Notes: Sect. 11. — The use of that distinction in practice.
Notes: Sect. 11. — The use of that distinction in practice.
398
Namely, how to improve these points of doctrine in my practice. There lies the great difficulty — and according to the unbelief or faith of the ascendant, the soul will carry itself in practice: confessing, begging pardon, fasting, mourning, and humbling itself, either as a condemned malefactor, or as an offending child.
399
See pages 113, note and 117, note, “The law, as it condemns and curses, is a mere passive and a naked bystander to the believer; it has no activity, nor can it act in that power on anyone in Christ; just as the law of Spain is merely passive in condemning a free-born man dwelling in Scotland.” Rutherford’s Spirit. Antichrist, p. 87. — “The law being fully satisfied by Christ, it neither condemns, nor can it condemn, to eternal sufferings; for that is removed from the law to all those who are in Christ.” Ibid.
400
For according to the Scripture, the believer is dead to the law, and the law is dead to the believer; namely, as it is the law of the Covenant of Works. See page 109, note, and pages 110, 111.
401
Exact and perfect, comparatively, not absolutely. See pages 215, 231.
402
See page 162, note.
403
The author speaks expressly of the love of God, touching believers’ justification and eternal salvation, which, according to the Scripture, he reckons to be given to them already. And he asserts that, as no good in them or done by them, moved God to love them so as to justify them, and give them eternal life, so no evil in them or done by them, will lessen that love, as to their justification and eternal salvation. That is, as he himself explains it, none of this will move God to take eternal life (which includes justification) away from them, once given. This is a most firm truth. However more and greater the sins of a believer are, he may lay to his account the more and greater effects of God’s fatherly indignation against him; and the corruption of human nature makes adding such a clause in such a case very necessary. What our author advances here, is evident from the holy Scripture. Psa 89.30-34, “If his children forsake my law, and do not walk in my judgments, if they break my statutes, and do not keep my commandments, then I will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes: nevertheless, I not utterly take from him my lovingkindness will; nor will I allow my faithfulness to fail; I will not break my covenant, nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.” And to deny it, is in effect to affirm that God loves believers because of their justification and eternal salvation, and for their holiness; this is contrary to Titus 3.5, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us.” — Rom. 6.23, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Saying that his love towards them changes according to the variations of their frame and walk, is contrary to Rom. 11.29, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” But while the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints stands — namely: that true believers cannot fall away either totally or finally, either from relative grace or from inherent grace — our author’s doctrine on this point must stand also. And the sins of believers, however great or many they are, can never be of that kind which is inconsistent with a state of grace, nor of another kind than that of infirmities. See p. 168, note. However low grace is brought in the soul of a believer at any time, through the prevalence of temptation, he can never altogether lose his inherent holiness, nor can he at any time “live after the flesh.” For according to the Scripture, that is not the spot of God’s children; but he who lives this way neither is, nor ever was, one of them. Rom. 6.2, 14, “How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer in it? Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace.” — Chap. 8.1, “Those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” See verse 4; 1John 3.9, “Whoever is born of God does not commit sin — for his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”
“God foresaw what infirmities you would have, before he gave Christ this commision; and Christ foresaw them before his acceptance of the charge. If their prescience could not stop God in his gift, nor cool Christ in his acceptance, why should it now? While they continue, the love of God toward you is not hindered by them.” Charnock, vol. ii. p. 749.
“Observe a twofold distinction: 1st. Between God’s love in itself, and the manifestation of it to us — His love is itself perpetual and one, without change, increase, or lessening: but the manifestation of this love is variable, according to our more or less careful exercise of piety. 2d. Between God’s love to our persons, and God’s love to our qualities and actions. This is a distinction which God well knows how to make. Parents, I am sure, are well skilled in putting this difference between the vices and the persons of their children; those they hate, and these they love. The case is alike between God and the elect; his love toward their persons is from everlasting the same. Nor does their sinfulness lessen it; nor does their sanctity increase it; because in loving their persons, God never considered them other than as most perfectly holy and unblameable in Christ,” Pemble’s Works, p. 23.
404
They are.
405
See page 220, note.
406
Though not for their obedience, but for Christ’s obedience. [Christ’s obedience enables it, but their own obedience is rewarded with communion with God (1Joh 1.6). See above, and pp. 227-228 below.]
407
I read the last word of this sentence, Christ, not works [as originally printed], judging it plain that the latter is a press error. See the last clause of Neophytus’ speech above, and the reason here immediately following, with the first paragraph on page 228.
408
An awful penalty, if rightly understood, as comprehending all manner of strokes and afflictions on the outward and inner man, called by our author “temporal and spiritual afflictions on the outward man;” not to speak of the reproach, disgrace, and contempt, successless labour and toil, poverty, misery, want, and the like, which the believer is liable to for his disobedience, as well as others. His sins lay him open to the whole train of maladies, pains, torments, sores, diseases, and plagues, incident to sinful flesh, by which he may become a burden to himself and others. And these may be inflicted on him, not only by the hand of God, but by the hand of the devil; as appears in the case of Job. Indeed, the Lord may, in virtue of this penalty annexed to his law, pursue the controversy with the offending believer, even to death; so that his natural life may go because of his transgression, 1Cor. 11.30, 32. To this may be added the marks of God’s indignation against his sin, set upon his relations: witness the disorders, mischiefs, and strokes on David’s family, for his sin in the matter of Uriah, more bitter than death, 2Sam. 12.10-14; chap, 13, and 15.In the inner man, by virtue of the same penalty, he is liable for his transgression, to be deprived of the comfort, sense, exercise, and some measure of his graces; deprived of his sense of God’s love, his peace, joy, actual communion with God, and access to him in duties; he is to be brought under desertion, the hiding of God’s face, withdrawing the light of the Lord’s countenance; and left to walk in darkness, to go mourning without the sun, and to cry and shout while the Lord shuts out his prayer; to be thrown into agonies of conscience, pierced with the arrows of the Almighty in his spirit, compassed about and distracted with the terrors of God, seized with the fearful apprehensions of God’s revenging wrath against him, and thereby brought to the brink of absolute despair. Besides all this, he is liable to the buffetings of Satan, and horrid temptations; and for the punishment of one sin, he is allowed to fall into another. And all these may, by virtue of the penalty annexed to the law in the hand of Christ, converge in the case of the offending believer, together and at once. Thus, even though God nowhere threatens to cast believers in Christ into hell, yet he both threatens and often executes casting a hell into them, for their provocations.
Only the revenging wrath and curse of God are not part of the penalty to believers in Christ, according to the truth and our author. But the sober-minded reader will easily judge for himself whether or not this penalty, as it is without these, leaves the most holy and awful law of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ, most base and despicable.
“The one, namely: justification, equally frees all believers from the revenging wrath of God, and that is perfectly in this life.” Larger Cat. q. 77. — “They can never fall from the state of justification, yet they may, by their sins, fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and not have the light of his countenance restored to them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.” Westm. Confess., chap. 11. art. 5.— “They may fall into grievous sins, and for a time continue in them, whereby they incur God’s displeasure, and grieve his holy Spirit; they may come to be deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened, and their consciences wounded; they may hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves.” lb. chap. 17. art. 3. — “The threatenings of it serve to show what their sins deserve; and what afflictions in this life they may expect for them, though freed from the curse of it threatened in the law.” lb. chap. 19. art. 6. See p. 200, note.
409
Chos. Sermons, “Serm. Of the Kingdom of God,” page 120.
410
Mat. 6.9, 12, “Pray in this manner therefore: Our Father which art in heaven; forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
411
Micah 7:19 He will again have compassion on us, And will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
412
The subduing of sin is the mark of God’s hearing prayer for the pardon of it; if one does not feel his iniquity subdued, he cannot find that God has heard his prayers for pardon.
413
To producing holy obedience, acccording to the measure and degree of it.
414
The author here does nothing other than exhort the believer to yield free obedience, without respect to what either the Law of Works, or the Law of Christ, promises or threatens — other than exhort him to that perfect obedience which, in the beginning of this answer, he told him is not attainable in this life. And the truth is, neither the one nor the other is the design of these words. But he had exhorted him before to use all means to increase his faith; and for his encouragement, he tells him here that if, by faith, he applied the goodness of God in Christ to his own soul, in any good measure, then he would yield obedience accountably, without respect to what either the Law of Works, or the Law of Christ promises or threatens, and only because God commands or forbids it. The freeness of obedience is of very different degrees; and believers’ obedience is never absolutely free till it is absolutely perfect in heaven. But the freeness of their obedience will always be in proportion to the measure of their faith, which is never perfect in this life; thus the more faith, the more freeness of obedience; and the less faith, the less of that freeness. See page 79, note.
“The believer obeys with an angel-like obedience; then the Spirit seems to exhaust all the commanding awesomeness of the law, and supplies the law’s imperious power, with the strength and power of love.” Rutherford’s Spirit. Antichrist, p. 318. “The more of the Spirit — because the Spirit is essentially free (Psa 51.12; 2Cor. 3.17) — the more freeness; and the more freeness, the more renewed the will in obedience; and the more renewed the will, the less constraint, because freeness exhausts constraint.” Ibid.
“When Christ’s blood is seen by faith to quiet justice, then the conscience becomes quiet also, and will not allow the heart to entertain the love of sin, but sets the man at work to fear God for his mercy, and obey all his commandments out of love to God, for his free gift of justification bestowed on him by grace; for ‘this is the end of the law ‘indeed, this is whereby it obtains from a man more obedience than any other way.” Pract. Use of Sav. Knowledge, tit. ““The Third Thing Requisite,” etc. fig. 7.
Promises and threatenings are not, by this doctrine, annexed to the holy law in vain, even with respect to believers; for the law of God is, in his infinite wisdom, suited to the state of the creature to whom it is given. And therefore — even though the believer’s eternal happiness is unalterably secured from the moment of his union with Christ by faith — yet, since sin still dwells in him while he is in this world, the promises of fatherly smiles, and threatenings of fatherly chastisements, are still necessary. But it is evident that this necessity is entirely founded on the believer’s imperfection; as in the case of a child under age. And, therefore, although his being influenced to obedience by the promises and threatenings of the Law of Christ is not indeed slavish, it is plainly childish, not agreeing with the state of a perfect man, of one that has come to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. And in the state of perfection, he will yield such free obedience as the angels in heaven yield, without being moved to it by any promises or threatenings at all. And the nearer he comes in his progress to that state of perfection, the more his obedience will be of that nature. So by the doctrine advanced here, the author no more disowns the necessity of promises to influence and encourage the believer’s obedience, nor say that he should not regard the promises and threatenings, than one would say that a lame man has no need of, and should disregard the crutches provided for him. He only says that the stronger his limbs grow, the less need he will have of them, and he will lean all the less on them.
415
See the preceding note.