Protestant sense; but the force of
their objection lies not so much against its being free, as against the sinner
being sure of it. For they saw well enough, that if they could introduce
uncertainty at any part of the process, their end was gained. For to remove
such uncertainty the Church must be called in; and this was all they wanted.
The doctrine, then, that makes uncertainty necessary, and that affirms that
this uncertainty can only be removed by the development of a holy life, is
the old Popish one, though uttered by Protestants. Luther condemned it;
Bellarmine maintained it. And many of the modern objections to assurance,
on the part of some Protestants, are a mere reproduction of old Romish
arguments, urged again and again, against justification by faith.
There is hardly one objection made to a man's being sure of his
justification which would not apply, and which have not been applied,
against his being justified by faith at all. If the common arguments against
assurance turn out valid, they cannot stop short of establishing justification
by works. Salvation by believing, and assurance only by means of working,
are not very compatible. The interval which is thus created between God's
act of justifying us, and His letting us know that He has justified us, is a
singular one, of which Scripture certainly takes no cognizance.
This interval of suspense (be it longer or shorter) which Romanists have
created for the purpose of giving full scope to priestly interposition, and
which some Protestants keep up in order to save us from pride and
presumption, is not acknowledged in the Bible any more than purgatory. An
intermediate state in the life to come, during which the soul is neither
pardoned nor unpardoned, neither in heaven nor hell, is thought needful by
Romanists for purging out sin and developing holiness; but then this
interval of gloom is man's creation. An intermediate state in this life, during
which a sinner, though believing in Jesus, is not to know whether he is
justified or not, is reckoned equally needful by some Protestants, as a
necessary means of producing, and through holiness leading perhaps ere life
close to assurance; but then of this sorrowful interval, this present
purgatory, which would make a Christian's life so dreary and fearful,
Scripture says nothing. It is a human delusion borrowed from Popery, and
based upon the dislike of the human heart to have immediate peace,
immediate adoption, and immediate fellowship.
The self-righteous heart of man craves an interval of the above kind as a
space for the exercise of his religiousness, while free from the responsibility
for a holy and unworldly life which conscious justification imposes on the
conscience.
But it will be greatly worth our while to see what Romanists have said
upon this subject; for their errors help us much in understanding the truth. It
will be seen that it was against present peace with God that Rome
contended; and that it was in defense of this present peace, this immediate
certainty, that the Reformers did battle so strenuously, as a matter of life and
death. The great Popish Assembly, the "Council of Trent," in 1547, took up
these points concerning faith and grace. Nor was that body content with
condemning assurance; they proclaimed it an accursed thing, and
pronounced an anathema against every one who affirmed that justifying
faith is "confidence in the mercy of God." They denounced the man as
heretic who should hold "the confidence and certainty of the remission of
sins."
Yet they had a theory of a justification by faith. We give it in their own
words, as it corresponds strikingly with the process which is prescribed by
some Protestants as the means of arriving, after long years, at the
knowledge of our justification:
"The beginning of justification proceedeth from preventing grace. The
manner of the preparation is, first to believe the divine revelations and
promises, and knowing oneself to be a sinner, to turn from the fear of God's
justice to His mercy, to hope for pardon from Him, and therefore to begin to
love Him and hate sin, to begin a new life, and keep the commandments of
God. Justification follows this preparation."
This theory of a gradual justification, or a gradual approach to
justification, is that held by many Protestants, and made use of by them for
resisting the truth of immediate forgiveness of sin and peace with God.
Then comes another sentence of the Council which expresses truly the
modern theory of non-assurance, and the common excuse for doubting,
when men say, "We are not doubting Christ, we are only doubting
ourselves." The Romish divines assert:
"No one ought to doubt the mercy of God, the merits of Christ, and the
efficacy of the sacraments; but in regard to his own indisposition he may
doubt, because he cannot know by certainty, of infallible faith, that he has
obtained grace."
Here sinners are taught to believe in God's mercy and in Christ's merits,
yet still to go on doubting as to the results of that belief, viz. sure peace
with God. Truly self-righteousness, whether resting on works or on
feelings, whether in Popery or Protestantism, is the same thing, and the root
of the same errors, and the source of the same determination not to allow
immediate certainty to the sinner from the belief of the good news.
This Popish Council took special care that the doctrine of assurance
should be served with their most pointed curses. All the "errors of Martin"
were by them traced back to this twofold root, that a man is justified by
faith, and that he ought to know that he is justified. They thus accuse the
German Reformer of inventing his doctrine of immediate and conscious
justification for the purpose of destroying the sinner's works of repentance,
which by their necessary imperfection make room for indulgences. They
call this free justification, a thing unheard of before,-a thing which not only
makes good works unnecessary, but sets a man free from any obligation to
obey the law of God.
It would appear that the learned doctors of the Council were bewildered
with the Lutheran doctrine. The schoolmen had never discussed it, nor even
stated it. It had no place either among the beliefs or misbeliefs of the past. It
had not been maintained as a truth, nor impugned as a heresy, so far as they
knew. It was an absolute novelty. They did not comprehend it, and of course
misrepresented it. As to original sin, that had been so often discussed by the
schoolmen, that all Romish divines and priests were familiar with it in one
aspect or another. On it, therefore, the Council were at home, and could
frame their curses easily, and with some point. But the Lutheran doctrine of
justification brought them to a stand. Thus the old translator of Paul Sarpi's
History puts it:
"The opinion of Luther concerning justifying faith, that is a confidence
and certain persuasion of the promise of God, with the consequences that
follow, of the distinction between the law and the gospel, etc., had never
been thought of by any school writers, and therefore never confuted or
discussed, so that the divines had work enough to understand the meaning
of the Lutheran propositions."
Luther's doctrine of the will's bondage they were indignant at, as making
man a stone or a machine. His doctrine of righteousness by faith horrified
them, as the inlet of all laxity and wickedness. Protestant doctrines were to
them absurdities no less than heresies.
Nor was it merely the Church, the Fathers, and tradition that they stood
upon. The schools and the schoolmen! This was their watchword; for
hitherto these scholastic doctors had been, at least for centuries, the
bodyguard of the Church. Under their learning, and subtleties, and
casuistries, priests and bishops had always taken refuge. Indeed, without
them, the Church was helpless, so far as logic was concerned. When she
had to argue, she must call in these metaphysical divines; though generally
by force and terror she contrived to supersede all necessity for reasoning.
Three men in the Council showed some independence: a Dominican friar,
by name Ambrosius Catarinus; a Spanish Franciscan, by name Andreas de
Vega; and a Carmelite, by name Antonius Marinarus. The "Heremites" of
the order to which Luther originally belonged were especially blind and
bitter, their leader Seripandus outdoing all in zeal against Luther and his
heresy.
Compelled, in the investigation of the subject, to pass beyond Luther to
Luther's Master, they were sorely puzzled. To overlook Him was
impossible, for the Protestants appealed to Him; to condemn Him would
have not been wise.
They were obliged to admit the bitter truth, that Paul had said that a man
is justified by faith. They had maintained the strict literality of "This is my
body"; must they admit the equal literality of 'justified by faith"? Or may
this latter expression not be qualified and overlaid by scholastic ingenuity,
or set aside by an authoritative denial in the name of the Church? At the
Council of Trent both these methods were tried.
It was not Luther only who laid such stress upon the doctrine of free
justification. His adversaries were wise enough to do the same. They saw in
it the root or foundation stone of the whole Reformation. If it falls, Popery
stands erect, and may do what she pleases with the consciences of men. If it
stands, Popery is overthrown; her hold on men's consciences is gone; her
priestly power is at an end, and men have directly to do with the Lord Jesus
Christ in heaven, and not with any pretended vicar upon earth, or any of his
priests or seven sacraments. "All the errors of Martin are resolved into that
point," said the bishops of the Council; and they added, "He that will
establish the Catholic doctrine must overthrow the heresy of righteousness
by faith only."