CHAPTER IX. BELIEVE JUST NOW
You are in earnest now; but I fear you are making
your earnestness your Christ, and actually using it as a reason for not trusting
Christ immediately. You think your earnestness will lead on to faith, if it be
but intense enough, and long enough persisted in.
But there is such a thing as earnestness in the
wrong direction; earnestness in unbelief, and a substitution of earnestness for
simple faith in Jesus. You must not soothe the alarms of conscience by this earnestness
of yours. It is unbelieving earnestness; and that will not do. What God demands
is simple faith in the record which he has given you of his Son. You say, "I can't
give him faith, but I can give him earnestness; and by giving him earnestness,
I hope to persuade him to give me faith." This is self-righteousness. It shows
that you regard both faith and earnestness as something to be done in order to
please God, and secure his good will. You say, faith is the gift of God, but earnestness
is not; it is in my own power; therefore I will earnestly labor, and struggle,
and pray, hoping that ere long God will take pity on my earnest struggles, nay,
feeling secretly that it would be hardly fair to him to disregard such earnestness.
Now, if God has anywhere said that unbelieving earnestness and the unbelieving
use of means is the way of procuring faith, I cannot object to such proceeding
on your part. But I do not find that he has said so, or that the apostle in dealing
with inquirers set them upon this preliminary process for acquiring faith. I find
that the apostles shut up their hearers to immediate faith and repentance, bringing
them face to face with the great object of faith, and commanding them in the name
of the living God to believe, just as Jesus commanded the man with the withered
arm to stretch out his hand. The man was thoroughly helpless, yet he is, on the
spot, commanded to do the very thing which he could least of all do, the thing
which Jesus only could enable him to do. The Lord did not give him any directions
as to a preliminary work, or preparatory efforts, and struggles, and using of
means. These are man's attempts to bridge over the great gulf by human appliances;
man's ways of evading the awful question of his own utter impotence; man's unscriptural
devices for sliding out of inability into ability, out of unbelief into faith;
man's plan for helping God to save him; man's self-made ladder for climbing up
a little way out of the horrible pit, in the hope that God will so commiserate
his earnest struggles as to do all the rest that is needed.
Now God has commanded all men everywhere to repent;
but he has nowhere given us any directions for obtaining repentance. God has commanded
sinners to believe, but has not prescribed for them any preparatory steps or process
by means of which he may be induced to give them something which he is not from
the first most willing to do. It is thus that he shuts them up to faith, by concluding
them in unbelief. It is thus that he brings them to feel both the greatness and
the guilt of their inability; and so constrains them to give up every hope of
doing anything to save themselves; - driving them out of every refuge of lies,
and showing them that these prolonged efforts of theirs are hindrances, not helps,
and are just so many rejections of his own immediate help, - so many distrustful
attempts to persuade him to do what he is already most willing to do in their
behalf.
The great manifestation of self-righteousness, is
this struggle to believe. Believing is not a work, but a ceasing from work; and
this struggle to believe, is just the sinner's attempt to make a work out of that
which is no work at all, to make a labor out of that which is a resting from labor.
Sinners will not let go their hold of their former confidence, and drop into Christ's
arms. Why? Because they still trust these confidences, and do not trust him who
speaks to them in the gospel. Instead, therefore, of encouraging you to embrace
more and more earnestly these preliminary efforts, I tell you they are all the
sad indications of self-righteousness. They take for granted that Christ has not
done his work sufficiently, and that God is not willing to give you faith till
you have plied him with the arguments and importunities of months or years. God
is at this moment willing to bless you; and these struggles of yours are not,
as you fancy, humble attempts on your part to take the blessing, but proud attempts
either to put it from you or to get hold of it in some way of your own. You cannot,
with all your struggles, make the Holy Spirit more willing to give you faith than
he is at this moment. But our self-righteousness rejects this blessed truth; and
if I were to encourage you in these efforts, I should be fostering your self-righteousness
and your rejection of this grace of the Spirit.
You say you cannot change your heart or do any good
thing. So say I. But I say more. I say that you are not at all aware of the extent
of your helplessness and of your guilt. These are far greater and far worse than
you suppose. And it is your imperfect view of these that leads you to resort to
these appliances. You are not yet sensible of your weakness, in spite of all you
say. It is this that is keeping you from God and God from you.
God commands you to believe and to repent. It is
at our peril that you attempt to alter this imperative and immediate obligation
by the substitution of something preliminary, the performance of which may perhaps
soothe your terrors and lull your conscience to asleep, but will not avail either
to propitiate God or to life you into a safer, or more salvable condition, as
you imaging. For we are saved by faith, not by efforts to induce an unwilling
God to give us faith.
God commands you to believe; and, so long as you
do not believe, you are making him a liar, you are rejecting the truth, you are
believing a lie; for unbelief is, in reality, the belief in a lie. Yes, God commands
you to believe; and your not believing is your worst sin; and it is by exhibiting
it as your worst sin, that God shuts you up to faith. Now, if you try to extenuate
this sin; if you lay this flattering unction to your soul, that, by making all
these earnest and laborious efforts to believe, you are lessening this awful sin,
and rendering your unbelieving state a less guilty one; you are deluding your
conscience, and thrusting away from you that divine hand which, by this conviction
of unbelief, is shutting you up to faith.
I do not remember to have seen this better stated
anywhere than in Fuller's "Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation." I give just a few
sentences: - "It is the duty of ministers not only to exhort their carnal hearers
to believe in Jesus Christ for the salvation of their souls, but it is at our
peril to exhort them to anything short of it, or which does not involve or imply
it. We have sunk into such a compromising way of dealing with the unconverted,
as to have well nigh lost the spirit of the primitive preachers; and hence it
is that sinners of every description can sit so quietly as they do in our places
of worship. Christ and his apostles, without any hesitation, called on sinners
to repent and believe the gospel; but we, considering them as poor, impotent,
and depraved creatures, have been disposed to drop this part of the Christian
ministry. Considering such things as beyond the powers of their hearers, they
seem to have contented themselves with pressing on them the things they could
perform, still continuing enemies of Christ; such as behaving decently in society,
reading the Scriptures, and attending the means of grace. Thus it is that hearers
of this description sit at ease in our congregations. But as this implies no guilt
on their part, they sit unconcerned, conceiving that all that is required of them
is to lie in the way and wait the Lord's time. But is this the religion of the
Scriptures? Where does it appear that the prophets or apostles treated that kind
of inability, which is merely the effect of reigning aversion, as affording any
excuse? And where have they descended in their exhortations to things which might
be done, and the parties still continue the enemies of God? Instead of leaving
out everything of a spiritual nature, because their hearers could not find in
their hearts to comply with it, it may be safely affirmed that they exhorted to
nothing else, treating such inability not only as of no account with regard to
the lessening of obligation, but as rendering the subjects of it worthy of the
severest rebuke."...Repentance toward God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ,
are allowed to be duties, but not immediate duties. The sinner is considered as
unable to comply with them, and therefore they are not urged upon him; but instead
of them, he is directed to pray for the Holy Spirit to enable him to repent and
believe! This, it seems, he can do, notwithstanding the aversion of his heart
from everything of the kind. But if any man be required to pray for the Holy Spirit,
it must be either sincerely and in the name of Jesus, or insincerely and in some
other way. The latter, I suppose, will be allowed to be an abomination in the
sight of God; he cannot, therefore, be required to do this; and as to the former,
it is just as difficult and as opposite to the carnal heart as repentance and
faith themselves. Indeed, it amounts to the same thing; for a sincere desire after
a spiritual blessing, presented in the name of Jesus, is no other than the prayer
of faith."
The great thing which I would press upon our conscience
is the awful guilt that there is in unbelief. Continuance in unbelief is continuance
in the very worst of sins; and continuance in it because (as you say) you cannot
help it, is the worst aggravation of your sin. The habitual drunkard says, he
cannot help it; the habitual swearer says, he cannot help it; the habitual unbeliever
says, he cannot help it. Do you admit the drunkard's excuse? Or do you not tell
him that it is the worst feature of his case, and that he ought to be utterly
ashamed of himself for using such a plea? Do you say, I know you can't give up
your drunken habits, but you can go and pray to God to enable you to give up these
habits, and perhaps God will hear you and enable you to do so. What would this
be but to tell him to go on drinking and praying alternately; and that, possibly,
God may hear his drunken prayers, and give him sobriety? You would not deal with
drunkenness in this way; ought you to deal thus with unbelief? Ought you not to
press home the unutterable guilt of unbelief; and to show a sinner that, when
he says I can't help my unbelief, he is uttering his most dreadful condemnation,
and saying, I can't help distrusting God, I can't help hating God, I can't help
making God a liar; and that he might just as well say, I can't help stealing and
lying, and swearing.
Never let unbelief be spoken of as a misfortune.
It is awfully sinful; and its root is the desperate wickedness of the heart. How
resolutely evil must that heart be, when it will not even believe! For this depravity
of soul and need of a heavenly Quickener, cannot palliate our unbelief, or make
it less truly the sin of sins. If our helplessness and hardness of heart lessened
our guilt, then the more wicked we became, the less guilty we should be. The sinner
who loves sin so much that he cannot part with it, is the most guilty of all.
The man who says, I cannot love God, is proclaiming himself one of the worst of
sinners; but he who says, I cannot even believe, is taking to himself a guilt
which we may truly call the darkest and most damnable of all.
Oh, the unutterable guilt involved even in one moment's
unbelief - one single act of an unbelieving soul! How much more in the continuous
unbelief of twenty or sixty years! To steal once is bad enough, how much more
to be a thief by habit and repute! We think it bad enough when a man is overtaken
with drunkenness; how much more when we have to say of him, he is never sober.
Such is our charge against the man who has not yet known Christ. He is a continuous
unbeliever. His life is one unbroken course of unbelief, and hence of false worship,
if he worships at all.[24] Every new moment is a new act of unbelief; a new commission
of the worst of sins; the sin of sins; a sin in comparison with which stealing
and drunkenness, and murder, awful as they are, becomes as trifles.
Let the thought of this guilt, Oh, anxious soul,
cut your conscience to the quick! Oh! tremble as you think of what it is to be,
not for a day or an hour, but for a whole lifetime, an unbelieving man!
[24]
There is a tendency among some to undervalue doctrine, to exact morality at
the expense of theology, and to deny the importance of a sound creed. I do not
doubt that a sound creed has often covered an unsound life, and that much creed,
little faith, is true of multitudes. But when we hear it said, "Such a man is
far gone in error, but his heart is in its right place; he disbelieves the substitution
on the cross, but he rests on Christ himself," - we wonder, and ask, What then
was the Bible written for? It may be (if this be the case) a bood of thought
like Bacon's Novum Organum, but it is no standard of truth, no infallible expression
of the mind of an infallible being! The solemnity with which that book affirms
the oneness of truth, and the awful severity with which it condemns every departure
from the truth, as a direct attack on God himself, show us the danger of saying
that a man's heart may be in its right place though his head contains a creed
or error. Faith and unbelief are not mere mental manipulations, to which no
moral value is attached. Doctrine is not a mere form of thought or phase of
opinion. Within what limits such might have been the case had there been no
revelation, I do not say. But, with a revelation, all mental transactions as
to truth and error assume a moral character, with which the highest responsibility
is connected; their results have a moral value, and are linked with consequences
of the most momentous kind. On true doctrine rests the worship of the true God.
If, then, Johovah is a jealous God, not giving his glory to another, unbelief
must be one of the worst of sins; and error not only a deadly poison to the
soul receiving it, but hateful to God as blasphemy against himself, and the
same in nature as the blind theologies of paganism, on which is built the worship
of Baal, or Brahm, or Jupiter. The real root of all unbelief is atheism. Man's
guilty conscience modifies this, turns it into idolatry; or his sentimental
nature modifies it, and turns it into pantheism. The fool's "No God" is really
the root of all unbelief.