This is not, however, the common case; neither is it the happy lot of all to be so instructed from their cradles to maturity. And when sin has taken possession of the mind—whether in the milder development of what is called innocent gaiety;—the love of pleasure, without vice;—indisposition for serious things and persons;—or whether evil takes a larger development, and vice in its grosser form exists; in either case they cannot be said to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—nor, as a consequence, to seek to do His will; but are living under the condemnation of those who do not believe. And these states, admitted and protracted, necessarily tend to harden in sin, and the longer they continue, to render it more difficult to return, repent, and live. So that in general it is when the fear of death is brought nearer by sickness:—when aroused by the powerful ministry of the Word, or by the direct pleadings of the Holy Spirit, convincing us of sin and of judgment to come:—then, if at all, they are arrested in their downward course, and, through God’s longsuffering mercy, are brought to see their need of a Saviour, a Redeemer, a sacrifice for sin. Under such circumstances no necessary implication of pardon will give peace; they must feel that Jesus has borne their sins in His own body on the tree, and that by His stripes they are healed.
How many instances do we read of persons, for long years refusing to yield themselves to God, being at length brought into such depths of misery or danger (in that longsuffering mercy which has followed them all through), and then are they enabled to repent and put away their sins, and, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, to be saved from the wrath to come.
But some, perhaps, will say: Why cannot I believe in the Lord Jesus as “the restorer of breaches,” and “of paths to dwell in,” without going back to past ages? The answer is very obvious—that if He be not the Sacrifice, He cannot be the Restorer. He is one Christ, and His work one. If He atones for the sin of mankind, He can be then the restorer;—the one is as much part of His character as the other. And if we would divide His perfect work in two parts, and reject Him when suffering on the cross for our sins:—that “we might live”:—“to give His life a ransom for us,”—can we be sure that He will acknowledge us when seated on the right hand of God? Can we be truly said to believe in Him with our whole heart? If we do not accept what He has said of Himself; by His own rule we are not seeking to do His will.
It is after “having made peace through the blood of His cross;” . . . that He is able “to reconcile all things unto Himself” (Col. i. 19, 20), so that they who “were sometimes alienated by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable, and unreproveable in His sight.” (Col. i. 22).
In the previous chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, Paul, having taken a review of the mercies of God in human redemption by Christ, and of the calling of the Jews and Gentiles;—in the twelfth chapter he beseeches the brethren “to present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is their reasonable service” (ver. 1); and at the end of the thirteenth chapter he exhorts them to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lust thereof” (ver. 14); while the intermediate verses contain a remarkably concise epitome of the character and duties of the members of the Christian Church.
I have endeavoured to draw the character of Christianity as I find it in the New Testament. No place is made for lukewarmness, indifference, or formality. Every one receiving the inestimable blessing of faith in Christ is naturally expected to embrace it; to prize it as the “pearl of great price”; the greatest of all treasures; and to be wrapped up in its excellence, counting all other things as valueless and unworthy of attention in comparison with it. And the new creature is to grow up out of the new faith, stripped of all that is old and sinful, and clothed with all that is just and true and godly.
To flee from the “wrath to come,” and take refuge in the ark or fold of Christ, is a work of the deepest seriousness, and the joy of feeling that you have attained that shelter and security is depicted in the New and Old Testaments as of the liveliest kind.
“Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say rejoice” (Phil. iv. 4). “Whom having not seen ye love; in whom though now ye see Him not, yet, believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet. i. 8), and this in the midst of grievous persecutions.
“And thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel” (Isa. xli. 16).
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isa. lxi. 10).