Practical Religion / Being Plain Papers on the Daily Duties, Experience, Dangers, and Privileges of Professing Christians

by J. C. Ryle

I do not for a moment deny that this witness of the Spirit is exceedingly various in the extent to which the sons of God possess it. With some it is a loud, clear, ringing, distinct testimony of conscience: "I am Christ's, and Christ is mine." With others it is a little, feeble, stammering whisper, which the devil and the flesh often prevent being heard. Some of the children of God speed on their course towards heaven under the full sails of assurance. Others are tossed to and fro all their voyage, and will scarce believe they have got faith. But take the least and lowest of the sons of God. Ask him if he will give up the little bit of religious hope which he has attained? Ask him if he will exchange his heart, with all its doubts and conflicts, its fightings and fears,—ask him if he will exchange that heart for the heart of the downright worldly and careless man? Ask him if he would be content to turn round and throw down the things he has got hold of, and go back to the world? Who can doubt what the answer would be I? "I cannot do that," he would reply. "I do not know whether I have faith, I do not feel sure I have got grace; but I have got something within me I would not like to part with." And what is that "something"? I will tell you.—It is the witness of the Spirit.

Let us try to understand this also. The sons of God have the witness of the Spirit in their consciences. This is another mark of sonship.

(4) One thing more let me add. All the sons of God take part in suffering with Christ. What says the Scripture which heads this paper? "If children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with Him." (Rom. viii. 17.)

All the children of God have a cross to carry. They have trials, troubles, and afflictions to go through for the Gospel's sake. They have trials from the world,—trials from the flesh,—and trials from the devil. They have trials of feeling from relations and friends,—hard words, hard treatment, and hard judgment. They have trials in the matter of character;—slander, misrepresentation, mockery, insinuation of false motives,—all these often rain thick upon them. They have trials in the matter of worldly interests. They have often to choose whether they will please man and lose glory, or gain glory and offend man. They have trials from their own hearts. They have each generally their own thorn in the flesh,—their own home-devil, who is their worst foe. This is the experience of the sons of God.

Some of them suffer more, and some less. Some of them suffer in one way, and some in another. God measures out their portions like a wise physician, and cannot err. But never, I believe, was there one child of God who reached paradise without a cross.

Suffering is the diet of the Lord's family. "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth."—"If ye be without chastisement, then are ye bastards, and not sons."—"Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God."—"All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." (Heb. xii. 6, 8; Acts xiv. 22; 2 Tim. iii. 12.) When Bishop Latimer was told by his landlord that he had never had a trouble, "Then," said he, "God cannot be here."

Suffering is a part of the process by which the sons of God are sanctified. They are chastened to wean them from the world, and make them partakers of God's holiness. The Captain of their salvation was "made perfect through suffering," and so are they. (Heb. ii. 10; xii. 10.) There never yet was a great saint who had not either great afflictions or great corruptions. Well said Philip Melancthon: "Where there are no cares there will generally be no prayers."

Let us try to settle this down into our hearts also. The sons of God have all to bear a cross. A suffering Saviour generally has suffering disciples. The Bridegroom was a man of sorrows. The Bride must not be a woman of pleasures and unacquainted with grief. Blessed are they that mourn! Let us not murmur at the cross. This also is a sign of sonship.

I warn men never to suppose that they are sons of God except they have the scriptural marks of sonship. Beware of a sonship without evidences. Again I say, Beware. When a man has no leading of the Spirit to show me, no spirit of adoption to tell of, no witness of the Spirit in his conscience, no cross in his experience,—is this man a son of God? Whatever others may think I dare not say so! His spot is "not the spot of God's children." (Deut. xxxii. 5.) He is no heir of glory.

Tell me not that you have been baptized and taught the catechism of the Church of England, and therefore must be a child of God. I tell you that the parish register is not the book of life. I tell you that to be styled a child of God, and called regenerate in infancy by the faith and charity of the Prayer-book, is one thing; but to be a child of God in deed, another thing altogether. Go and read that catechism again. It is the "death unto sin and the new birth unto righteousness," which makes men children of grace. Except you know these by experience, you are no son of God.