Plain Sermons, Preached at Archbishop Tenison's Chapel, Regent Street

by James Galloway Cowan

Brethren, most of you follow, or have followed, some bad habit; at least, each of you has committed, and can now bring to quick remembrance, some one evident, wilful sin. Now God forbade that sin, and warned you of condemnation if you did it. God witnessed its commission. His displeasure arose; He registered it in heaven; He wrote down death, eternal death, against it; and angels, beholding what He did, prepared themselves to fly with the lightning’s speed and execute that sentence, at the first motion of His commanding will. The sentence is not executed. The sin has, or has not, brought you inconvenience, perplexity, contempt, pain, sickness, loss. But, at any rate, it has not brought you death. Brethren, why not? Do you know? do you imagine? do you care? Is the sentence still impending, or has it been reversed? Are you forgiven? or have you yet to seek forgiveness? Do you concern yourselves at all about the matter? If you have forgiveness, do you really value it? If you have it not, do you really seek it? Oh! judge yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged of the Lord.

I can imagine the comparatively religious ready to urge, “Thus saying, you reproach us also; you bring all in guilty; you do not allow that any are in the right.” Even so, brethren, for there is none clear in this matter. The standard of right is so high, that all come short of it. Infirmity checks the accomplishment of our best purposes. Sin defiles even our holy things. The flesh ever resists the spirit, and too often blinds and deadens it. And so our warmest desires are often all but cold; our greatest industry is but little removed from sloth. We cannot do the things, nor think the thoughts that we would, in perfection. Let us gather consolation from the fact, that this is a law even of our regenerate being, when we fall short of what we desire and aim at; but let us not thereby justify ourselves in spiritual indifference, nor suppose that a general culpability exonerates the individual. Much will always be amiss, through the opposition of the flesh, and through the difficulty of discerning spiritual things; and much allowance we may hope will be made for us: but, much that is amiss, might be corrected, and ought to be; nay, unless it is, we shall be without excuse. It is so, be assured, in this matter of forgiveness. At the best, we shall never, in this world, appreciate it fully, when bestowed; nor seek it with sufficient earnestness, when needed. But, if we concern ourselves to think right thoughts about it; if we ascertain more clearly what it is, and how obtained, we shall speedily become more grateful for it, more eager to obtain it, more sure partakers of it. Let me throw out a few suggestions, which, by God’s blessing, may help to bring us nearer to this better state.

First, consider what Divine forgiveness is. It is not capricious reversal of the sentence, “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” Divine justice does not give up its claim. Divine truth does not belie itself; Divine resoluteness become fickle. God is not a man, that He should repent, or that He should say and not do, or that He should come to love what once He hated. God might have been freely reconciled to the transgressor, if He had not made transgression sin. He might, even then, have left the sinner alone, imposing no other punishment than exile from His presence, if He had not solemnly declared, “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” But now, His holiness, His justice, and His truth are irrevocably pledged to banish and destroy transgressors. It can never be otherwise. Holiness cannot tolerate near unholiness: like Satan from heaven, like Adam and Eve from paradise, it must be cast out. Justice cannot acquit the guilty. Truth can never say, “Thou shalt not die,” to him to whom it has already said, “Thou shalt die.” There is no such forgiveness. If you transgress, you are a sinner; if you sin, you are condemned; if you are condemned, you must die. God has said it, and there is no variableness, or shadow of turning, in Him.

We are wont to think otherwise. We fancy that sin, though wrong, is not destructive: we wrap ourselves in false security, and flatter and mislead others, by a perverse assurance that God will not be extreme to mark what is done amiss. Yea, we think we have Scripture warrant for so doing. We read of Divine promises which were never realised, and Divine threats which were never executed; and we gather from them that, like our poor fickle selves, God easily goes back from His resolution of favour or wrath.

But let us look again at those promises and threats, and we shall see that, if they were not fulfilled, it was not because God changed, but because the objects changed on whom He had resolved to operate, for good or evil. Jerusalem (bound to God by a covenant of allegiance) was promised perpetual preservation. Jerusalem forsook the allegiance, and therefore was destroyed. Nineveh’s cry of wickedness provoked the Lord to threaten it with destruction within forty days; but when those forty days were expired there was no cry of wickedness to be answered; but a cry of repentance, a pledge of amendment, a nation’s voice and posture of worship. God did not change, but Nineveh did. The judgment was ready to fall; but there was no object for it to fall upon, and so it fell not. If the righteous ceases to be righteous, the promises made to his righteousness cannot be fulfilled; if the sinner becomes sinless, the sentence of sin cannot be executed upon him. “At what instant,” says God, by Jeremiah, “I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” [90] And the like is elsewhere declared of individuals.

Thus only does God change His word; thus only is there forgiveness with Him. The sinner must change his sin, for sinlessness; and then for wrath he shall have favour. But this change he cannot make. He cannot wipe out or undo the past; he cannot bring a clean thing out of an unclean; he cannot repair the breaches in his soul; he cannot strengthen the things that are ready to perish. Vain, then, is his idle trust in the non-fulfilment of a published threat; and vain are all his efforts to avert that threat. While he is a sinner, God will not forgive him; and a sinner he can never cease to be.

But, what man cannot do himself, Christ has done for him. Having in His own person satisfied the Divine law, and stood sinless and accepted before the Father, He has made Himself the human source of faculties and graces, by which other men, joined to Him, may partake of the infinite merits of His atonement, His tasting of death for every man; and may also be cleansed, and restored, and strengthened, and become again sinless; escaping the guilt, and putting away the corruption of sin. There is such forgiveness. Mark, it is not an indulgent Father’s concession to the mere request of His loved Son. It is not, again, such a substitution of the innocent for the guilty, that no more account of sinners is taken; nor is it a compromise by which one death is accepted instead of many. It is a merited power, vested in the God-Man, to be the source of absolution and sanctification. It is a purchased right to apply that power to all who will observe prescribed conditions. Christ holds and exercises that power. It is in Him to save whom He will; it is in Him to desire to save all.

But still, He has not handed over the forgiveness to all. Nay, let it be said with all reverence, He cannot so hand it over. Men must come to Him for it; they must be joined to Him to derive it; they must become like Him to be saved by Him. On conditions He received the power of salvation, and on conditions He imparts it. Those who do not observe these conditions, so far from escaping condemnation through what He has done, and what He has attained unto, do thereby become subject to surer and worse condemnation. The same work, the same authority, which made Him the Saviour of all men, made Him also the Judge of all; and imposed the inflexible law, that every one that would not be saved by Him must be destroyed by Him.

Now, in this day of grace, He is labouring to save: and He will save to the uttermost all who seek His salvation. But, by and by, He must come to judge; and then, whosoever has not been already saved, must be utterly destroyed. Are you forgiven? Christ has forgiven you. Are you seeking forgiveness? If you seek it aright, Christ will bestow it. Are you not forgiven? Will you not seek forgiveness? Then, rely upon it, you must be condemned; and that not only or chiefly by the law, but by the Gospel, the dispensation on the one hand of unspeakable goodness, on the other of unpardonable severity. If Christ is not made your Saviour, He will be your destroyer. There is forgiveness with Him. There is no forgiveness elsewhere.

Let me press this upon you, dear brethren, even though in so doing I repeat what I have already said. There is no forgiveness with God, the Father, apart from Christ, the Saviour. There is no forgiveness, for the Saviour’s sake, to those who do not belong to the Saviour. You must not go to the Father and plead, while you continue in your sin, that, since One has died for sins, there is no longer any such thing as sin. You must not suppose that holiness, and justice, and truth are set at nought in all other cases, because they have been maintained in one. You must not expect that He who once refused forgiveness, now freely grants it to the same persons in the same state; that He is changed, and, therefore, you need not be. No! to find any comfort in the assurance, “There is forgiveness with Thee,” and to verify it in your own case, you must have observed, and be still observing, the prescribed conditions. You must have become Christ’s, and Christ have become yours. You must have obtained the pardon from Him, and you must hold it through Him; and He must testify thereof, and plead for you, ere the Father will pronounce His absolution: “The Lord hath put away thy sins: thou shalt not die.”