Nature can afford no balsam fit for soul cure. Healing from duty and not from Christ, is the most desperate disease. Poor ragged nature, with all its highest improvements, can never spin a garment fine enough, without spot, to cover the soul’s nakedness. Nothing can fit the soul for that use, but Christ’s perfect righteousness.
Whatsoever is of nature’s spinning must be all unravelled, before the righteousness of Christ can be put on; whatsoever is nature’s putting on, Satan will come and plunder it every rag away, and leave the soul naked and open to the wrath of God. All that nature can do will never make up the least drachm of grace, that can mortify sin, or look Christ in the face even for one day.
Thou art a professor, goest on hearing, praying, and receiving, yet miserable thou mayest be. Look about thee; did thou ever yet see Christ to this day in distinction from all other excellencies and righteousness in the world, and all of them falling before the majesty of his love and grace? Is. ii. 17.
If thou hast seen Christ truly, thou hast seen pure grace, pure righteousness in him, every way infinite, far exceeding all sin and misery. If thou hast seen Christ, thou canst trample upon all the righteousness of men and angels, so as to bring thee into acceptance with God. If thou hast seen Christ, thou wouldst not do a duty without him for ten thousand worlds, 1 Cor. ii. 2. If ever thou sawest Christ, thou sawest him a Rock, higher than self-righteousness, Satan, and sin, Ps. lxi. 2; and this Rock doth follow thee, 1 Cor. x. 4; and there will be continual dropping of honey and grace out of that Rock to satisfy thee, Ps. lxxxi. 16. Examine if ever thou hast beheld Christ as the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, John, i. 14, 16, 17. Be sure thou art come to Christ, that thou standest on the Rock of Ages, hast answered to his call to thy soul, hast closed with him for justification.
Men talk bravely of believing, but whilst whole and sound few know it. Christ is the mystery of the Scripture: Grace the mystery of Christ. Believing is the most wonderful thing in the world. Put any thing of thine own to it, and thou spoilest it; Christ will not so much as look at it for believing. When thou believest and comest to Christ, thou must leave behind thee thine own righteousness, and bring nothing but thy sin. (O that is hard!) Leave behind thy holiness, sanctification, duties, humblings, &c., and bring nothing but thy wants and miseries, else Christ is not fit for thee, nor thou for Christ. Christ will be a whole Redeemer and Mediator, and thou must be an undone sinner, or Christ and thou will never agree. It is the hardest thing to take Christ alone for righteousness: that is, to acknowledge him Christ. Join any thing to him of thine own, and thou dost un-Christ him.
Whatever comes in when thou goest to God for acceptance besides Christ, call it anti-Christ bid it begone; make only Christ’s righteousness triumphant; all besides that is Babylon, which must fall if Christ stand; and thou shalt rejoice in the day of the fall thereof, Is. xiv. 10, 11, 12.——Christ alone did tread the wine-press, and there was none with him, Is. lxiii. 3. If thou join any thing to Christ, Christ will trample upon it in fury and anger, and stain his raiment with the blood thereof.——Thou thinkest it easy to believe; was ever thy faith tried with an hour of temptation, or with a thorough sight of sin? Was it ever put to wrestle with Satan, and the wrath of God lying upon the conscience? When thou wast in the mouth of hell and the grave, then God shewed thee Christ, a ransom, a righteousness, &c. Then if thou couldst say, Oh, I see grace enough in Christ, thou mayest say that which is the biggest word in the world, Thou believest. Untried faith is uncertain faith.
To believing, there must go a clear conviction of sin, and the merits of the blood of Christ, and of Christ’s willingness to save upon this consideration merely, that thou art a sinner; things all harder than to make a world. All the powers in nature cannot get up so high in a storm of sin and guilt, as really to believe there is any grace, any willingness, in Christ to save. When Satan charged sin upon the conscience, then for the soul to bring it to Christ, that is gospel-like. That is to make him Christ, he serves for that use. To accept Christ’s righteousness alone, his blood alone, for salvation, that is the sum of the gospel. When the soul, in all duties and distresses, can say, Nothing but Christ, Christ alone for righteousness, justification, sanctification, redemption, 1 Cor. i. 30; not humblings, nor duties, nor graces, &c., that soul hath got above the reach of the billows.
All temptations, Satan’s advantages, our complainings, are laid in self-righteousness, and self-excellency: God pursueth these, by setting Satan upon thee, as Laban did Jacob for his images; these must be torn from thee, he is unwilling as thou wilt; these hinder Christ from coming in; and till Christ come in, guilt will not come out; and where guilt is, there is hardness of heart; and therefore much guilt argues little if any thing of Christ.