Human Depravity And Divine Mercy
DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 19, 1865, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT
THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
"And the Lord smelled a sweet savor. And the Lord said in His heart, I
will not again curse the ground anymore for man's sake; for the
imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again
destroy anymore every thing living as I have done."
Genesis 8:21.
PETER tells us that Noah's ark and Baptism are figures of salvation. He
puts the two together as pictures of the way by which we are saved.
Noah was not saved by the world's being gradually reformed and restored
to its primitive innocence, but a sentence of condemnation was
pronounced and death, burial and resurrection ensued. Noah must go into
the ark and become dead to the world. The floods must descend from
Heaven and rise upward from their secret fountains beneath the earth.
The ark must be submerged with many waters–here was burial. And then
after a time Noah and his family must come out into a totally new world
of resurrection life.
It is the same in the figure of Baptism. The person baptized, if he is
already dead with Christ, is buried–not purified and improved–but
buried beneath the waves. And when he rises he professes that he enjoys
newness of life. Baptism is setting forth just what Noah's ark set
forth–that salvation is by death and burial. You must be dead to the
world. The flesh must be dead with Christ, buried with Christ–not
improved, not made better, but utterly put aside as unimprovable, as
worthless, dead–a thing to be buried and to be forgotten.
And we must come forth in resurrection life, feeling that above us
there is a new Heaven and beneath us a new earth where righteousness
dwells, seeing that we are new creatures in Christ Jesus. It would be
very instructive to dwell upon each point of the resemblance between
Noah's deliverance and the salvation of every elect soul. Noah enters
into the ark–there is a time when we distinctly enter into Christ and
become one with Him. Noah was shut in the ark so that he could never
come out again till God should open the door. There is a time when
every child of God is shut in–when faith and full assurance give him
an evidence that he is indissolubly one with Christ Jesus. He is
grasped in Christ's hand so that none can pluck him out. He is hidden
in Christ's loins so that none can separate him from the love of God.
Then comes the flood–there is a season in the Christian's experience
when he discovers his own depravity. He is saved. He is in the ark. He
is, however, still a sinner, still the subject of inbred lusts.
Suddenly all these corruptions break up! They beat upon his ark, they
assail his faith, they endeavor, if possible, to drown his soul in sin.
But he is not destroyed by them–for, by the grace of God, he is where
other men are not–he is where he cannot be drowned by sin. He is in
Christ Jesus! He mounts as the floods deepen. The more he feels the
depth of his depravity, the more he admires the fullness of the atoning
sacrifice! The more terrible the temptation, the more joyous is his
consolation in Christ Jesus.
And so he rises in holy communion towards his God. Then comes the
wind–typical of the breath of the sacred Spirit by which the floods of
corruption are calmed and peace reigns within and the soul sings,
"Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ." Then the tops of the mountains
appear–sanctification takes place upon a part of the man. There are
some bright graces which glisten out of the general flood of
corruption. There are some points of his new-born nature which delight
him with their beauty. His ark has grounded and settled– he no longer
floats, so to speak, tossed about with a struggling faith and
contending unbelief–he feels that as Christ Jesus is forever seated
firmly at the right hand of God, so he, in Christ Jesus, has entered
into rest.
The ark grounded on the top of Ararat–so does the Believer's
experience come to a settled condition. He is no more moved about with
fears and questions, but rejoices in hope of the Glory of God. He sends
forth his thoughts in search after evidence of his complete salvation,
and probably he sends out some of his own ignorant carnal expectations,
just as Noah sent out the raven. These ignorant imaginations of what
the work of the Spirit is go forth and they never return because no
unclean child of the old Adam can be a discerner of the new world. Then
he sends out the dove–holy desires, earnest prayers go to and fro. By
and by they come back with a token for good, some choice mercy from the
hand of God–an olive branch of assured peace–and the Believer surely
knows not only that he is in Christ, not only that he is grounded in
Christ, but that all the waters are calmed, all sin is gone, all danger
removed, all death destroyed!
Then occurs a period where God opens the door. Christ had been as a
sort of prison to the Christian up till then. The Cross had been a
burden. He did not rejoice in liberty. But God the Father now comes
with the blessed Spirit and opens the door and the Believer is fully at
liberty in the new world. The saved soul's first act is, like Noah, to
build an altar unto God and, as a priest, to offer sacrifice, which, as
it rises to Heaven, is accepted because it is a memorial of Christ. The
Lord smells a sweat savor and though the believing man is still full of
sin and from his youth up has an evil imagination, yet he hears the
Covenant voice which says, "I will no more curse, I will no more
destroy."
He hears the Covenant promise which confirms forever the faithfulness
of God and he rejoices to inherit, like Noah, a new world where
righteousness dwells. I do not lay any stress upon these
interpretations, but I know the Apostle says concerning Hagar and
Sarah, "which things are an allegory." I believe that the book of
Genesis is a book of dispensa-tional Truth and if it were rightly read,
not by the eye of curiosity, but by the heart of the student who has
been made wise to see the deep things of God, very much of Divine and
holy teaching would be discoverable in it.
But now I come to the text itself. We have here, first, a very sad and
painful fact, "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth."
We have, secondly, God's most extraordinary reasoning, "I will not
again curse the ground for man's sake, for the imagination of man's
heart is evil." Then, thirdly, we have some inferences less
extraordinary but practical to ourselves from the text.
I. To begin, then, with the text, we have here A MOST PAINFUL FACT that
man's nature is incurable–"the imagination of man's heart is evil from
his youth." You will remember, beforethe flood, in the fifth verse of
the sixth chapter it is written, "God saw that the wickedness of man
was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of
his heart was only continually evil." After the flood it is just the
same. The description in the sixth chapter belonged to all the
antediluvian race.
You might have hoped that after so terrible a judgment, when only a
few–a picked and peculiar few–that is, eight, were saved by water,
that then, as man began anew with a better stock, the old branches that
were sere and rotten being cut away–that now the nature of man would
be improved. It is not one whit so. The same God who, looking at man,
declared that his imagination was evil before the flood, pronounces the
very same verdict upon them afterwards. Oh God! How hopeless is human
nature! How impossible is it that the carnal mind should be reconciled
to God! How needful is it that You should give us new hearts and right
spirits, seeing that the old nature is so evil that even the floods of
Your judgments cannot cure it of its evil imaginations!
I would have you studiously notice the words used in both these
passages–the antediluvian and the postdiluvian verdict of God. Look at
the fifth verse of the sixth chapter–God saw not only outward sin that
was great and multiplied and cried to Him for vengeance–He saw sin in
the sons of men, the descendants of Cain. Worse still, He saw treachery
and departure from God in the sons of the chosen ones, the sons of Seth
had gone astray, also. The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that
they were fair and the two races became mingled so as to produce
monsters of iniquity. But, worse than that, He saw that the thoughts of
men's hearts were evil–man could not think without being evil.
No, more! The substratum which underlies actual thought–unformed,
unfashioned thought–the eggs, the embryos of thought, called here the
imagination of the thought, the first conception, the infant motions of
the soul–all these God found to be evil. But observe, He says they
were, "only evil." Not one trace of good! No gold amidst the dross, no
light amidst the darkness–they were "only evil." And then He adds that
word "continually." What? Never any repentance? Never any yearning
towards the right? No pure drops of holiness now and then? No, never!
"Every imagination"–notice that word. The whole verse is most clear, a
broom that sweeps man clean of all boasted good. "Every
imagination"–when he was at his best, when he stood at God's altar,
when he tried to be right– even then his thoughts had evil in them!
Dr. Dick says, "All man's thoughts, all his desires, all his purposes
are evil, expressly or by implication because the subject of them is
avowedly sinful, or because they do not proceed from a holy principle
and are not directed to a proper end. It is not occasionally that the
human soul is thus under the influence of de- pravity. This is its
habit and state. It seems impossible to construct a sentence which
should more distinctly express its total corruption than this."
Look at this other passage which is our text. You will see it gives a
different phase of the same evil, but it does not abate one jot or
tittle of it. It is still, "the imagination of man's heart." It is
still the inward character, the core, the pith, the marrow of mankind
which God is dealing with. It is not the stream which comes from man
that is foul but the fountain of man–the innermost source of the
fountain! The imagination of his heart is evil–and we are told here
what we are not told in the other text–that his thoughts are evil from
his youth, that is to say, from his earliest childhood.
And it would not be evil from his childhood in every case if there were
not certain seeds of evil sown before that and therefore we can go
further and in the words of Holy Scripture we can confess with
sorrowful truthfulness–"Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin
did my mother conceive me." From the very earliest imaginable period in
which human nature exists it is a defiled, tainted thing and only
worthy of God's utter abhorrence! And were it not that He smells a
sweet savor in the sacrifice of Christ, He would say, as He did say in
the sixth chapter, "He repented that He had made man on the earth and
it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom
I have created from the face of the earth."
I have thus brought out this painful fact distinctly, I hope, before
you. It is true both before and after the flood. If you want any proof
of its being true now turn to the scores of passages of Scripture which
all prove it. I think, however, if our time were limited, as it is this
morning, I should prefer to mention the third chapter of Paul's Epistle
to the Romans. It is the most sweeping description of the universality
of human depravity that could possibly have been penned. I will read
from the ninth to the nineteenth verse–"What then? Are we better than
they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles,
that they are all under sin as it is written, There is none righteous,
no, not one: there is none that understands, there is none that seeks
after God.
"They are all gone out of the way, they are together become
unprofitable. There is none that does good, no, not one. Their throat
is an open sepulcher. With their tongues have they used deceit. The
poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and
bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery
are in their ways: and the way of peace they have not known: there is
no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things so ever
the Law says, it says to them who are under the Law: that every mouth
may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God."
Jonathan Edwards says upon this passage, "If the words which the
Apostle uses here (Rom. 3:10-19) do not most fully and determinately
signify a universality, no words ever used in the Bible, or elsewhere,
are sufficient to do it. I might challenge any man to produce any one
paragraph in the Scripture, from the beginning to the end, where there
is such a repetition and accumulation of terms so strongly and
emphatically and carefully formulated to express the most perfect and
absolutely universality, or any place to be compared to it. What
instance is there in the Scripture, or indeed any other writing when
the meaning is only the much greater part?
"Where this meaning is signified in such a manner by repeating such
expressions, 'They are all,' 'they are all together,' 'every one,' 'all
the world' joined to multiplied negative terms, to show the
universality to be without exception? Saying, 'There is no flesh,'
'there is none, there is none, there is none, there is none,' four
times over. Besides the addition of, 'no, not one,' 'no, not one,' once
and again. . . So that if this matter [universal depravity] is not here
set forth plainly, expressly and fully, it must be because no words can
do it. And it is not in the power of language, or any manner of terms
and phrases, however contrived and heaped one upon another,
determinately to let us remember the confessions of God's people."
You never heard a saint on his knees yet tell the Lord that he had a
good nature, that he did not need renewing. Saints, as they grow in
Divine Grace, are made to feel more and more acutely the evil of their
old nature. You will find that those who are most like Christ have the
deepest knowledge of their own depravity and are most humble while they
confess their sinfulness. Those men who know not their own hearts may
be able to boast, but that is simple ignorance, for if you will take
down the biographies of any persons esteemed among us for holiness and
for knowledge in the things of God, you will find them frequently
crying out under a sense of inward carnality and sin.
If I may return to Scripture I cannot help quoting David, "Behold I was
born in sin and shapen in iniquity." It is a most villainous thing that
some persons try to slander David's mother and to suppose that there
was something irregular about his birth which made him speak as he has
done! Whereas there cannot be the slightest imputation upon that
admirable woman. David himself speaks of her with intense respect and
says, "Save the son of Your handmaid" as though he felt it no discredit
to be the son of such a woman.
She was, doubtless, one of the excellent of the earth and yet,
excellent as she was, it could not but be otherwise that in sin her son
was conceived. Let us not at all attempt to escape from the force of
what David says. He is using no exaggerated expressions. There is no
indication of hyperbole throughout the whole Psalm. He is a
broken-hearted man on his knees. He is confessing his own sin with
Bathsheba and is not likely either to bring any accusation against his
own mother or to use exaggerated terms! Beloved it is so. We, all of
us, the best of us still have to bear about with us the marks of the
unclean thing from which we sprang.
Take Paul again–was there ever a man who knew more of what sanctity of
nature means, or who was brought nearer to the image of Christ? Yet he
cries out, "Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death." He finds no joy until he can say, "I thank God
through Jesus Christ our Lord." Still I think we have another proof,
namely, our own observation. We have lived long enough to observe with
our own eyes and by our reading that sin is the universal disease of
manhood. Is it not certain, according to observation, that man's heart
is evil? They used to tell pretty tales about the charming innocence of
men dwelling in the wooded bowers of primeval forests, untainted by the
vices of civilization, unpolluted by the inventions of commerce and
art.
The woods of America were searched and no such sweet babes of grace
were discovered. The ferocity and cruelty of the Indians justify my
saying that they were hateful and hating one another. The blood-red
tomahawk might have been emblazoned as the Redman's coat of arms and
his eyes glaring with revenge might be taken as the true index of his
character. Travelers have penetrated of late into the center of Africa
where we may expect to see nature in its primitive excellence and what
is the report that is brought back to us? Why, it is nature in its
primitive devilry, that is all!
Let such abominable tyrants as Messrs. Grant and Speke describe to us
indicate to us what man is when he is left in his primeval state,
untainted by civilization–he is simply a greater devil–he is naked
and he is not ashamed! In this, only, is he like our unfallen parents.
Again, try the mildest races. There is the mild Hindu. You look into
his gentle face and you cannot suppose him capable of cruelty. Trust
well that mild Hindu, subdued by British arms so speedily and so
cheerfully bowing his neck to the yoke. But you may as well trust the
sleek and cunning tiger from his jungle–let the story of the Sepoy
rebellion of a few years ago show us the gentleness of the mild Hindu!
Live among the mild Hindu and if you dare read the first chapter of
Paul's Epistle to the Romans, remember that it is a decent account of
what, in ordinary life, is practiced among the Hindu but which could
not be more clearly described, because the mouth of modesty would
refuse to speak it and the ears of modesty would tingle at the hearing
of it. The life of the most respectable Hindu is tainted with vices too
vile to mention. "Yes, but still," says one, "we must look at children,
because sin may enter into us through education–let us look at
children."
Very well, I am willing to look at children and I am unwilling that
anybody should say a word that is harsh or severe against children's
nature. But I will say that any man who declares children to be born
perfect never was a father! If he would only watch his own child–not
merely when that child has its toys around it and is pleased and happy,
but when its little temper is ruffled–he would soon perceive evil
nestling there. Your child without evil? You without eyes, you mean!!
If you will only look and listen you will soon discover, if no other
fault, this one, "they go astray from the womb, speaking lies."
One of the earliest vices of children which needs to be corrected with
most constant and wise rigor is the tendency towards falsehood. It is
all very pretty for people to talk about the innocence of children. But
I would like them to have to keep one of the nursery schools like those
at Manchester, where the children are left while the mothers are at
work in the mills! They would soon discover in their pulling one
another's hair, and scratching at one another's eyes, and such like
pretty little diversions and innocent freaks, that they are not
altogether the sweet babes of innocence they are supposed to be!
"Well," says one, "still, human nature may have some spiritual good in
it. Look at the men who make illustrious the page of history–look at
Socrates, for instance–religion did nothing for Socrates, but yet what
a fine character he was." Who told you that? I will venture to say that
the philosopher's character would not bear description in a decent
assembly. We know from undoubted authority that the purest philosophers
at times indulged in bestiality and filth. So- lon and Socrates were no
exceptions. When Infidels hold up these sages as being such patterns of
what human nature might become, they have history dead against them.
"The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. There is no
soundness in it."
And this, be it remembered, is without an exception in the long history
of humanity, say six thousand years. There is not one that has escaped
contamination, not one who has come into the world clean, not one who
dares go before his Maker's bar and say, "Great God, I have never
sinned, but have kept Your Law from my youth up."
II. Now I want you to notice, in the second place, a most extraordinary
thing–when I noticed it yesterday I was surprised and overwhelmed with
grateful admiration–that is, GOD'S EXTRAORDINARY REASONING. Good
reasoning, but most extraordinary. He says, "I will not again curse the
ground anymore for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is
evil from his youth." Strange logic! In the sixth chapter He said man
was evil and therefore He destroyed him. In the eighth chapter He says
man is evil from his youth and therefore He will not destroy him!
Strange reasoning! Strange reasoning!–to be accounted for by the
little circumstance in the beginning of the verse, "the Lord smelled a
sweet savor." There was a sacrifice there–that makes all the
difference! When God looks on sin apart from sacrifice, Justice says,
"Destroy! Destroy! Smite! Curse! Destroy!" But when there is a
sacrifice, God looks on sin with eyes of mercy and though Justice says,
"Destroy," He says, "No, I have punished My dear Son. I have punished
Him and will spare the sinner." Mercy looks to see if she cannot find
some loophole, something that she can make into an excuse why she may
spare mankind.
Is then, natural depravity, an excuse for sin? Does God use it as such?
No, Beloved–that our heart is vile is rather an aggravation of the
vileness of our action than any excuse for it. Yet there is this one
thing–we are born sinners and God sees there, I will say, a sort of
loophole. Rightly, upon the terms of Justice, there is no conceivable
reason why He should have mercy upon us. But Divine Grace makes and
invents a reason. O may I be helped, while I try to show you where I
think the ground of mercy lies! Devils fell separately–we have every
reason to believe that every fallen angel sinned on his own account and
fell. And it is very likely that on this account there was no
possibility, as we know of, of their restoration–every separate fallen
spirit was given up forever to chains and darkness and flames of fire.
But men! Men did not fall separately and individually. Our case is a
somewhat different one from that of fallen angels. We, all of us, fell
without our own consent, without having, in fact, any finger in it,
actually. We fell federally in our covenant head–it is in consequence
of our falling in Adam that our heart becomes evil from our youth. Now
it looks to me as if God's mercy caught that. He seemed to say, "These
My creatures have, according to my arrangement of federation, fallen
representatively. Then I can save them representatively. They perished
in one, Adam. I will save them in Another. They fell not by their own
overt act, though, indeed, their own overt acts have added to this and
deserve My wrath, but their first fall was not through themselves. They
are sinful from their very infancy. Therefore He says, "I will deliver
them by Another as they fell by another."
I do not know whether I can make it clear. I do not think that this was
any reason before the bar of Justice why God should save us, for I
believe that He might justly have condemned the whole race of Adam on
account of Adam's sin and their own guilt. But I do think that this was
a blessed loophole through which His mercy could, as it were, come
fairly to the sons of men. "There," He says, "I made them not distinct
individuals but a race. They fell as a race, they shall rise as an
elect race–'As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive.' 'As by the transgression of one many were made sinners, so by
the righteousness of one shall many be made righteous.' "
I think you see the drift of it, then. Man's being sinful, is in the
logic of justice, a reason for punishment. Man's being sinful from his
youth by inheritance from his federal head becomes, through mercy, a
reason why Sovereign Grace should light upon men while fallen angels
are left to perish forever. Oh, I bless God that I did not fall first
of all myself. I do bless the day, now, that I fell in Adam, for it may
be if I had never fallen in Adam I should have fallen in myself and
then I must have been, like fallen angels, shut out forever from the
Presence of God and in the flames of Hell! One of the old Divines used
to say of Adam's sin, "Beata culpa"–"Happy fault!"
I dare not say that, but in one sense I will say, blessed Fall that
renders it possible for me to rise! Blessed way of ruin which renders
it possible for the blessed way of salvation to be brought
about–salvation by Substitution! Salvation by Sacrifice! Salvation by
a new Covenant Head, who for us is offered up that God may smell a
sweet savor and may deliver us! I hope nobody will misconstrue what I
have said and make out that I teach that human depravity is an excuse
for sin–God forbid! It is only in the eyes of Divine Grace that it
becomes the door of mercy.
You know if your child has offended you, you do not want to chastise
him and yet you feel he deserves it. How you do try, if you are a
loving parent, to find some reason why you may let him go. There is no
reason–you know that. If you deal with him in terms of justice, there
is no reason why having sinned he should not smart for it. But you keep
casting about for an excuse–perhaps it is his mother's birthday and
you let him off for that. Or else there was some little circumstance
which softened the offense for which you may have him excused.
I do not know whether the story is true, but it is said of Queen
Victoria when she was just queen–just a girl–she was asked to sign a
death warrant for a person who, by court martial, had been condemned to
die. It is told that she said to the Duke, "Cannot you find any reason
why this man should be pardoned?" The Duke said, "No, it was a very
great offense, he ought to be punished." "But was he a good soldier?"
The Duke said he was a shamefully bad soldier, had always been noted as
a bad soldier. "Well, cannot you invent for me any reason?" "Well," he
said, "I have every reason to believe from testimony that he was a good
man as a man, although a bad soldier." "That will do," she said, and
she wrote across the warrant, "pardoned"–not because the man deserved
it–but because she wanted a reason for having mercy.
So my God seems to look upon man and after He has looked him through
and through and cannot see anything, at last He says, "He is evil from
his youth," and he writes "Pardoned." He smells the sweet savor first
and His heart is turned towards the poor rebel. Then He turns to him
with mercy and blesses him.
III. But now, thirdly, by your leave and patience, I shall have to lead
you to a few inferences from the doctrine of the depravity of man. If
the heart is so evil, then it is impossible for us to enter Heaven as
we are. We cannot suppose that those holy gates shall enclose those
whose imaginations and thoughts are evil, and evil continually. No, if
that is the place into which nothing shall enter that defiles, then no
man being what he was in his first birth can ever stand there!
Another step. Then it is quite clear that if I am to enter Heaven no
outwardreform will ever do, for if I wash my face, that does not change
my heart And if I give up all my outward sins and become outwardly what
I ought to be, yet still, if it is true that my heart is the villainous
thing which Scripture says it is, then my outward reformation cannot
touch that and I am still shut out of Heaven. If inside that cup and
platter there is all this filthiness, I may cleanse the outside, but I
have not touched that which will shut me out of Heaven.
I go, then, a little farther and I observe that I must have a new
nature–not new practice only, but a new nature– not new thoughts or
new words, but a new nature so as to become a totally new man. And when
I draw the inference, I have Scripture to back me at once, for what
does Jesus say to Nicodemus? "You must be born again." But what is to
be born again? To my first birth, I owe all I am by nature. I must get
a secondbirth to which I am to owe all I am as I enter Heaven.
Multitudes of persons have been saying, "What is Regeneration?" Here
they have been writing hundreds of pamphlets and no two of them agree
upon what Regeneration is except that they say that a man may be
regenerated and not converted.
Here is an extraordinary thing! An unconverted man who is regenerated?
One who is an enemy to God and yet he has in himself a new nature? He
has been born again and yet is not converted to God? What? A
Regeneration that does not convert? A Regeneration, in fact, that
leaves men just where they were before? But to every babe in Christ the
word, "regenerate," is as plain as possible–he wants no definition, no
description. "To be born again? Why," he says, "I comprehend that it is
to be made over again, a new creature in Christ Jesus! My first birth
makes me a creature–my second birth makes me a newcreature and I
become what I never was before."
I must remember that what is needed in me is not to bring out and
develop what is good in me, for, according to God's Word in the sixth
of Genesis, there is nothing good, it is only evil. Grace does not
enter to educate the germs of holiness within me, for there is no germ
of good in man at all–he is "evil continually"– and every imagination
is "only evil." I must, then, die to sin! My old nature must be slain,
it cannot be mended! It is too bad, too rotten to be patched up–that
must die. By the death of Jesus it must be destroyed. It must be buried
with Christ and I must rise in resurrection life to conformity with my
Lord Jesus.
Well then, advancing one step further–It is clear if I must be this
before I can enter Heaven that I cannot give myself a new nature. A
crab tree cannot transform itself into an apple tree! If I am a wolf I
cannot make myself a sheep. Water can rise to its own proper level, but
it cannot go beyond it without pressure. I must have, then, something
worked in me more than I can work in myself and this, indeed, is good
Scriptural doctrine. "That which is born of the flesh"–what is it?
When the flesh has done its very best what is it?–"That which is born
of the flesh is flesh"–it is filthy to begin with and filth comes of
it–only "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit: marvel not that I
said unto you you must be born again."
My soul must come under the hand of the Spirit. Just as a piece of clay
is on the potter's wheel and is made to revolve and is touched by the
fingers of the potter and molded into what he wishes it to be, so must
I lie passively in the hands of the Spirit of God and He must work in
me to will and to do of His own good pleasure. And then I shall begin
to work out my own salvation with fear and trembling, but never, never
till then. I must have more than nature can give me, more than my
mother gave me, more than my father gave me, more than flesh and blood
can produce under the most favorable circumstances. I must have the
Spirit of God from Heaven.
Then comes this inquiry, "Have I received it? What is the best evidence
of it?" The best evidence of it is this–Am I resting upon Christ
Jesus, alone, for salvation? You generally find on potters' vessels
that there is a certain mark so that you can know who made them. I want
to know whether I am a vessel fit for the Master's use, molded by His
hands and fashioned by His Spirit. Now, every single vessel that comes
out of God's hands has a Cross on it. Have you the Cross on you? Are
you resting upon Christ's bloody Atonement made on Calvary? Is He to
your soul your one rock of refuge– your one only hope? Can you say
this morning–
"Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to Your Cross I cling–
Naked, come to You for dress;
Helpless, look to You for Grace.
Black, I to the fountain fly,
Wash me, Savior, or I die"?
Then, my Brothers and Sisters, you have a new heart and a right spirit!
You are a new creature in Christ Jesus, for simple faith in Christ is
what the old Adam never could attain! A simple faith in Jesus is the
great, sure mark of a work of the Holy Spirit in your soul by which you
are made to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light.
"Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." Do you
believe that Jesus is the Christ? Do you take Him to be God's Anointed
to you? Do you trust yourself to Him to plead for you, to work for you,
to fulfill the Law for you, to offer Atonement for you?
If so, if Jesus is the Christ to you–you are born of God. The Spirit
which is in you now will drive out the old nature, slay it utterly, cut
it up root and branch and you shall one day bear the image of the
heavenly, even as you have till now borne the image of the earthly. May
God bless these words of mine to your souls' good.
"Eternal Spirit, we confess
And sing the wonders of Your Grace!
Your power conveys our blessings down
From God the Father and the Son.
Enlightened by Your heavenly ray,
Our shades and darkness turn to day.
Your inward teachings make us know
Our danger and our refuge, too.
Your power and glory works within,
And breaks the chains of reigning sin,
Does our imperious lusts subdue,
And forms our wretched hearts anew.
The troubled conscience knows Your voice,
Your cheering Words awake our joys;
Your Words allay the stormy wind,
And calm the surges of the mind."