Despairing sinner! Thou lookest on thy right hand, and on thy left, saying, “Who will shew us any good?” Thou art looking over all thy duties and professions to patch a righteousness to save thee. Look at Christ now; look to him and be saved all the ends of the earth, Is. xlv. 22. There is none else. He is a Saviour, and there is none besides him, xliii. 11. Look any where else, and thou art undone. God will look at nothing but Christ, and thou must look at nothing else. Christ is lifted up on high, as the brazen serpent in the wilderness, that sinners at the end of the earth, at the greatest distance, may see him, and look towards him, John, iii. 14, 15. The least sight of him will be saving, the least touch healing to thee; and God intends thou shouldst look on him, for he hath set him upon a high throne of glory, in the open view of all poor sinners. Thou hast infinite reason to look on him: no reason at all to look off him; for he is meek and lowly of heart, Matt. xi. 29. He will do that himself which he requires of his creatures; viz. bear with infirmities, Rom. xv. 1. Not pleasing himself, nor standing upon points of law, ver. 2; he will restore with the spirit of meekness, Gal. vi.; and bear thy burdens, ver. 2. He will forgive not only till seven times, but seventy times seven, Matt. xviii. 21, 22. I put the faith of the apostles to it to believe this, Luke, xvii. 4, 5. Because we are hard to forgive, we think Christ is hard.
We see sin great, we think Christ doth so, and measure infinite love with our line, infinite merits with our sins, which is the great pride and blasphemy, Ps. ciii. 11, 12; Is. x. 15. Hear what he saith: I have found a ransom, Job xxxiii. 24; in him I am well pleased, Matt. iii. 18. God will have nothing else; nothing else will do thee good, or satisfy conscience, but Christ who satisfied the Father. God doth all upon the account of Christ. Thy deserts are hell, wrath, rejection. Christ’s deserts are life, pardon, and acceptance. He will not only shew thee one, but he will give thee the other. It is Christ’s own glory and happiness to pardon. Consider, whilst Christ was upon the earth, he was more among publicans and sinners, than among scribes and pharisees, his professed adversaries, for they were righteous ones: it is not as thou imaginest, that his state in glory makes him neglected, scornful to poor sinners; No. He hath the same heart now in heaven; he is good, and changeth not; he is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world, John, i. 20. He went through all thy temptations, dejections, sorrows, desertions, rejections, Matt. iv. 3 to 12 and 26; Mark, xv. 24; Luke, xxii. 44; Matt. xxiv. 38. And he hath drawn the bitterness of the cup, and left thee the sweet: the condemnation is out; Christ drank up all the Father’s wrath at one draught, and nothing but salvation is left for thee. Thou sayest thou canst not believe, thou canst not repent. Fitter for Christ if thou hast nothing but sin and misery. Go to Christ with all thy impenitence and unbelief, to get faith and repentance from him—that is glorious: Say unto him, Lord, I have brought no righteousness of grace to be accepted in or justified by; I am come for thine. We would be bringing to Christ, which must not be; grace will not stand with works, Tit. iii. 5; Rom. xi. 6. Self-righteousness and self-sufficiency are the darlings of nature, which she preserves as her life; that makes Christ obnoxious to nature; nature cannot desire him; he is just directly opposite to all nature’s glorious interests. Let nature make a gospel, and it would make it contrary to Christ. It would be to the just, the innocent, the holy, &c. Christ made the gospel for thee, that is, for needy sinners, the ungodly, the unrighteous, the accursed. Nature cannot endure to think the gospel is only for sinners; it will rather choose to despair than go to Christ upon such terrible terms. When nature is opposed to guilt or wrath, it will go to its own haunts of self-righteousness, self-goodness, &c. An infinite power must cast down those strong holds. None but the self-justiciary stands excluded out of the gospel. Christ will look at the most abominable sinner before him, because to such a one Christ cannot be made justification—he is no sinner. To say in compliment, I am a sinner, is easy; but to pray with the publican indeed, Lord be merciful to me a sinner, is the hardest prayer in the world. It is easy to profess Christ with the mouth, but to confess him with the heart, as Peter, (to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, the alone Mediator,) that is above flesh and blood. Many call Christ Saviour; few know him to be so. To see grace and salvation in Christ, is the greatest sight in the world; none can do that, but at the same time they shall see that glory and salvation to be theirs. I may be ashamed to think, in the midst of so much profession, that I have little of the blood of Christ, which is the main thing of the gospel. A Christless formal profession will be the blackest sight next to hell. Thou mayest have many good things, and yet one thing may be wanting that may make thee go away sorrowful from Christ. Thou hast never sold all thou hast, never parted with all thine own righteousness, &c. Thou mayest be high in duty, and yet a perfect enemy and adversary to Christ, in every prayer, in every ordinance.
Labour after sanctification to thy utmost, but make not a Christ of it to save thee; if so, it must come down one way or other.
Christ’s infinite satisfaction, not thy sanctification, must be thy justification before God. When the Lord shall appear terrible out of his holy place, fire shall consume that as hay and stubble. This will be found true religion, to rest all upon the everlasting mountains of God’s love and grace in Christ; to live continually in the sight of Christ’s infinite righteousness and merits, (they are sanctifying; without them the heart is carnal,) and in those sights to see the full vileness of sin, and to see all pardoned; in those sights to pray, hear, &c., seeing thy polluted self, and all thy weak performances accepted continually; in those sights to trample upon all thy self-glories, righteousness, and privileges, as abominable, and be found continually in the righteousness of Christ only; rejoicing in the ruins of thy own righteousness, the spoiling of all thy own excellencies, that Christ’s alone, as Mediator, may be exalted on his throne: mourning over all thy duties (how glorious soever) which thou hast not performed in the sight and sense of Christ’s love. Without the blood of Christ on the conscience, all this is dead service, Heb. ix. 14.
That opinion of free will, so cried up, will be easily confuted, as it is by scripture, in the heart that hath had any spiritual dealings with Jesus Christ, as to the application to its merit, and subjection to his righteousness. Christ is every way too magnificent a person for a poor nature to close withal or to apprehend. Christ is so infinitely holy, nature durst never look at him; so infinitely good, nature can never believe him to be such, when it lies under a full sight of sin. Christ is too high and glorious for nature so much as to touch. There must be a divine nature first put in the soul, to make it lie on him, he lies so infinitely beyond the sight or reach of nature.
That Christ, which natural free will can apprehend, is but a natural Christ of a man’s own making, not the Father’s Christ, nor Jesus the Son of the living God, to whom none can come without the father’s drawing, John, vi. 44. 46. Finally, search the scriptures daily, as mines of gold, wherein the heart of Christ is laid. Watch against constitutional sins, see them in their vileness, and they shall never break out into act. Keep always an humble, empty, broken frame of heart, sensible of any spiritual miscarriage, observant of all inward workings, fit for the highest communications. Keep not guilt in the conscience, but apply the blood of Christ immediately. God chargeth sin and guilt upon thee, to make thee look to Christ.
Judge not Christ’s love by providences, but by promises. Bless God for shaking off false foundations, and for any way whereby he keeps the soul awakened and looking after Christ. Better sicknesses and temptations than security and slightness.
A slighting spirit will turn a profane spirit, and will sin and pray too. Slighting is the bane of profession; if it be not rooted out of the heart, by constant and serious dealings with, and beholdings of Christ in duties, it will grow more strong and more deadly by being under church ordinances. Measure not thy graces by other attainments, but by Scripture trials. Be serious and exact in duty, having the weight of it upon the heart; be as much afraid of taking comfort from duties as from sins. Comfort from any hand but Christ’s is deadly. Be much in prayer, or you will never keep up much communion with God. As you are in closet prayer, so you will be in all other ordinances.
Reckon not duties by high expression, but by low frames, and the beholdings of Christ. Tremble at duties and gifts. It was a saying of a great saint, he was more afraid of his duties than his sins; the one often made him proud, the other always made him humble. Treasure up manifestations of Christ’s love, they make the heart low for Christ, too high for sin. Slight not the lowest, meanest evidences of grace; God may put thee to make use of the lowest as thou thinkest, even that, 1 John, iii. 14, may be worth a thousand worlds to thee.