Comfort for the Desponding.
i. 18. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Some are kept in a desponding state—I. By the views they entertain of the sovereignty of God and the doctrine of election. But—1. The election of God, whatever it is, is an election unto life, and not unto destruction. It should therefore be a source of encouragement, not discouragement; it should awaken hope and joy, rather than despondency. 2. God’s election is His rule of action, not yours: yours is the Bible.[1] 3. The thing you are required to believe in order to salvation is not your election, but God’s truth. 4. In your present state you have nothing to do with election;[2] but if you will entertain the question, the evidence is much more in favour of your election than against it. II. By the views they take of certain isolated passages of Scripture (Matt. xii. 31, 32; Heb. xii. 17; Prov. i. 24–31). Not one of these passages, rightly understood, need quench your hope. Where there is one obscure passage that seems to make against you, there is a hundred which plainly and positively tell you that if you turn you shall live, if you believe you shall be saved. III. By an apprehension that their repentance has not been deep enough. But—1. The genuineness of your repentance is not to be estimated by the pungency of your feelings.[3] 2. It is not the depth of your feelings that is your warrant to come to Christ. 3. Your penitential feelings will not be likely to be increased by staying away from Christ. IV. By the fear that they have gone too far and sinned too much to be forgiven. But, admitting the very worst you can say of yourself, there is everything in the character of God, in the work of Christ, in the power of the Spirit, in the experience of other sinners,[4] in the promises of the Bible, to inspire and sustain your hope.—John Corbin.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Whatever the decrees of God be concerning the eternal state of men, since they are secret to us, they can certainly be no rule either of our duty or comfort. And no man hath reason to think himself rejected of God who does not find the marks of reprobation in himself—I mean an evil heart and life. By this, indeed, a man may know that he is out of God’s favour for the present; but he hath no reason at all from hence to conclude that God hath from all eternity and for ever cast him off. That God calls him to repentance, and affords him the space and means of it, is a much plainer sign that God is willing to have mercy upon him, than anything else can be that God hath utterly cast him off. For men to judge of their condition by the decrees of God, which are hid from us, and not by His Word, which is near us, is as if a man wandering in the wide sea in a dark night, when the heaven is all clouded, should resolve to steer his course by the stars which he cannot see, but only guess at, and neglect the compass which is at hand, and would afford him much better and more certain direction.—Tillotson, 1630–1694.
[2] We have no ground at first to trouble ourselves about God’s election. “Secret things belong to God.” God’s revealed will is, that all who believe in Christ should not perish. It is my duty, therefore, knowing this, to believe: by doing whereof I put that question, whether God be mine or no? out of all question, for all that believe in Christ are Christ’s, and all that are Christ’s are God’s. It is not my duty to look to God’s secret counsel, but to His open offer, invitation, and command, and thereupon adventure my soul. In war men will venture their lives, because they think some will escape, and why not they? In traffic beyond the seas many adventure a great estate, because some grow rich by a good return, though some miscarry. The husbandman adventures his seed, though sometimes the year proves so bad that he never sees it more. And shall not we make a spiritual adventure, in casting ourselves upon God, when we have so good a warrant as His command, and so good an encouragement as His promise, that He will not fail those that rely on Him?—Sibbes, 1577–1635.
[3] I see no reason to call in question the truth and sincerity of that man’s repentance who hates sin and forsakes, and returns to God and his duty, though he cannot shed tears, and express the bitterness of his soul by the same significations that a mother does in the loss of her only son. He that cannot weep like a child may resolve like a man, and that undoubtedly will find acceptance with God. Two persons walking together espy a serpent; the one shrieks and cries out at the sight of it, the other kills it. So it is with sorrow for sin; some express it by great lamentations and tears, and vehement transports of passion; others by greater and more real effects of detestation—by forsaking their sins, by mortifying and subduing their lusts; but he that kills it doth certainly best express his inward enmity against it.—Tillotson, 1630–1694.
[4] Oh who can read of a Manasseh, a Magdalene, a Saul, yes, an Adam, who undid himself and a whole world with him, in the roll of pardoned sinners, and yet turn away from the promise, out of a fear that there is not mercy fit in it to serve his turn? These are landmarks that show what large boundaries mercy hath set for itself, and how far it hath gone, even to take into its arms the greatest sinners that make not themselves incapable thereof by final impenitency. It were a healthful walk, poor doubting Christian, for thy soul go to this circuit, and oft see where the utmost stone is laid and boundary set by God’s pardoning mercy, beyond which He will not go.—Gurnall, 1617–1679.