I alluded in the beginning to the indirect effects of prayer, and these are too valuable to be overlooked. Prayer, pervaded by humility and trust, is always strengthened by its own exercise. All Christian graces are beautified by it; all Christian virtues are stimulated by it. It is a Divine provision for rousing the slumbering affections of the renewed heart, and keeping them awake. Prayer, too, is its own reward, and a blessed one. How holy and how happy must they be who are on intimate terms with God! Their faces catch His glory, and their every tone and step the impress of the sanctity of the Divine companionship. The Christian can tell his Father all! And because he is so near to God and to heaven, he can put and keep the world beneath his feet.
Even delays and seeming refusals are not without their salutary influence. Some persons pray for specific blessings year after year—“pray without ceasing”—and are often staggered at the fact that their prayers remain unanswered; and yet we see them growing in spirituality, purity, fortitude, faith, and we hear them say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” And so their faith—the most precious thing they have—is tried and refined as in a furnace. Surely such an answer to prayer is sublime!
I have been speaking to many a doubt, to many a perplexity, with which I am familiar in my own experience and in that of others. God grant that my words may be helpful! What we all want in regard to this great subject is clearer views and a more unquestioning trust. God courts our utmost confidence, and He will not fail to reward it.
XVI.
ASSURANCE.
“I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”—2 Timothy i. 12.
These are among the last words the apostle wrote. He is now at Rome, in prison, and within a few days of the tragic end. He is worn down by age; still more so by a constant, toilsome, suffering ministry of some thirty years, a ministry which has obtained for him, at the hands of men, stones and stripes, and now a dungeon, with the immediate prospect of a violent death. He is bound with chains, and compelled to be silent just where and when he has so long been anxious to speak, in the metropolis of the world! He is, moreover, forsaken by his friends, who, though they love him, have not courage to go and visit him now! Outwardly, no sadder condition could well be imagined. Yet Paul is filled with a deep and holy peace. How is this? The answer is that he feels within himself the approval of his God. He is in prison, but that is because of his obedience to His Saviour. He has worn himself down in a Divine service. Behind him he sees a long train of woes and sufferings, but he also sees many churches which he has founded, and many unknown regions open to the gospel. Before him he sees an unrighteous judge and a painful martyrdom, but he also sees heaven, Christ, and the unfading crown. If he says, “All have forsaken me,” he can also say, as his Master did, that he is not left alone. All this is enough to account for the calmness and hopefulness of this his last epistle, and especially of the words before us to-day.
I will not trouble you with the critical difficulties of the text. On only one preliminary question I would say a word. What does Paul mean by the expression, “that which I have committed unto Him”? Some urge that it was the Church which he was about to leave; others, that it was the result of his labours; and others, that it was his final salvation. I prefer to combine all these into one general whole, and to say: “All his Christian interests, the hopes on which his spirit rested for his personal salvation, and every other interest that was dear to his heart.” He had “committed” to Christ himself, the church he had loved and served, the results of his labour, and the final reward to which he was looking forward. If, within the vast scope of his desires, there had been one thing which he could not commit to Christ, his rest would have been incomplete, and his joy would have been marred. But for everything he was able to say: “Saviour, I have committed this to Thee.”
Observe how Paul puts this great matter. He was the greatest doctrinal writer of the New Testament; but he does not say that he believes in doctrines, but that he believes in a Person. “I know whom I have believed.” All doctrinal belief follows, and is comprised in, that. Faith everywhere in Scripture is confidence in Christ. He who believes in Christ must come sooner or later to believe in the doctrines which cluster around Him. But our experience grows beyond these into the realisation of Him as being so actual, so near, and so sufficient, as to be our true rest. Who among us can tell all the reasons why he believes in Christ? Many of them cannot be put into words. They belong to our most secret thoughts, to the emotions of our happiest hours, to a hidden, silent history, which, if the world heard, it could not understand. Yet these proofs multiply in proportion as the Christian advances in life. How many times have we found the words of Christ adapted to our wants! How many unexpected deliverances has He wrought on our behalf! How many answers to prayer have we received at His hands! How much peace has He breathed into our hearts! “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”
What a grand confirmation have we here of the faith Paul preached! Had his trust been misplaced, surely he had suffered enough to disabuse him of it, and that most completely. But his faith grows the more he suffers. No mere party zeal could stand a test like this; no, nor any delusion either. And so we say that such a man as Paul was, under the circumstances in which he maintained his trust, could not be deceived. Thus Paul’s faith becomes a confirmation of our own, and, with him on our side, we may face a world of doubt.