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"CHOICE SAYINGS."

 

The Gospel.

The very first sigh on account of sin which is begotten in the heart of a sinner by the Holy Spirit, is the beginning of an eternal communion with God.

Among hearers of the Gospel God remem­bers the sins of those only who remember not the blood of Jesus.

If God build His glory upon Christ, shall not we build on Him our hope of salvation?

Do we heartily renounce our own righteous­ness?  and are we looking only to the atoning blood of Jesus for justification and sanctifica­tion? If so, we are poor sinners saved by grace.

The very commandment of God-" Repent" --shows a dispensation above the law, and supposes a fountain of grace in the heart of God. Were there not forgiveness with God, there could have been no commandment to repent.

As divine justice was honoured by the con­demnation and cross of Christ, the Head, so is the same justice honoured by the salvation of the members.

The natural man has no apprehension of the Gospel. "What must I do?" is ever his cry. Man has done his work perfectly-that of self-­destruction. He is wholly bent upon evil, altogether ruined. Hence he is a fitting object for the Gospel of God.

Unbelief is the height or presumption: it plainly proves that we are seeking for some cause of God's love in the creature, which can never be.

It is among the highest provocations the sinner can be guilty or against God, when, without the blood of Christ sprinkled on his conscience, he, in will-worship, calls God his Father.

No cup of poison so deadly as that mingled cup of law and grace, of works and faith, which is presented to men by false teachers, instead of the Gospel or the grace of God.

Yet, alas, do men gladly receive, and eagerly drink, seeking to satisfy conscience!

To seek healing of soul from duties instead of the blood of Christ, is taking poison to cure disease.

When we would consider the love of God in Christ, we are as one approaching the ocean: he casts a glance on the surface, but the depths he cannot sound.

 

The Law and the Gospel.

Let sinner look at himself in the glass of God's holiness, he must see his own condemnation; but by faith in Jesus he beholds himself free from condem­nation, and stands before God in Christ, as Christ Himself.

The Law was magnified by Christ, and made honourable; and therefore God in His right­eousness must magnify for ever Christ and His members with Him.

Under the Law they laboured first, and rested after (Exod. xx. 8-11); but under the Gospel we rest first, by faith in Jesus, and then work.

The Law begins with commands and ends with blessings; but the blessings are fruit upon lofty branches, which fallen man can never reach: he cannot and will not climb the tree. The Gospel, on the contrary, begins with promises; and promises give birth to precepts. The Law demands justice; the Gospel delights in mercy through satisfied justice. Moses blesses the law-doer; Jesus pardons the guilty and saves the lost.

Everyone who hears the Gospel has a door opened to him of escape from the wrath to come. In the Day of Judgment men shall know all the past. Forgetful hearers of the Gospel shall then with gnashing of teeth remember how they once neglected so great sal­vation (Heb, ii. 3): their worm will never die, their fire never be quenched. (Mark ix. 44.)

No child of Adam has a right to anything from God save the wages of sin. Justice, apart from grace in Christ's cross, must allot to every sinner hell for his wages and portion. If the sinner is to have eternal life, he must have it as a free gift from God. Alas that thousands of sinners who hear the Gospel will not have it, because they are too proud to be saved on God's terms of pure grace!

What is it to obey the Gospel, but to believe the Gospel? Unbelief says, "I will not receive Christ as a gift from God." Faith, on the contrary, says, "I want Christ in His fulness: my pinching poverty makes me glad of so rich and all-sufficient a Saviour."

 

The Scriptures.

THERE are mysteries of grace and love in every page of the Bible: it is a thriving soul that finds the Book of God growing more and more precious.

A careless reader of the Scriptures never made a close walker with God.

Spread the Bible before the Lord; ask Him to teach you what your ignorance and what His wisdom.

Meditation on the Word of God is the chief means of our growth in grace: without this even prayer itself will be little better than an empty form. Meditation nourishes faith, and faith and prayer are the keys which unlock the hidden treasures of the word.

We have great need to be prepared for trials of faith and patience in so great a business as reading the Scriptures with understanding heart. It is only by faith and patience, and prayerful meditation of the Word, that we are delivered from imaginations of the flesh-from sacrificing to our own net, and burning incense to our own drag.

The laying open the heart of God is the great design of the Scriptures: happy the reader who falls in with that design!

The Bible is always a new book to those well acquainted with it.

We shall never become established in grace until we credit the Word of God as the self-­proving voice of Him who speaks it.

Satan has ten thousand devices for drawing us away from the Scriptures. This done, we are in his net; and, though our gracious God put us not to shame by any outward and gross trans­gression, we shall become barren and unfruitful.

No believer can flourish in the ways of Christ, unless it be his custom to deal with God by the Word in the closet.

The children of God in the furnace without a good store of Scripture in their hearts are always impatient, struggling in self-will for deliverance, and thereby they do but add fuel to the fire.

If we read the Word of God chiefly to get comfort, we shall have but little, and that of doubtful kind. Let us put away this selfish­ness, and use the Word of God as the sword of the Spirit against the flesh in us; so will the Scriptures unfold themselves more and more, and endear Christ to us. That sword, well handled against the flesh in ourselves, will serve us in good stead against Satan.

The Book of God is a store of manna for God's pilgrim children; and we ought to see to it that the soul get not sick and loathe the manna. The great cause or our neglecting the Scriptures is not want of time, but want of heart, some idol taking the place of Christ. Satan has been marvellously wise to entice away God's people from the Scriptures. A child of God who neglects the Scriptures can­not make it his business to please the Lord of glory: cannot make Him Lord of the con­science; ruler of the heart; the joy, portion, and treasure of the soul.

The threatenings of God's Word are designed to discourage men from their wickedness, and to drive them out of all refuges of lies to the Saviour. For the utterly self-condemned sinner there is nothing but encouragement in the whole compass of the Bible.

If it be asked, What is the proof that we digest our spiritual food?-that our knowledge of God's truth turns to growth in grace? the answer is, Does it lead us into communion with God, and submission to His will? Among the marks of true communion with God, two of the plainest are a spirit of thanksgiving and a spirit of confession.

 

The Natural Man and his Religion.

 The Religion of the Natural Man is made up of pride, ignorance, and a guilty conscience: these effectually keep the sinner far from God. Grace, on the contrary, moves us to draw near to God by the blood of Jesus. It was the obedience of faith that made Abel the acceptable worshipper.

The fairest things in the world's sight are the foulest in the sight of God; to wit, the world's Wisdom and the world's Religion.

To judge by the number of creeds in the world, its Religions are many; yet there are but two-man's Religion and God's. The former ever builds on the false righteousness of the flesh; the latter on the rock Christ.

All the Religion of the Natural Man turns the Bible upside down: it begins with works, and then leads men to hope for mercy. Whereas the Bible begins with the pardon of sin, and then enjoins obedience.

Nadab and Abihu went up with Moses into the mount with God, yet afterwards perished while offering strange fire. Were natural men that profess Christ to be caught up into heaven, and sent down to earth again, they would be still but Nadabs and Abihus at enmity with God. The carnal mind must be crucified; it cannot be mended or improved.

The man who worships God without the new birth is a mocker of God, not a worshipper.

It is natural to the corrupt heart of man to deny its weakness and sinfulness, and to boast of its strength and righteousness.

If Adam in his state of uprightness could not uphold himself, how shall we, his corrupt seed, by native strength rise up out of our fall?

There are many stirrings of conscience in the Natural Man which are not grace, though often mistaken for it. Balaam, Saul, and many others, had such stirrings-conscience pulling one way and the heart another. Without grace there is no self-abhorrence, and therefore no looking to the blood of Christ. Where grace is, the soul desires deliverance from the power of sin as well as its punishment.

If you be not converted to God, you have not to be doing good works, but to learn that you can do none, and that you are to come empty to receive God's gift of eternal life by faith in Christ Jesus. Your best prayer for mercy is the true confession of your sin. Made alive in Christ, you are to bring forth fruit to God. That fruit will not be apples of Sodom or grapes of Gomorrah: such are all your good works in your natural state-your fruit will be from Jesus, the true and living vine.

 

Sin.

 

THE perfection of our obedience in the sight of our heavenly Father lies not so much in attainment as in endeavor.  Reserves spoil obedience.  We may be dealing honestly with Sin that is seen outwardly, and yet not skillfully and effectually, because of not striking at the deep roots of evil within. 

God indeed, as our Father in Christ Jesus does not blame us for Indwelling Sin; but He does require that we should contend against it.

It is one thing to be blameless before men, and another to be aiming at that perfect obe­dience which Christ rendered to the Father: "I do always those things that please Him."

The first sign of spiritual life in the soul is generally the cry of distress from the sight of that which never gave trouble before-the pollution of Sin. The mere natural man may dread the punishment of Sin, its uncleanness he cannot feel, he cannot discern.

David said, "Horror hath taken hold upon me, because of the wicked that forsake Thy law." If we be spiritually-minded, we shall in like manner mourn over the unregenerate. Lot did not apprehend as did Abraham the state of Sodom, because, without God's leading, he was in it, and, alas! too much of it.

God would ever have us regard Sin in its pollution and guilt, and deal with it as done against Him. (Ps. u. 4.)

Those who deny the Godhead of Christ, and atonement by His blood, know not their sick­ness; and such need not the Physician that God hath sent, nor the remedy that God hath provided.

It is a great principle of God's government, that a sin not repented of becomes a seed which greatly multiplies.

The slack conscience that questions the everlasting punishment of the ungodly, betrays the soul's neglect of solemn dealing with the death of the Son of God on the tree, and of the testimonies of the scriptures thereto.

Sin does not lie in being tempted, but in not resisting temptation. The Lord Jesus Him­self was tempted, and, because of His holiness, suffered pain unspeakable, yet could not be defiled. So far as we have His mind, we, His members, suffer pain in temptation, and the greater the pain of the soul the less the de­filement.

How precious the words of Rom. vi. 10, 11! -"In that He died, He died unto Sin once .... Likewise reckon ye also yourselves." "He liveth unto God." We with Him live to God. He died to Sin by dying for Sin. It was once imputed to Him. He put it away by the sacrifice of Himself; and now, with the glory of His atonement, lives at the right hand of God. The poor and needy one, by faith in the Son of God, is in Christ as Christ in God's sight. Is no Sin now imputed to Christ?-so none to the believer. Is Christ, with the glory of His atonement, accepted of God?-so the believer. The apprehending by faith these great things is the true way of mortifying Sin. "Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace" (v. 14).

The sinner thinks to improve himself by lopping off this or that branch of his Sin; he knows not that thereby he does but nourish the evil root.

The greater power we have over Sin, the more intolerable do we feel the burden of it, and the more earnestly do we seek the cleans­ing of that blood which purges the conscience from its defilement.

Let us not be discouraged by any humili­ating discoveries we may make of the evils of our hearts. God knows them all, and has pro­vided the blood of Jesus Christ His Son to cleanse us from all sin.

God regards our Sins with the heart of a father, but not with the eye of a judge; for his sin-avenging justice has no further de­mands: the cross made satisfaction.

The imaginations of man's heart are only evil continually. Oh to come to close quarters with this truth! to be willing to be judged by it! There must be something more than man's own will for this; there must be the working of the Spirit of God.

We little know the deep mysteries of the human heart: it is because of our deep sin and ­pride that we bear correction with so much impatience; but if we had a dangerous malady, and knew it, we should not complain of the bitter taste and troublesome effects of the medicine given us to heal our disease.

Romans viii. 13, 14. One blow will sometimes take the life of the body; but to mortify sin we must be always striking, because Sin is always struggling.

If we contend with Sin, be assured that we shall be victorious sooner or later: there is not a single sin but the defiling power thereof may be subdued. (1 John i. 7.)

The so-called innocent amusements of the world are only contrivances to forget God.

It is the nature of Sin to obtain great power by little beginnings.

 

Confession of Sin.

 

SOON as the word is uttered, "I have sinned," that very moment flies the seraph. (Isa. vi.) God "is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." When we confess them in the name of Jesus, justice, having been satisfied by the blood of Christ is swift to pardon.

God cannot seal a pardon in the soul without confession. (Ps. xxxii, 3, 5.)

As we practise confession, so will be our happiness and joy; for all true confession is followed by the spirit of praise.

If in coming to God we complain against ourselves, let us thank Him that we have a heart to complain.

The Spirit of God never heals save as He wounds; and if those seeking Christ have not peace, it is because there is still in them some remnant of fancied goodness. Tell out the whole heart to God, and the conscience will be cleansed by confessing sin over the head of the scapegoat.

There is a counterfeit Confession of Sin ; let us beware of this counterfeit. We may be sure the sorrow is not deep if the sin be not subdued.

If so be we are ready in the confession of our faults, and have faith in the blood of sprinkling, those very faults will serve our growth in grace: they will be like manure to the field or garden.

God kills to make alive. He smites men's consciences to make them judge themselves. The first great step when a man desires to be saved is unqualified self-condemnation. Sin unconfessed is imputed; but sin confessed is blotted out by God. The sinner, coming in the name of Jesus, has a title to life: the ground of that title is the very name and justice of God.

We should confess to God every inward evil as soon as it is discovered to us: and if we have trespassed against our brother, to Him also we should speedily make confession. By so doing we shall keep up the communion of love with God and with each other.

It was the imputation of our sins to Christ that hid from Him the face of God the Father. It is our unconfessed disobedience that brings a cloud between Christ and us.

When on entering a house I see a child in disgrace for disobedience, although I tenderly consider the erring child, I especially feel with the grieved, sorrowing parent. When we sin, and are chastened of God, we should rather consider how the heart of our heavenly Father has by us been grieved, than be taken up with the smart of our stripes by His rod of cor­rection.

If we practise the true Confession of Sin, and so cease to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, we shall have the testimony of the Spirit that the ear, thumb, and toe, are tipped with blood and oil.

Keep no secrets from God. Confession of Sin to Him in all detail will greatly help us in the subduing it.

The sinful thought of the heart is, in the sight of God, the act: evils in life always pro­ceed from evils nourished in the heart.

Do we think that God is pleased with shallow confessions of deep sins? Compare Job xl. ,j, with xlii. 2-6.

After we have been able, by the grace of God, to subdue any besetting sin, and it seems to be dead, let us still be confessing to God that it is within us. By thus doing we shall show that we are not living on the victory but on God Himself. Indwelling sin will be thus regarded by the eye of our Father rather as our sickness than our fault.

All unconfessed sin has power over us; but all confessed sin God helps us to subdue: He will never blame us for sins confessed.

The speediest confession is the easiest and the best.