Answr. Art thou returning to God? If thou art returning, thou art the man; “Return ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings;” Jer. iii. 22.
Some, as I said, that revolt, are shot dead upon the place, and for them, who can help them? But for them that cry out of their wounds, it is a sign they are yet alive, and if they use the means in time, doubtless they may be healed.
Christ Jesus has bags of mercy that were never yet broken up or unsealed. Hence it is said, he has goodness laid up; things reserved in heaven for his. And if he breaks up one of these bags, who can tell what he can do!
Hence his love is said to be such as passeth knowledge, and that his riches are unsearchable. He has, no body knows what; for no body knows whom: he has by him in store for such as seem in the view of all men to be gone beyond recovery. For this the text is plain. What man or angel could have thought that the Jerusalem sinners had been yet on this side of an impossibility of enjoying life and mercy? Hadst thou seen their actions, and what horrible things they did to the Son of God; yea, how stoutly they backed what they did with resolves and endeavours to persevere, when they had killed his person, against his name and doctrine; and that there was not found among them all that while, as we read of, the least remorse or regret for these their doings; couldst thou have imagined that mercy would ever have took hold of them, at least so soon! Nay, that they should, of all the world, be counted those only meet to have it offered to them in the very first place! For so my text commands, saying, “Preach repentance and remission of sins among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”
I tell you the thing is a wonder, and must for ever stand for a wonder among the sons of men. It stands also for an everlasting invitation and allurement to the biggest sinners to come to Christ for mercy.
Now since, in the opinion of all men, the revolter is such a one; if he has, as I said before, any life in him, let him take encouragement to come again, that he may live by Christ.
Eleventhly, Would Jesus Christ have mercy offered in the first place to the biggest sinners? Then let God’s ministers tell them so. There is an incidence in us, I know not how it doth come about, when we are converted, to contemn them that are left behind. Poor fools as we are, we forget that we ourselves were so; Tit. iii. 2, 3.
But would it not become us better, since we have tasted that the Lord is gracious, to carry it towards them so, that we may give them convincing ground to believe, that we have found that mercy which also sets open the door for them to come and partake with us.
Ministers, I say, should do thus, both by their doctrine, and in all other respects.
Austerity doth not become us, neither in doctrine nor in conversation. We ourselves live by grace; let us give as we receive, and labour to persuade our fellow-sinners which God has left behind us, to follow after, that they may partake with us of grace. We are saved by grace, let us live like them that are gracious. Let all our things (to the world) be done in charity towards them; pity them, pray for them, be familiar with them for their good. Let us lay aside our foolish, worldly, carnal grandeur; let us not walk the streets, and have such behaviours as signify we are scarce for touching of the poor ones that are left behind, no not with a pair of tongs. It becomes us not thus to do.