Pray to that Holy Spirit to convince you of sin day by day, whensoever you do the least wrong thing. Pray to Him to keep your consciences tender and quick, that you may feel instantly, and lament deeply, every wrong thing you do.
Pray to Him to give you, every time you do wrong, that godly sorrow which brings peace and health, that heart-repentance never to be repented of. Pray to Him to convince you more and more, as you grow older, that all sin comes from not believing in Jesus Christ, not believing that He is near you, with you, in you, putting into your hearts all right thoughts and good desires, and willing, if you will, to help you to put those thoughts and desires into good practice.
Pray to the Holy Spirit to convince you more and more of righteousness; to make you see what righteousness is; that it is the very character and likeness of God the Father, because it is the character and likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the express image of His person. Pray to Him to make you see the beauty of holiness: how fair, and noble, and glorious a thing goodness is; how truly Solomon says: “that all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.”
Pray to the Holy Spirit to convince you more and more of judgment, and to make you sure that the Lord is King, a righteous Judge, of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, whose fan is in His hand, who thoroughly purges His floor, who comes quickly, and His reward is with Him, and who surely casts out of His kingdom, sooner or later, all things that offend, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. Pray to Him to make you sure by faith, though you cannot see it, that the prince of this world is judged; that evil doing, oppression, tyranny, injustice, cheating, neglect of man by man, cannot and will not prosper upon the face of God’s earth; for the everlasting sentence and wrath of God is revealed forth every moment against all unrighteousness of men, which He will surely punish, yea, and does hourly punish by Him by whom He judges the world, Jesus Christ, the Lord, who is exalted high above all principalities and powers, and has all power given to Him in heaven and earth, which He uses, as He used it in Judæa of old, utterly and always for the good of all mankind, whom He hath redeemed with His most precious blood.
XLV.
THE GOSPEL.
Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain: for I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures.—1 Corinthians xv. 1–4.
This is St. Paul’s account of the gospel; the good news which he preached to the sinful and profligate Corinthians, when they were sunk lower than the beasts which perish. And because they believed this good news, he said, they were saved then and there, and would be safe only as long as they believed that good news, and kept it in their memories. Now, from what did this good news save them? From their sins. There was something in St. Paul’s good news which made them hate their sins, and repent of them, and throw them away, and rise up to be new men and women, living new lives in godliness and purity and justice, such as they had never lived before. Now mind, it was not bad news which made the Corinthians repent of their sins; it was good news. It was not that St. Paul told them that God was going to cast them into endless torment for their sins, and that therefore they were terrified and afraid, and so repented. Doubtless St. Paul told them, as he told other heathens, that the wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness; that tribulation and anguish was laid up in store for every soul of man who worketh evil. But still, St. Paul says plainly here, that what saved the Corinthians was not that or any other fearful and terrifying news, but a gospel—good news. And he says that this good news did not merely, as some would wish it to do, make them comfortable in their minds while they went on in their old wicked ways. No. He says that it made them stand. That is, made them upright, strong-minded, righteous, self-restraining people; and that they were saved by it from those sins which had been dragging them down, and keeping them diseased in soul, weak, miserable, the slaves of their own passions and foul pleasures.
What wonderful good news was this, then, which could work so strange a change in these poor heathens, and how could it change them?
Let us see, first, what it was.
“That Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures; and that He was seen of Peter, then of the twelve; after that He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remained unto this day, but some are fallen asleep. After that He was seen of James, then of all the Apostles. And last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.”