Justification by Faith

Delivered by

C.H. SPURGEON,

At the [4]Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

"They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections
and lusts."— Galatians 5:24.

FROM SEVERAL QUARTERS we have heard lately intensely earnest objections
to the matter and tenor of the preaching of the evangelists from
America, who have been working among us. Of course, their teaching as
well as our own is open to honest judgment, and they, we feel sure,
would rather court than shun investigation of the most searching sort.
Criticisms upon their style of speaking and singing, and so on, are so
unimportant, that nobody has any need to answer them, "Wisdom is
justified of her children." It is a waste of time to discuss mere
matters of taste, for no men however excellent can please all, or even
become equally adapted to all constitutions and conditions: therefore
we may let such remarks pass without further observation. But upon the
matter of doctrine very much has been said, and said also with a good
deal of temper not always of the best. What has been affirmed by a
certain class of public writers comes to this, if you boil it down—that
it cannot really do any good to tell men that simply by believing in
Jesus Christ they will be saved, and that it may do people very serious
injury if we lead them to imagine that they have undergone a process
called conversion, and are now safe for life. We are told by these
gentlemen, who ought to know, for they speak very positively, that the
doctrine of immediate salvation through faith in Christ Jesus is a very
dangerous one, that it will certainly lead to the deterioration of the
public morality, since men will not be likely to set store by the
practical virtues when faith is lifted up to so very lofty a position.
If it were so it were a grievous fault, and woe to those who led men
into it. That it is not the fact we are sure; but meanwhile let us
survey the field of battle.

Will you please to notice that this is no quarrel between these
gentlemen and our friends Messrs. Moody and Sankey alone. It is a
quarrel between these objectors and the whole of us who preach the
gospel; for, differing as we do in the style of preaching it, we are
all ready to set our seal to the clearest possible statement that men
are saved by faith in Jesus Christ, and saved the moment they believe.
We all hold and teach that there is such a thing as conversion,—and
that when men are converted they become other men than they were
before, and a new life begins which will culminate in eternal glory. We
are not so dastardly as to allow our friends to stand alone in the
front of the battle, to be looked upon as peculiar persons, holding
strange notions from which the rest of us dissent. So far as salvation
through faith in the atoning blood is concerned, they preach nothing
but what we have preached all our lives; they preach nothing but what
has the general consent of Protestant Christendom. Let that be known to
all, and let the archers shoot at us all alike.

Then, further, if this be the point of objection, we should like those
who raise it to know that they do not raise it against us merely, and
these friends who are more prominent, but against the Protestant faith
which these very same gentlemen most probably profess to glory in. The
Protestant faith in a nutshell lies in this very same justification by
faith which they hoot at. It was the discovery that men are saved by
faith in Jesus Christ which first stirred up Luther. That was the ray
of light which fell upon his dark heart, and by the power of which he
came into the liberty of the gospels This is the hammer by which popery
was broken in the old time, and this is the sword with which it still
is to be smitten—the very "Sword of the Lord and of Gideon." Jesus is
the all-sufficient Savior, and "He that believeth in him is not
condemned." Luther used, in fact, to say—and we endorse it—that this
matter of justification by faith is the article by which a church must
stand or fall. That so-called church which does not hold this doctrine
is not a church of Christ, and it is a church of Christ that does hold
it, notwithstanding many mistakes into which it may have fallen. The
contest lies really between the Popish doctrine of merit and the
Protestant doctrine of grace, and no man who calls himself a Protestant
can logically dispute the question with us and our friends.

We shall go somewhat further than this. The objection is not against
Messrs. Moody and Sankey, but against all evangelical ministers; not
against them only, but against our common protestantism; and yet more,
it is against the inspired word of God; for if this book teaches
anything under heaven, it certainly teaches that men are saved by faith
in our Lord Jesus. Read the Epistle to the Galatians, and your judgment
may be very perverse, but you cannot, by any common wresting of words,
expel that doctrine from the Epistle. It was written on purpose to
state that truth plainly, and defend it fully. Neither can you get rid
of that doctrine from the whole New Testament. You shall find it not
merely seasoning all the epistles, but positively saturating them, tin,
as you take chapter by chapter, you may wring out of them, as out of
Gideon's fleece, this one truth, that justification before God is by
faith, and not by the works of the law. So that the objection is
against the Bible; and let those who shoot their errors understand that
they fight against the Eternal Spirit of God and the witness which he
has borne by his prophets and apostles. Deny inspiration, and you have
ground to stand on; but while you believe the Bible you must believe in
justification by faith.

But now let us look this matter in the face. Is it true or not that
persons who believe in Jesus Christ do become worse than they were
before? We are not backward to answer the inquiry, and we stand in a
point of observation which supplies us with abundant data to go upon.
We solemnly affirm that men who believe in Jesus become purer, holier,
and better. At the same time I confess that there has been a good deal
of injudicious and misleading talk at times by uninstructed advocates
of free grace. I fear, moreover, that many people think that they
believe in Jesus Christ, but do nothing of the sort. We do not defend
rash statements, or deny the existence of weak-minded followers; but we
ask to be heard and considered. Some persons say, "You tell these
people that they will be saved upon their believing in Christ." Exactly
so. "But will you kindly tell me what you mean by being saved, sir?" I
will, with great pleasure. We do not mean that these people will go to
heaven when they die, irrespective of character: but, when we say that
if they believe in Jesus they will be saved, we mean that they will be
saved from living as they used to live—saved from being what they now
are, saved from licentiousness, dishonesty, drunkenness, selfishness,
and any other sin they may have lived in. The thing can readily be put
to the test, if it can be shown that those who have believed in the
Lord Jesus have been saved from living in sin, no rational man ought to
entertain any objection to the preaching of such a salvation. Salvation
from wrongdoing is the very thing which every moralist should commend
and not censure, and that is the salvation which we preach. I am afraid
that some imagine that they have only to believe something or other,
and they will go to heaven when they die, and that they have only to
feel a certain singular emotion, and it is all right within them. Now,
if any of you have fallen into that error, may God in his mercy lead
you out of it, for it is not every faith that saves, but only the faith
of God's elect. It is not any sort of emotion that changes the heart,
but the work of the Holy Ghost. It is a small matter to go into an
inquiry-room and say, "I believe"; such an avowal as that proves
nothing at all, it may even be false. It will be proved by this,—if you
have rightly believed in Jesus Christ you will become from that time
forward a different man from what you were. There will be a change in
your heart and soul, in your conduct and your conversation; and, seeing
you thus changed, those who have been honest objectors will right
speedily leave off their objections, for they will be in the condition
of those who saw the man that was healed standing with Peter and John;
and therefore they could say nothing against them. The world demands
facts, and these we must supply. It is of no use To cry up our medicine
by words, we must point to cures. Your change of life will be the
grandest argument for the gospel, if that life shall show the meaning
of my text,—"They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the
affections and lusts."

Let us discuss this text in an apologetic manner, hoping to overcome
prejudice, if God permit.

Notice, first of all, that THE RECEPTION OF JESUS CHRIST BY FAITH IS,
IN ITSELF AN AVOWAL THAT WE HAVE CRUCIFIED THE FLESH WITH THE
AFFECTIONS AND LUSTS. If faith be such an avowal, why say that it is
not connected with holy living?

Let me show that this is the case. Faith is the accepting of Jesus
Christ. In what respects? Well, principally as a substitute. He is the
Son of God, and I am a guilty sinner. I deserve to die: the Son of God
stands in my stead and suffers for me, and when I believe in him I
accept him as standing for me. To believe in Jesus was very beautifully
set forth in the old ceremony of the law, when the person bringing a
sacrifice laid his hands upon the head of the bullock or the lamb, and
hereby accepted the victim as standing in his place, so that the
victim's sufferings should be instead of his sufferings. Now, our faith
accepts Jesus Christ as standing in our stead. The very pith and marrow
of faith's confidence lies in this—

"He bore, that I might never bear,
His Father's righteous ire."

Christ for me, Christ in my room and stead.

Now, try to catch the following thought.—When you believe, you accept
Christ as standing instead of you, and profess that what he did he did
for you, but what did Christ do upon the tree? He was crucified and
died. Follow the thought, and note well that by faith you regard
yourself as dead with him—crucified with him. You have not really
grasped what faith means unless you have grasped this. With him you
suffered the wrath of God, for he suffered in your stead: you are now
in him—crucified with him, dead with him, buried with him, risen with
him, and gone into the glory with him—because he represents you, and
your faith has accepted the representation. Do you see, then, that you
did, in the moment when you believed in Christ, register a declaration
that you were henceforth dead unto sin. Who shall say that our gospel
teaches men to live in sin, when the faith which is essential to
salvation involves an avowal of death to it? The convert begins with
agreeing to be regarded as dead with Christ to sin: have we not here
the foundation stone of holiness?

Observe also that, if he follows the command of Christ, the very first
step which a Christian takes after he has accepted the position taken
up by the Lord Jesus on his behalf is another avowal more public than
the first, namely, his baptism.

By faith he has accepted Christ as dead, instead of him, and he regards
himself as having died in Christ. Now, every dead man ought to be
buried, sooner or later; and so, when we come forward and confess
Christ, we are "buried with him in baptism unto death, that like as
Jesus Christ rose from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we
also might rise to newness of life." Though baptism does not avail
anything as a ceremony, having no power or efficacy in and of itself,
yet as a sign and symbol it teaches us that true believers are dead and
buried with Christ. So, you see, the two ways in which, according to
the gospel, we actually and avowedly give ourselves to Christ, are by
faith and baptism. "He that believeth, and is baptised, shall be
saved." Now, the essence of faith is to accept Christ as representing
me in his death: and the essence of baptism is to be buried with Christ
because I am dead with him. Thus at the very doorstep of the Christian
religion, in its first inward act and its first outward symbol, you get
the thought that believers are henceforth to be separated from sin and
purified in life. He who truly believes, and knows what it is to be
really buried with Christ, has begun—nay, he has, in a certain sense,
effected completely—what the text describes as the crucifixion of the
flesh with the affections and lusts. For, dear friends, let it never be
forgotten that the grand object for which we lay hold on Christ is the
death of sin. Who among us has believed in Christ that he might escape
the pangs of hell? Oh, brother, you have but a very poor idea of what
Jesus Christ has come into the world to do: he is proclaimed to be a
Savior who "shall save his people from their sins." This is the object
of his mission. True, he comes to give pardon, but he never gives
pardon without giving repentance with it; he comes to justify, but he
does not justify without also sanctifying. He has come to deliver us,
not from thee, O death, alone! nor from thee, O hell, alone! but from
thee, O sin, the mother of death, the progenitor of hell! The Redeemer
lays his axe at the root of all the mischief, by killing sin, and thus,
as far as we are concerned, he puts an end to death and hell. Glory be
to God for this! Now, it does seem to me that if the very commencement
of the Christian faith be so manifestly connected with death to sin,
they do us grievous injustice who suppose that in preaching faith in
Jesus Christ we ignore the moralities or the virtues, or that we think
little of sin and vice. We do not so, but we proclaim the only method
by which moral evil can be put to death and swept away. The reception
of Christ is an avowal of the crucifixion of the flesh with the
affections and lusts, what more can the purest moralist propose? What
more could he avow himself?

II. But secondly, AS A MATTER OF FACT, THE DECEPTION OF CHRIST IS
ATTENDED WITH THE CRUCIFIXION OF SIN. I shall now state my own
experience when I believed in Jesus; and while I am doing so I rejoice
to remember that there are hundreds, if not thousands in this place who
have experienced the same, and millions in this world, and millions
more in heaven, who know the truth of what I declare. When I believed
that Jesus was the Christ, and rested my soul in him, I felt in my
heart from that moment an intense hatred to sin of every kind. I had
loved sin before, some sins particularly, but those sins became from
that moment the most obnoxious to me, and, though the propensity to
them was still there, yet the love of them was clean gone; and when I
at any time transgressed I felt an inward grief and horror at myself
for doing the things which aforetime I had allowed and even enjoyed. My
relish for sin was gone. The things I once loved I abhorred, and
blushed to think of.

Then I began to search out my sins. I see now a parallel between my
experience in reference to sin, and the details of the crucifixion of
Christ. They sent Judas into the garden to search for our great
substitute, and just in that way I began to search for sin, even for
that which lay concealed amid the thick darkness of my soul I was
ignorant, and did not know be sin, for it was night in any soul; but,
being stirred up to destroy the evil, my repenting spirit borrowed
lanterns, and torches, and went out as against a thief. I searched the
garden of my heart through and through, with an intense ardor to find
out every sin; and I brought God to help me, saying, "Search me, O God,
and try me, and know my ways;" nor did I cease till I had spied out my
secret transgressions. This inward search is one of my most constant
occupations; I patrol my nature through and through to try and arrest
these felons, these abhorred sins, that they may be crucified with
Christ. O ye in whom iniquity lurks under cover of your spiritual
ignorance, arouse yourself to a strict scrutiny of your nature, and no
longer endure that your hearts should be the lurking-places of evil. I
remember when I found my sin. When I found it I seized it, and I
dragged it off to the judgment-seat. Ah, my brethren, you know when
that occurred to you, and how stern was the judgment which conscience
gave forth. I sat in judgment on myself. I took my sin to one court,
and to another. I looked at it as before men, and trembled to think
that the badness of my example might have ruined other men's souls: I
looked at my sin as before God, and I abhorred myself in dust and
ashes. My sin was as red as crimson in his sight and in mine also. I
judged my sin, and I condemned it—condemned it as a felon to a felon's
death. I heard a voice within me which, Pilate-like, pleaded for it—"I
will chastise him and let him go; let it be a little put to shame; let
not the wrong deed be done quite so often; let the lust be curbed and
kept under." But, ah, my soul said, "Let it be crucified! Let it be
crucified!" and nothing could shake my heart from this intent, that I
would slay all the murderers of Christ if possible, and let not one of
them escape for my soul hated them with a deadly hatred, and would fain
nail them all to the tree. I remember, too, how I began to see the
shame of sin. As my Lord was spit upon, and mocked, and despitefully
used, so did my soul begin to pour contempt upon all the pride of sin,
to scorn its promises of pleasure, and to accuse it of a thousand
crimes. It had deceived me, it had led me into ruin, it had well nigh
destroyed me, and I despised it, and poured contempt upon its
briberies, and all it offered of sweetness and of pleasure. O sin, how
shameful a thing didst thou appear to be! I saw all that is base, mean,
and contemptible concentrated in thee. My heart scourged sin by
repentance, smote it with rebukes, and buffeted it with self-denials.
Then was it made a reproach and a scorn. But this sufficed not—sin must
die. My heart mourned for what sin had done, and I was resolved to
avenge my Lord's death upon myself.

Thus my soul sang out her resolve—
"Oh, how I hate those lusts of mine
That crucified my God;
Those sins that pierced and nail'd his flesh
Fast to the fatal wood!
Yes, my Redeemer, they shall die;
My heart was so decreed:
Nor will I spare the guilty things
That made my Savior bleed."

Then I led forth my sins to the place of crucifixion. They would fain
have escaped, but the power of God prevented them, and like a guard of
soldiery, conducted them to the gibbet of mortification. The hand of
the Lord was present, and his all-revealing Spirit stripped my sin as
Christ was stripped; setting it before mine eyes, even my secret sin in
the light of his countenance. Oh, what a spectacle it was as I gazed
upon it! I had looked before upon its dainty apparel, and the colors
with which it had bedizened itself, to make it look as fair as Jezebel
when she painted her face: but now I saw its nakedness and horror, and
I was well nigh ready to despair; but my spirit bore me up, for I knew
that I was forgiven, and I said "Christ Jesus has pardoned me, for I
have believed in him; and I will put the flesh to death, by crucifying
it on his cross." The driving of the nails I do remember, and how the
flesh struggled to maintain its liberty. One, two, three, four, the
nails went in, and fastened the accursed thing to the wood with Christ,
so that it could neither run nor rule; and now, glory be to God, though
my sin is not dead, it is crucified, and must eventually die. It hangs
up there; I can see it bleeding out its life. Sometimes it struggles to
get down, and tries to wrench away the nails, for it would fain go
after vanity; but the sacred nails hold it too fast, it is in the grasp
of death, and it cannot escape. Alas, it dies a lingering death,
attended with much pain and struggling: still it dies, and soon its
heart shall be pierced through with the spear of the love of Christ,
and it shall utterly expire. Then shall our immortal nature no more be
burdened with the body of this death, but, pure and spotless, it shall
rise to and behold the face of God for ever.

Now, I am not talking allegorically of things which ought to be
realized, but as a matter of fact remain mere ideas. I am describing in
figure what happens in reality; for every man who believes in Jesus
immediately bestirs himself to get rid of sin; and you may know whether
he has believed in Jesus Christ or not by seeing whether there is a
change in his motives, feelings, life, and conduct. Do you say that you
doubt this? You may doubt what you like, but facts speak for
themselves. There will come before me, I dare say, before this week is
over, as there have almost every week of my life, men who have been
slaves to intoxication made sober at once by believing in Jesus Christ;
women, once lost to virtue, who have become pure and chaste by
believing in Jesus; men who were fond of all manner of evil pleasures,
who have turned instantly from them, and have continued to resist all
temptation, because they are new creatures in Christ Jesus. The
phenomenon of conversion is singular, but the effect of conversion is
more singular still; and it is not a thing done in a corner, it can be
seen every day. If it were merely an excitement in which men felt a
distress of mind, and then by-and-by thought they were at peace, and
became happy because self-satisfied, I should not see any particular
good in it; but if it be true that regeneration changes men's tastes
and affections, that it, in fine, changes them radically, making them
altogether new creatures; if it be so, I say, then may God send us
thousands of conversions! And that this is so we are quite sure, for we
see it perpetually.

III. Thirdly, we go a step farther, and say that THE RECEPTION OF JESUS
CHRIST INTO THE HEART BY SIMPLE FAITH IS CALCULATED TO CRUCIFY THE
FLESH.

When a man believes in Jesus the first point that helps him to crucify
the flesh is that he has seen the evil of sin, inasmuch as he has seen
Jesus, his Lord, die because of it. Men think that sin is nothing; but
what will sin do? What will it not do? The virus of sin, what wilt it
poison? Ay, what will it not poison? Its influence has been baleful
upon the largest conceivable scale. Sin has flooded the world with
blood and tears through red-handed war; sin has covered the world with
oppression, and so has crushed the manhood of many, and broken the
hearts of myriads; sin begat slavery, and tyranny, and priestcraft, and
rebellion, and slander, and persecution; sin has been at the bottom of
all human sorrows; but the crowning culminating point of sin's villainy
was when God himself came down to earth in human form—pure, perfect,
intent on an errand of love—came to work miracles of mercy, and
redemption. Then sinful man could never rest till he had crucified his
incarnate God. They coined a word when the Parliamentary party executed
the king in England, and called the king's destroyers "regicides," and
now we must make a word to describe sin: sin is a deicide. Every
sinner, if he could, would kill God, for he says in his heart, "No
God." He means he wishes there were none. He would be rejoiced indeed
if he could learn for certain that there was no God. In fact, that is
the bugbear of his life, that there is a God, and a just God, who will
bring him into judgment. His secret wish is that there were no religion
and no God, for he might then live as he pleased.

Now, when a man is made to see that sin in its essence is the murderer
of Emmanuel, God with us, his heart being renewed, he hates sin from
that very moment. "No," he says, "I cannot continue in such evil. If
that be the true meaning of every offense against the law of God—that
it would put God himself out of his own world if it could—I cannot bear
it." His spirit recoils with horror, as he feels—

"My sins have pulled the vengeance down
Upon his guiltless head:
Break, break, my heart, oh burst mine eyes!
And let my sorrows bleed.
Strike, mighty grace, my flinty soul,
Till melting waters flow,
And deep repentance drown mine eyes
In undissembled woe."

Then the believer has also seen in the death of Christ an amazing
instance of the great grace of God; for if sin be an attempt to murder
God—and it is all that—then how wonderful it is that the creatures who
committed this sin were not destroyed at once. How remarkable that God
should consider it worth his while to devise a plan for their
restoration; and yet he did, with matchless skill, contrive a way which
involved the giving up of his only-begotten and well-beloved Son.
Though this was an expense unequalled, yet he did not withdraw from it.
He "so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting
life:" and this for a race of men who were the enemies of their good
and gracious God. "Henceforth," saw the believer in Christ, "I can have
nothing to do with sin, since it does despite to so gracious a God. O,
thou accursed sin, to drive thy dagger at the heart of him who was all
grace and mercy! This makes sin to be exceedingly sinful."

Further, the believer has had a view of the justice of God. He sees
that God hates sin intensely, for when his only begotten Son tools sin
upon himself, God would not spare even him. That sin was not his own,
in him was no sin, but when he voluntarily took it upon himself, and
was made a curse for us, the Judge of all the earth did not spare him.
Down from his armoury of vengeance he took his thunderbolts and hurled
them at his Son, for his Son stood in the sinner's stead. There was no
mercy for the sinner's substitute. He had to cry as never one cried
before or since, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Torrents
of woe rushed through his spirit; the condemnation of sin overwhelmed
him; all God's waves and billows went o'er him.

Now, when a man sees this wonderful fact he can no longer think lightly
of transgression. He trembles before the thrice holy Jehovah, and cries
in his secret heart, "How can I sin if this be God's opinion of it? If
in his justice he smote it so unsparingly, even when it was only laid
by imputation upon his Son, how will he smite it when its actual guilt
lies on me? O God deliver me from it."

The believer has also had one more sight which, perhaps, more
effectually than any other changes his view of sin. He has seen the
amazing love of Jesus. Did you ever see it, my hearer? If you have seen
it you will never love sin again. O think, that he who was master of
all heaven's majesty came down to be the victim of all man's misery! He
came to Bethlehem, and dwelt among us, offering thirty years and more
of toilsome obedience to his Father's will; and at the close he reached
the crisis of his griefs, the crowning sorrow of his incarnation—his
bloody sweat and death agony. That was a solemn Passover which he ate
with his disciples, with Calvary full in view. Then he arose and went
to Gethsemane,

"Gethsemane, the olive-press,
(And why so called let Christians guess,)
Fit name, fit place, where vengeance strove,
And griped and grappled hard with love.
'Twas there the Lord of life appeared
And sighed, and groaned, and prayed, and feared;
Bore all incarnate God could bear
With strength enough, and none to spare."

Behold how he loved us! He was taken to Pilate's hall, and there was
scourged—scourged with those awful Roman whips weighted with little
bullets of lead, and made of the intertwisted sinews of oxen, into
which they also inserted small slivers of bone, so that every blow as
it fell tore off the flesh. Our beloved Lord had to suffer this again
and again, being scourged often as that verse seems to intimate which
says, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his
stripes we are healed." Yet he loved us, loved us still. Many waters
could not quench his love, neither could the floods drown it. When they
nailed him to the tree, he loved us still. When, every bone being
dislocated, he cried in sad soliloquy, "I am poured out like water, all
my bones are out of joint," he loved us still. When the dogs compassed
him and the bulls of Bashan beset him round, he loved us still. When
the dread faintness came upon him till he was brought into the dust of
death, and his heart melted like wax in the midst of his bowels, he
loved us still. When God forsook him, and the sun was blotted out, and
midnight darkness covered the midday, and a denser midnight veiled his
spirit—a darkness like that of Egypt, which might be felt, he loved us
still. Till he had drunk the last dregs of the unutterably bitter coo,
he loved us still. And when the light shone on his face, and he could
say, "It is finished," that light shone on a face that loved us still.
Now, every man to whom it has been given to believe in Jesus, and to
know his love, says, "How can I offend him? How can I grieve him? There
are actions in this life which I might otherwise indulge in, but I dare
not now, for I fear to vex my Lord." And if you say "Dare not, are you
afraid of him?" the answer will be, "I am not slavishly afraid, for
into hell I can never go." What am I afraid of, then? I am afraid of
that dear face, on which I see the gutterings of tears which he once
shed for me. I am afraid of that dear brow which wore the thorn-crown
for me; I cannot rebel against such kindness, his bleeding love
enchains me. How can I do so great a wickedness as to put my dying Lord
to shame? "Do you not feel this, my beloved brother? If you have ever
trusted the Lord Jesus, you crouch at his feet, and kiss the prints of
his nails, for very love; and if he would use you as a footstool, if it
would raise him any higher, you would count it the highest honor of
your life. Ay, if he bade you go to prison and to death for him, and
would say it himself, and put his pierced hand on you, you would go
there as cheerfully as angels fly to heaven. If he bade you die for
him, though the flesh is weak, your spirit would be willing; ay, and
the flesh would be made strong enough, too, if Jesus did but look upon
you, for he can with a glance cast out selfishness and cowardice, and
everything that keeps us back from being whole burnt-offerings to him.
Is it not so?

"Speak of morality! Thou bleeding Lamb
The best morality is love to thee!"

When we once are filled with love to thee, O Jesus, sin becomes the
dragon against which we wage a lifelong warfare; holiness becomes our
noblest aspiration, and we seek after it with all our heart and soul
and strength. If candid minds will but honestly consider the religion
of Jesus Christ, they will see that Christian men must hate sin if they
are sincere in their faith. I might go farther into that, but I will
not.

IV. The last thing of all is this. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS WITH THE GOSPEL,
AND WHERE HE IS HOLINESS MUST BE PROMOTED.

Let it never be forgotten that—while the reception of Jesus Christ by
simple faith is an avowal of death to sin, and does bring with it an
experience of hating sin, and is calculated to do so—there in one thing
more. If, dear friends, in any work of revival, or ordinary ministry,
there was nothing more than you could see or hear, I think that many
criticisms and cavils might be, at least, rational, but they are not so
now; for one grand fact makes them for ever unreasonable. Wherever
Jesus Christ is preached, there is present One sublime in rank and high
in degree. You will not suppose that I am speaking of any—earthly
potentate. No, I am speaking of the Holy Ghost—the ever blessed Spirit
of God. There is never a gospel sermon preached by an earnest heart but
what the Holy Ghost is there, taking of the things of Christ and
revealing them unto men. When a man turns his eye to Jesus, and simply
trusts him—for we adhere to that as being the vital matter—there is
accompanying that act—nay, I must correct myself, there is as the cause
of that act—a miraculous, supernatural power which in an instant
changes a man, as completely as if it flung him back into nothingness
and brought him forth into new life. If this be so, then believing in
Christ is something very marvellous. Now, if you will turn to the third
chapter of John's gospel, and also to his Epistles, you will see that
faith is always linked with regeneration, or the new birth, which new
birth is the work of the Spirit of God. That same third of John which
tells us, "Ye must be born again," goes on to say, "And as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted
up; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal
life." Wherever there is faith in Jesus Christ a miracle of
purification has been wrought in the heart. Deny this and you deny the
testimony of the Scriptures, which say plainly, that "whosoever
believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." "And whosoever is
born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth
himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not." Wherefore do you doubt,
for we who are personal examples can assure you that it has been so in
our case? I mean not that myself and one or two others affirm this, but
the witnesses may be met with by hundreds and thousands, and they all
agree in asserting that the power of the Holy Ghost has changed the
current of their desires, and made them love the things which are holy,
and just, and true. Therefore, sirs, whether you believe it or not, you
must be so kind as to understand one thing from us very decidedly,
namely, that if to preach salvation through faith be vile we purpose to
be viler still. Surely you cannot blame us for acting as we do if our
stand-point be correct. If the preaching of the cross, though it be to
them that perish foolishness, be to them that believe in Christ the
wisdom of God and the power of God, we shall not give up preaching
Christ for you. If it be so that men are made new creatures—that, while
others are talking about morals, our gospel plants and produces them—we
shall not give up work for talk, nor the efficient agency of the gospel
for the inventions of philosophy.

To the front, my brethren, with the cross, more and more; in your
schools and in your pulpits set forth Christ crucified as the sinner's
hope more and more plainly. Bid the sinner look to Jesus! Look and
live! The gospel is the great promoter of social order, the great
reclaimer of the waifs and strays of society, the elevator of the human
race; this doctrine of free pardon and gracious renewal, freely given
to the most worthless upon their believing in Jesus, is the hope of
mankind. There is no balm in Gilead, and never was; but this is the
balm of Calvary, for there is the true medicine, and Jesus Christ is
the infallible Physician. Do but try it, sinners! Do but try it! Look
to Jesus, and the passions which you cannot else overcome shall yield
to his cleansing power. Believe in Jesus, and the follies which cling
to you, and crush you as the snakes engirdled Laocoon and his sons, you
shall be able to untwist. Yea, they shall die at Jesus' glance, and
shall fall off from you. Believe in Jesus, and you have the spring of
excellency, the hath of purity, the source of virtue, the destruction
of evil, the bud of perfection.

God grant us still to prove the power of the Lord Jesus in ourselves,
and to proclaim his power to all around us.

"Happy if, with our latest breath,
We may but gasp his name;
Preach him to all, and cry in death
Behold behold, the Lamb!"

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON—Galatians 5.

HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"—278, 317, AND 432; and "Safe in the Arms
of Jesus."