The
subject of today’s lecture is, “What Constitutes True Submission?”
Before
I begin discussing this subject, I want to make two introductory remarks.
1. If any of you are deceived concerning your
hopes, and have built your hopes on a false foundation, the fundamental error
in your situation was the fact that you embraced what you thought was the gospel
plan of salvation using selfish motives.
Your selfish hearts weren’t broken.
This is the source of your delusion, if you are deceived. If your selfishness was subdued, you are not
deceived in your hope. If it was not
subdued, all your religion is worthless, and your hope is worthless.
2.
If any of you are deceived and you have a false hope, you are in the most
serious danger of reviving your old hope whenever you are awakened to consider
your condition. It is a very common
thing for such professing Christians, after a season of anxiety and
self-examination, to settle down again on their old foundation. The reason is, their mental habits have
become stuck in a rut, and therefore, by the laws of their mind it is difficult
to break out of that rut. If you ever intend
to get right with God, you must clearly see that you have, up until now, been
totally wrong, so that you no longer need to continue doing those things that
have deceived you.
Who
does not know that there is an awful lot of this kind of deception? How often will large portions of a church
lie cold and dead until a revival begins?
Then you will see them bustling about, and they get involved in
religion, as they call it, and renew their efforts and multiply their prayers
for a while; and this is what they call getting revived. But this is only the same kind of religion
that they had before. Such religion
lasts no longer than the excitement of the revival lasts. As soon as efforts to convert sinners in a
church begin to diminish, these individuals relapse into their former
worldliness. They get as close to what
they were before their supposed conversion as their pride and their fear of the
censures of the church will let them.
When a revival comes again, they go through one more round of
renewal. And so, they live from one
high to another, over and over again, revived and backslidden, revived and
backslidden, up and down as long as they live.
The truth is, they were first deluded by a spurious conversion in which
their selfishness was never broken down; and the more they multiply their
selfish efforts, the more certainly they will be lost.
I
will now discuss submission, and try to show you what true gospel submission is
in the following order, which is:
I. What is not true submission?
II. What is true submission?
I. What is not true submission?
1. True submission to God is not
indifference. No two things can be
further apart than indifference and true submission.
2.
Submission does not consist in being willing to be sinful for the glory of
God. Some think that true submission
includes the idea of being willing to be sinful for the glory of God. But this is wrong. To be willing to be sinful is itself a sinful state of mind. And to be willing to do anything for the
glory of God, is choosing not to be sinful.
The idea of being sinful for the glory of God is foolish and
unreasonable.
3.
Submission does not consist in being willing to be punished.
If
we were now in hell, true submission would require that we should be willing to
be punished. Because then, it would be
certain that, it was God’s will that we should be punished. So, if we were in a world where no provision
was made for the redemption of sinners, and where our punishment was therefore
inevitable, it would be our duty to be willing to be punished. If a man commits murder, and there is no
other way to secure public justice but for him to be hung, it is his duty to be
willing to be hung for the public good.
But, if there was any other way in which the murderer could make the
public interest complete, it would not be his duty to be willing to be
hung. Therefore, if we were in a world
that was only under the law, where there was no plan of salvation, and there
was nothing to secure the stability of government in the forgiveness of
sinners, it would be the duty of every person to be willing to be
punished. However, in the world we live
in today, genuine submission does not imply that we must be willing to be
punished. We know it is not God’s will
that everyone will be punished, but it is God’s will that all, who truly repent
and submit to God, shall be saved.
II.
What is genuine submission?
1. Genuine submission consists in perfect
passive agreement with all of God’s providential dealings and dispensations;
whether it relates to us, to others, or to the universe. Some people think that they agree passively
in God’s providential government. Yet,
if you talk with them you will discover that they find fault with God’s
arrangements in many things. They wonder
why God allowed Adam to sin, or why God allowed sin to enter the universe at
all? Why did God do this or that? Why did God make this or that the way He
did? In all of these situations,
suppose we cannot give a satisfactory reason to any of these questions. True submission still implies a perfect
passive agreement in whatever God has allowed or done; and feeling that, as far
as His providence is concerned, it is all right.
2.
True submission implies a passive agreement with the precept of God’s moral law. The general precept of God’s moral law is,
“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,
with all your mind, and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:30-31) Perhaps you may say, “I agree with this precept. I feel that it is right, and I have no
objection to this law.” Here I want you
to make a careful distinction between your constitutional approval of God’s
law, and actually submitting to it.
Every person naturally, by its own knowledge of right and wrong,
approves of this law. There is not one
devil in hell that does not approve of this law. God has so created our mind that it is impossible to be a moral
agent, and not approve of His law.
However, this is not the passive agreement that I am talking about. A person may feel this approval so strongly
that he is even delighted with it, without having truly submitted to it. There are two ideas included in genuine
submission. Let’s look at them.
(1.)
The first idea is that true agreement with God’s moral law includes actual
obedience. It is useless for a child to
pretend to truly agree with his father’s commands, unless he actually obeys
them. It is useless for a citizen to
pretend to agree with the laws of the land unless he obeys those laws.
(2.)
The main idea of submission is yielding to what I consider is the most
important controversial issue. And that
is this: men have taken their supreme affection away from God and His kingdom,
and set up self-interest as the most important thing that they are concerned
about. Instead of devoting their lives
to doing good, as God requires, they have adopted the rule that “charity begins
at home.” This is the very heart of the
debate between God and the sinner. The
sinner aims at promoting his own interest as his purpose in life. Now, the first idea implied in submission is
yielding to God on this point. We must
stop making our own interest our supreme goal, and let the interests of God and
His kingdom rise in our affections just as much above our own interests as
their real value is greater. The man
who does not do this is a rebel against God.
Suppose
a civil ruler sets himself up to promote the general happiness of his
nation. He enacts laws wisely adapted
to promote everybody’s happiness, and he invests all his own resources into
promoting their happiness; and then he requires every subject to do the
same. Now, suppose an individual goes
and sets up his own private interest in opposition to the general interest of
the nation. He becomes a rebel against
the government, and against all the interests that the government was established
to promote. Now, the rebel’s first idea
of submission is to give up his private selfish interests, and unite with the
ruler and the obedient subjects to promote the public good. Now, the law of God absolutely requires that
you should make your own happiness subordinate to the glory of God and the good
of the universe. And, until you do
this, you are the enemy of God and the universe, and a child of hell.
Now,
the gospel has the same requirements as the law. It is astonishing, that many, within a few years of professing
Christianity, maintain that it is right for someone to aim directly at his own
salvation, and make his own happiness the great object or goal that he should
pursue. However, it is clear that God’s
law is different from this. God’s law
requires every one to prize God’s interest supremely. And the gospel requires the same with the law. Otherwise, Jesus Christ becomes someone who
died so He can approve of your sin, and who came into the world to take up arms
against God’s government.
It
is easy to show from the Bible, that the gospel requires un-biased, unselfish
love, or love to God and love to man, just as the law requires. The first passage I will quote is this,
“Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness”. (Matt 6:33)
What does that mean? Strange as
it may seem, a writer has recently quoted this text to prove that it is right to
seek first our own salvation or our own happiness and to make our own salvation
and happiness the leading object that we pursue. But, that is not the meaning.
This passage requires us to promote the kingdom of God as the object of
our pursuit. I believe it commands us
to aim at being holy and it does not aim at our own happiness. Happiness is connected with holiness, but it
is not the same thing, and to seek holiness or obedience to God, and to honor
and glorify Him, is a very different thing from supremely seeking our own
interests.
Another
passage is, “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to
the glory of God”. (I Cor 10:31) Indeed!
What? May we not eat and drink
to please ourselves? No! We may not even gratify our natural appetite
for food, but our eating and drinking is subordinate to the glory of God. This is what the gospel requires. The apostle Paul wrote this to the Christian
church.
Another
passage is, “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also
for the interests of others”. (Phil
2:4) However, I won’t even try to quote
all the passages that teach this. You
may find on almost every page of the Bible, some passage that means the same
thing, requiring us not to seek our own benefit, but the benefit of others.
Our
Savior says, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever
loses his life for My sake will find it.”
(Matt 16:25) That is, if a
person’s goal is his own interest, he will lose his own interest. If his goal is saving his own soul, he will
lose his own soul. He must go out of himself,
and make the good of others his supreme object, or he will be lost.
And
again Jesus says, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or
father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name's sake, shall
receive a hundredfold, and inherit everlasting life.” (Matt 19:29) Here some
people may stumble, and say, “Look, here is a reward held out as a motive”. But, notice! What are you to do? Are
you to forsake self for the sake of a reward to self? No; you are to forsake self for, His name’s
sake, for the sake of Christ and His gospel; and the results will be as
stated. That is the important distinction.
In
the 13th chapter of Corinthians, Paul gives us a full description of this
impartial love, or charity, without which a person is nothing in religion. It is remarkable how much Paul says a person
may do, and yet be nothing. “Though I
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become
as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and
all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing. And
though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be
burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” (I Cor 13:1-3) But true
gospel love has this character. “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not
envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely,
does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in
iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.”
This love does not seek its own.
Notice that this love has no selfish goal, but it seeks the happiness of
others as its great goal. Without this
kind of unselfish love, we know there is not one particle of religion. Do you see that I could stand here all night
quoting and explaining passages to the same point; showing that all pure
religion consists in unselfish love?
Before
I go on, I want to mention several objections to what I have just shared with
you, which you may be thinking about. I
am doing this because some of you may stumble here, and get the idea that it is
right to have our religion consist in aiming at our own salvation as our great
goal in life.
Objection
1. “Why are the threats in the word of
God given if selfishness is not influenced by a fear of the wrath to
come?"
Many
answers may be given to this objection.
Answer. We are so created that, by the laws of our
being, we naturally dread pain.
Therefore, the threats in scripture answer many purposes. One is, to grab our selfish attention and
lead it to examine the reasons there are for loving and obeying God. Once the Holy Spirit gets our attention,
then He can rouse our conscience, and present those things that will lead us to
consider and decide on the reasonableness and duty of submitting to God.
Objection
2. “Since God has made us susceptible
to pleasure and pain, is it wrong to be influenced by them?”
Answer. It is neither right nor wrong. Pleasure and pain have no moral
character. If I had time tonight, I
would show you why this is true. In
morals, there are a group of actions that fall under the category of prudent
acts. For instance: Suppose you stand
on the edge of a cliff, where, if you throw yourself down, you will break your
neck. You are warned against it. Now, if you do not consider the warning, but
throw yourself down and kill yourself, that would be sin. But thinking about it has no virtue. It is simply a prudent act. There is no virtue in avoiding danger,
although it may often be sinful not to avoid the danger. It is sinful for us to brave the wrath of
God. But to be afraid of hell is not
holy, no more than the fear of breaking your neck by jumping off a cliff is
holy. It is simply a dictate of our
constitution.
Objection
3. “Does not the Bible make it our
immediate duty to seek our own happiness?”
Answer. It is not sinful to seek our own happiness,
according to its real value. On the
contrary, we should seek our own happiness, according to its real value. And anyone that neglects to do this, commits
sin. Another answer is, that although
it is right to seek our own happiness, and the constitutional laws of our mind
require us to consider our own happiness, still our constitution does not indicate
that to pursue our own happiness as our ultimate purpose in life is right. Suppose someone argues that because our
constitution requires food, therefore it is right to seek food as our supreme
goal in life. Would that be right? Certainly not, because the Bible clearly forbids
any such thing, and says, “Whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of
God”. (I Cor 10:31)
Objection
4. “Each one’s happiness is entirely
within his own power; and if everyone should seek his own happiness, the
happiness of the whole will be secured, to the greatest amount that is possible."
This
objection sounds true, but it is not accurate.
I deny the conclusion altogether because,
(1.)
The laws of our mind are such that it is impossible for any one of us to be
happy while we are making our own happiness our supreme goal in life. True happiness consists in gratifying
virtuous desires. But to be gratified,
we must obtain the thing that we desire.
Therefore, to be happy, the desires that we gratify must be right, and
therefore these desires must be unselfish desires. If your desires terminate on yourself; for example, if you desire
the conversion of sinners for the sake of promoting your own happiness, when
sinners are converted, it does not make you happy because their conversion is
not the thing on which your desire terminates.
The law of our mind makes it impossible for anyone who pursues his own
happiness, to ever obtain it. Let me
explain more specifically. True happiness
requires two things. First, you must
have a virtuous desire. If your desire
is not virtuous, your conscience will rise up against it, and therefore your
gratification will be accompanied with pain.
Secondly, your desire must be gratified in attaining its object. The object must be desired for its own sake,
or the gratification will not be complete, even if the object should be
attained. If the object is desired as a
means to a goal, the gratification will depend on obtaining the goal by this
means. But if the thing was desired as
an end, or for its own sake, obtaining it will produce unmingled gratification. The mind must therefore desire, not its own
happiness, for in this way it can never be attained, but the desire must
terminate on some other object which is desired for its own sake, the attainment
of which would be a gratification and thus result in happiness.
(2.)
If each one pursues his own happiness as his supreme goal, the interests of
different individuals will clash, and destroy the happiness of all. This is what we see happening in the world
right now. This is the reason for all
the fraud, violence, oppression, and wickedness on earth and in hell. It is because each one is pursuing his own
interest, and their interests clash.
The true way to secure our own happiness is, not to pursue our own
happiness as a goal, but to pursue another object, which, when obtained, will
provide complete gratification. That
object is the glory of God and the good of the universe. The question is not, whether it is right to
desire and pursue our own happiness at all, but whether it is right to make our
own happiness our supreme end.
Objection
5. “Happiness consists in gratifying virtuous
desire. Then the thing I aim at is
gratifying virtuous desire. Is not that
aiming at my own happiness?”
Answer. Our mind does not aim at gratifying the
desire, but at accomplishing whatever is desired. Suppose you see a beggar, as I mentioned last week, and you give
him a loaf of bread. Your goal is to
relieve the beggar’s misery. Relieving
the beggar’s misery is the object you desire, and when you accomplish what you
desire, your desire is gratified, and you are happy. But if, in relieving the beggar, your goal was your own
happiness, then relieving the beggar will not gratify that desire, and you make
it impossible to gratify it.
Thus,
you see, that both the law and the gospel require impartial unselfish love as
the only condition on which man can truly be happy.
3.
True submission implies submitting to the penalty of God’s law.
Let
me once again call your attention to the distinction that I have
made before. We are not, in this world,
simply under a government of law all by itself. This world is a province of Jehovah’s empire, which stands in a
peculiar relationship to God’s government.
We have rebelled, and a new and special provision has been made by which
God offers us mercy. The conditions are
that we obey the precepts of the law and submit to the justice of the
penalty. It is a government of law,
with the gospel added to it. The gospel
requires the same obedience as the law requires. The gospel supports punishment for sin, and requires that we
agree with the justice of the penalty.
If we were only under the law, it would require us to submit to the
infliction of the penalty. However, we
are not, and never have been, since the fall, under the government of mere law,
but we have always known, more or less clearly, that mercy is offered. Therefore, being willing to be punished has
never been required. It is in this
respect, that gospel submission differs from legal submission. Under bare law, submission would consist in
being willing to be punished. In this
world, submission consists in agreeing with the justice of the penalty, and
seeing ourselves as deserving the eternal wrath of God.
4.
True submission implies agreeing and yielding to the sovereignty of God.
It
is the duty of every sovereign to see that all his subjects submit to his
government. In addition, it is his duty
to enact such laws, that every individual, if he obeys perfectly, will promote
the public good in the highest possible degree. Then, if anyone refuses to obey, the duty of the sovereign is to
take that individual by force, and make him promote the public interest in the
best way that is possible with a rebellious subject. If a subject of that government will not promote the public good
voluntarily, he should be made to do it involuntarily. The government must either hang him, or shut
him up, or in some way make him an example through suffering; or, if the public
good allows mercy, the government may show mercy in a way that will best
promote the general or best interest of the public. Now God is a sovereign ruler, and the submission that He requires
is just what He must require. He would
be neglecting His duty as a ruler if He did not require submission. And since you have refused to obey this
requirement, you are now required to throw yourself into His hands, for Him to
dispose of you, for time and eternity, in the way that will most promote the
interests of the universe. You have
forfeited all claims to any portion in the happiness of the universe or the
favor of God. And since you cannot render
obedience for the past, you are now required to acknowledge the justice of His
law, and leave your future destiny entirely and unconditionally at His disposal
for time and for eternity. You must
submit all you have and all you are to Him.
You have justly forfeited everything, and are required to give it all up
at His bidding, in any way that He calls for it, to promote the interests of
His kingdom.
5. Finally, true submission requires submission
to the terms of the gospel. The terms
of the gospel are:
(1.)
Repentance. You must have a hearty
sorrow for sin. You must justify God
and take His side against yourself.
(2.) Faith.
You must have a perfect trust and confidence towards God, the kind that
leads you without hesitation to throw yourself, body and soul, and all you have
and are, into His hand, to do with you whatever He thinks is best for you.
(3.) Holiness.
Your love must be pure, un-biased, and unselfish.
(4.)
You must receive salvation as a mere matter of pure grace, to which you have no
claim on the score of justice.
(5.)
You must receive Christ as your mediator and advocate, your atoning sacrifice,
your ruler and teacher, and in all the offices in which He is presented to you
in God’s word. In short, you are to be
completely submitted to God’s appointed way of salvation.
REMARKS.
I.
Do you see why there are so many false hopes in the church?
The
reason is, that so many people embrace what they think is the gospel, without
yielding obedience to the law. They
look at the law with dread, and regard the gospel as a plan to avoid the
law. This has been going on since the
gospel was first preached. Some people
cling to the gospel and reject the law; while others follow the law and neglect
the gospel. The Antinomians think that
they can get rid of the law altogether.
They believe the gospel rule of life is different from the law; whereas,
the truth is, that the rule of life is the same in both situations, and both
require impartial unselfish love. Now,
if a person thinks that, under the gospel, he can give up the glory of God as
his supreme goal in life, and instead of loving God with all his heart, and
soul, and strength, may make his own salvation his supreme goal, his hopes are
false. He has embraced another gospel,
which is no gospel at all.
II.
This subject shows how we are to face the popular objection, that faith in
Christ implies making our own salvation our object or motive.
Well,
what is faith? It is not believing that
you shall be saved, but believing God’s word concerning His Son. It is nowhere revealed that you shall be
saved. God has revealed the fact that
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. What you call faith is more properly called hope. The confident expectation that you shall be
saved is a logical conclusion from the act of faith and the conclusion that you
have a right to draw, when you are aware that you are obeying the law and
believing the gospel. That is, when you
exercise the feelings required in the law and in the gospel, you have a right
to trust in Christ for your own salvation.
III.
It wrong to believe that despair of mercy is essential to true submission.
This
is clear from the fact that, under the gospel, everybody knows that it is God’s
will for every person who exercises impartial unselfish love to be saved. Suppose a man should come to me and ask,
“What shall I do to be saved?” and I should tell him, “If you expect to be
saved you must despair of being saved”, what would he think? What inspired writer ever gave any such
direction as this? No! The inspired answer is, “Love the Lord your
God with all your heart!”
“Repent!” “Believe the gospel,”
and so on. Is there anything here that
implies despair?
It
is true that sinners sometimes despair before they obtain true peace. But, why?
It is not because despair is essential to true peace; but because of
their ignorance, or of wrong instructions given to them, or a misunderstanding
of the truth. Many anxious sinners
despair because they get a false impression that they have sinned away their
day of grace, or that they have committed the unpardonable sin, or that their
sins are peculiarly wicked, and the gospel does not reach them. Sometimes they despair for this reason: they
know that there is mercy provided and ready to be bestowed as soon as they will
comply with the terms, but they find that all their efforts at true submission
are in vain. They find that they are so
proud and so obstinate, that they cannot get themselves to consent to the terms
of salvation. Perhaps most individuals,
who do submit, do in fact come to a point where they feel that all as
lost. But is that necessary? That is the question. Now, you see, it is nothing but their own
wickedness that drives them to despair.
They are unwilling to grab a hold of the mercy that is offered to
them. Therefore, their despair, instead
of being essential to true submission under the gospel, is inconsistent with
it, and no man embraces the gospel while they are in that state. It is horrible unbelief then, in fact, it is
a sin to despair; and saying that despair is essential to true submission is
saying that sin is essential to true submission.
IV.
True submission is submitting to the whole government of God.
True
submission is accepting and yielding to God’s Providential government, His
moral government, the precept of His law, and the penalty of His law, so that
he who deserves the exceeding great and eternal weight of damnation; submits to
the terms of salvation in the gospel.
Under the gospel, it is no one’s duty to be willing to be damned. It is wholly inconsistent with a person’s
duty to be willing to be damned. The
person, who only submits to the law and consents to be damned, is as much in
rebellion as ever; for it is one of God’s express requirements that he should
obey the gospel.
V.
If you tell a sinner that he must be willing to be punished is a serious
mistake for several reasons.
You
set aside the gospel, and you place the sinner under another government than
the one that exists. You set before
that sinner a partial view of the character of God, and then you require him to
submit to that partial view. You hold
back the true reasons for submitting.
You don’t present the real and true God. You deceive the sinner by giving him the idea that God desires
his damnation, and he must submit to it.
God has taken His solemn oath that He does not desire the death of the
wicked, but that they turn from their wickedness and live. You slander God, and you charge God with perjury. Everyone under the gospel knows that God
desires the salvation of sinners, and it is impossible to hide that fact. The true ground on which you should place
the sinner’s salvation is that he is not to seek his own salvation, but he is
to seek the glory of God, and not to think that God desires or wants to send him
to hell.
What
did the apostles tell sinners when they asked what they must do to be
saved? What did Peter tell them on the
day of Pentecost? What did Paul tell
the jailer? They were told to repent,
forsake their selfishness, and believe the gospel. This is what people must do to be saved.
There
is another problem in trying to convert men this way. Because you are trying to convert them by the law, you are
setting aside the gospel. You are
attempting to make them holy, without the appropriate influences that will make
them holy. Paul thoroughly tried this
way, and he found that it never worked.
In the 7th chapter of Romans, he gives us the result using himself as an
example. It drove him to confess that
the law was holy and good, and he ought to obey it; and there it left him in
distress, and crying, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the
evil I will not to do, that I practice.”
(Rom 7:19) The law was not able
to convert him, and so he cries out, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of
death?” (Rom 7:24) At this point the love of God in sending his
Son, Jesus Christ, is presented to his mind, and that solved the problem. In the next chapter, Paul explains; “For
what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending
His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned
sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled
in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Rom 8:3:4)
The whole Bible testifies that only the influence of the gospel can
bring sinners to obey the law. The law
will never do it. Shutting out from a
person’s soul those motives that cluster around it from the gospel will never
convert a sinner.
I
know there may be some people who think they were converted this way, and that
they have totally submitted to the law, and without any influence from the
gospel. But, was it ever hidden from
them for a moment, that Christ had died for sinners, and that if they would
repent and believe, they would be saved?
These motives must have had their influence, for all the time that they
thought they were looking only at the law; they expected that if they believed
they would be saved.
I
suppose the error of attempting to convert men by the law, without the gospel,
lies in an old theory that men, in order to be saved, must be willing to be
damned. This theory sets aside the fact
that this world is, and since the fall always has been, under a dispensation of
mercy. If we were under a government of
mere law, true submission to God would still require mercy. But men are not, in this sense, under the
law, and never have been; for immediately after the fall, God gave Adam a revelation
of mercy. (Gen 3:15)
An
objection arises here in the mind of some, which I will remove.
Objection. “Is not the offer of mercy in the gospel,
designed to produce a selfish religion?”
The
offer of mercy may be perverted, as every other good thing may be, and then it
may give rise to a selfish religion.
God knew this could happen when he revealed the gospel. But, please notice. Nothing is designed to subdue the rebellious
heart of man, but this glorious exhibition of the unselfish love of God in the
offer of mercy.
Once,
there was a father, who had a stubborn and rebellious son; and for a long time
he tried to subdue him by chastisement.
He loved his son, and longed to have him virtuous and obedient. But the child seemed to harden his heart
against his father’s repeated efforts.
After a long time, the poor father became quite discouraged, and burst
out into a flood of convulsive weeping.
“My son! My son! What shall I do? How can I save you? I
have done everything that I could to save you.
Oh! What more can I
do?" The son had looked at the rod
with a brow of brass, but when he saw those tears rolling down his father’s furrowed
cheeks and heard the convulsive sobs of anguish from his aging heart, he also
burst into tears, and cried out, “Spank me father! Please spank me, as much as you please, but don't cry!” Now the father had found out the way to
subdue that stubborn heart. Instead of
holding over him nothing but the iron hand of law, he poured out his soul
before him; and what was the effect?
Was it to crush him into a hypocritical submission? No, the rod did that. The gushing tears of his father’s love broke
the son down at once, and he truly submitted to his father’s will.
The
same is true with sinners. The sinner
braves the wrath of Almighty God, and hardens himself to receive the heaviest
bolt of Jehovah's thunder. But when he
sees the LOVE of his Heavenly Father’s heart, if there is anything that will
make him hate and denounce himself; that will do it. When he sees God manifested in the flesh, stooping down to take
on human nature, hanging on the cross, and pouring out His soul in tears and
bloody sweat and death, that will grip his heart. Is this designed to make hypocrites? No, the sinner’s heart melts, and he cries out, “Oh, do anything
else, and I can bear it; but the love of the blessed Jesus overwhelms me”. This is the very nature of our mind, to be
influenced this way. Therefore, Instead
of being afraid, exhibit the love of God to sinners, exhibiting the love of God
to sinners is the only way to make them truly submissive and truly
unselfish. The law may make hypocrites;
but nothing but the gospel can draw out the soul in true love to God.