This awful declaration rests upon the veracity and power of God, and upon the nature of that work of the Spirit, “which makes us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” Col. i. 12.
1. Unconverted sinners can not enter the kingdom of heaven, because the God of truth hath declared they shall not. His word is more than ten thousand barriers in the way. And his veracity is so engaged to defend and fulfil every threatening, as well as every promise, that sinners might as well expect that God should change his nature, as change his word. Therefore if he hath said “the wicked shall be cast into hell;” Psal. ix. 17;—“he that believeth not shall be damned;” Mark, xvi. 16;—and that, “neither fornicators, nor isolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God;” 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10; we may be fully persuaded, that Jehovah will as certainly fulfil these most tremendous threatenings, as if we saw the accomplishment of them, this instant, with our eyes. Heaven and earth shall pass away; but one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the scriptures, until all be fulfilled. If Satan suggest “you shall not surely die,” remember “he was a liar from the beginning;” and that the fatal consequence of crediting that original falsity, was a confirmation of this unalterable truth, “that the wages of sin is death,” and that “what a man soweth that shall he also reap.”
2. When God makes a promise or denounceth a threatening, his power as well as his faithfulness is exerted equally to the accomplishment of the one and the other. No intervention of second causes shall stay his hand, or obstruct, or even retard his designs; because himself the great First Cause makes them all subservient to his sovereign will. So that he must fulfil every promise to his people, because his ability is equal to his veracity, and both spring from his eternal willingness to do so. And he will execute every denunciation of his wrath, because he can. Could the potsherds of the earth contend successfully with their Maker, they might then entertain some distant hope at least of evading his threatenings, and eluding his wrath: but, before they can expect to accomplish either, they must first cope with Omnipotence, and take heaven itself by storm: for, sooner shall the great Jehovah be dethroned, and his dominion in the heavens be subverted, than sinners unconverted be suffered to dwell there. The hand of God himself shall shut the gates of the celestial city against them; and all the power of the Lord God Almighty shall be exerted, together with his truth and justice, to keep them out, for ever. In vain shall the sons of Belial attempt to enter; in vain shall they knock, and importunately cry, saying, “Open unto us.” Their exclusion will be announced and confirmed by those cutting words of the Judge, “Depart from me, for I know you not.”
3. But the admission of unchanged sinners to the kingdom of God is an utter impossibility, because they want that conformity of heart to the exercise of heaven, which is necessary to make them willing to stay there, even if they were admitted. And it was upon this ground, that our Lord told Nicodemus, that “except a man be born again, he could not see the kingdom of God.” John, iii. 3. By regeneration, the aversion of the heart to spiritual exercises is taken away, and a delight in them substituted in its stead. But in a carnal mind this aversion is deeply rooted. And could a sinner, under the influence of it, be suffered to enter the kingdom of heaven, all the bliss of paradise would be no heaven to him. Carrying with him an indisposedness of heart to the employ of heaven, and having his eyes previously blinded by carnal lusts, he would not see any beauty in the palace of the great King, or enjoy any satisfaction in the beatific presence of the King himself. Having been accustomed on earth to frequent the company of the dissolute and the gay, he would feel awkward and unhappy in the society of saints and angels. All the harps of heaven would communicate no melody to his ears; and the exercise of praise and adoration would appear, as it did on earth, an intolerable burden. He would derive no enjoyment even from that river of the water of life, that floweth in a pure and perennial stream of happiness from the throne of God, and of the Lamb: for, having left the world with his heart full of carnal delights, the recollected pleasures of the sensuality and dissipation below, would crowd in upon his mind to mar all the felicity of heaven, and to make him prefer a Mahometan paradise to the exalted fruition of the blessed God, and all the refined pleasures which they taste, who contemplate his perfections, and bask in the beams of his love.
Besides the want of a disposition to the employ of heaven, there is in the hearts of the unregenerate a positive enmity against God, and the laws of his kingdom, which makes them rebels and enemies. And it cannot be supposed that such could find a place in that harmonious society, where perfect love to God is the bond of eternal concord and happiness among the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem. As soon might the devil and his angels expect to be translated to glory, as sinners, with hearts fraught with enmity against God, hope for a place in his kingdom. Rev. xxii. 11, 15.
From what has been said, it is evident,
1. That, as conversion is the work of God, to prescribe “rules” for the sinner’s own accomplishment of it, as some legal authors have done, is palpably as absurd as to furnish a man with a set of rules for making a world. For the old and the new creation have one and the same agent; and he is the Almighty Creator of the universe. Isa. xlv. 17, 18.
2. That conversion doth not consist in those things, which the blindness of some, the pride of others, and the pharisaical zeal of not a few, would substitute in its stead. For instance; baptism is not conversion. It is only the outward sign of it. And, to mistake the sign for the thing itself, is as absurd as to make a shadow equal to the substance. The thing signified in baptism is, “a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness:” and this is conversion. But how many content themselves with having partaken of the outward ordinance, who do not understand the significancy of the institution, and know nothing of the blessings symbolically represented in it! “He is not a Jew, who is one outwardly,” (nor is he a Christian who is one no farther); “but he is a Jew,” (and a Christian,) “who is one inwardly: and circumcision,” (or baptism) “is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” Rom. ii. 28, 29.—Neither does the great change consist in a transient effect on the passions. These may often be mechanically wrought upon, and violent emotions excited in them, without the least concomitant influence from the Spirit of God. One man may be affected under a sermon, and another weep at a tragedy, and both be in the same predicament as to their state of heart towards God. When the passions are moved, because the affections are engaged, and the understanding enlightened in the subject, then the work is produced, not by the pathos of eloquence, or the violent mechanism of bawling and unmeaning vociferation, but by the finger of God. A change of the latter kind will be permanent and abiding. But conversions, such as spring from a transient gust of passion, will always evaporate, “like the morning cloud or the early dew, that passeth away.” Hos. vi. 4.—It would be equally absurd and dangerous to place true religion in an outward and partial reformation, often accompanied with a shew of zeal, which, at the bottom, is nothing but emptiness and ostentation. When a man all of a sudden cuts off some superfluities of naughtiness in dress and outward indulgence; when he prunes off some excrescences, while the root of corruption remains untouched; when to-day he acts the part of a novice, and to-morrow, like a fungus that shoots up in a night, he raises his head as a Reformer, without wisdom or materials for beginning or conducting a reformation; in such cases, the conversion is often from bad to worse; it is as if a harmless statue should be transformed into a venomous reptile; or folly, stealing the venerable garb of truth, should commence tyrant, and like Solomon’s madman, with the hand of outrageous zeal, scatter about arrows, fire-brands, and death. Prov. xxvi. 19. From such conversions, and such converts as these, may the Lord at all times defend and save his church!—To change a denomination, or to adhere to that in which one may happen to have been born and educated, is not conversion. A man may turn protestant, then turn calvinist, then turn arminian, then turn methodist, then turn quaker or quietist, (an usual transition,) then turn dissenter, and last of all turn churchman, and yet, through all these revolutions, which have been more than once exemplified in a single character, he may not once have thought seriously of turning CHRISTIAN—a name infinitely more honorable than all the empty titles that men assume to themselves to distract the minds of their brethren, and to rear their own consequence, often, upon the ruins of peace and union. Some are, no doubt, very sincere, and highly to be commended, for changing a denomination, when the interests of truth and the prosperity of their souls, or the dictates of conscience, are the objects in view. But there is not a greater delusion under the heavens, than for a man to infer the safety of his state, merely from an idea of the purity of the communion to which accident or bigotry may have induced him to join himself. To turn to a party, and to turn to God, are as different as light and darkness.—As for those, who plead for their continuance in the old beaten track of formality, because, as they say, “they will not change their religion,” a discourse upon the nature of true conversion is intended to convince such, that they have, in fact, no religion to change. And as for those, under the influence of a more refined delusion, who place religion in the espousal of orthodox opinions, which have no renovating influence on their hearts and lives, and often take a false refuge in doctrines, of which, alas! they never experienced the power; it is necessary to tell these, and their partners in self-deception, that religion is principally A TEMPER; and that to be really changed, is to have “the mind that was in Christ Jesus,” to be governed by that love, which St. Paul describes in 1 Cor. xiii.; and to be influenced by the humble temper of a little child. Without this, party is an insignificant badge, doctrines but chaff, zeal but wild-fire, and conversion but a name.
To conclude. Whatever denomination we adhere to, or whatever principles we espouse, let us remember, that, without the power of vital godliness, such badges of distinction must appear to him, who searcheth the heart, only as a “sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” And as I have labored to urge this as a leading sentiment through the whole discourse, every candid hearer must see, that the ambition of my heart, like that of every disinterested servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, is, to be instrumental, not in turning you to a particular name or favorite persuasion, but in converting you to God. Whether, then, you have erected your hopes, and built your system on the broad but rotten base of infidelity; whether you have commenced a free liver in consequence of being a free thinker—for they are characters closely allied—or, with some right notions in your head, betray a heart immersed in the world and dead in sin; whether you are dissipated with the gay, dissolute with the abandoned, or formal with the self-righteous; whatever accidental superiority, by birth, education, or fortune, you may possess above others; or howsoever applauded you may be for decency of manners or regularity of outward devotion; yet, in whatever light, either infidelity, libertinism, formality, or morality, can place a character, the unalterable truth of the text stands to cut off the fallacious pretensions of each. Conversion implies infinitely more than any moralist upon earth can attain to: and it differs as much from mere orthodoxy, as the genial and vivid light of the sun doth from the faint beams of the pale orb, that borrows light, but derives no heat, from his luminous body. As for formality in religion, it is not even the shadow of that, of which it claims the essence. And as for the profane and the licentious, continuing such, the text stands as a barrier against the impiety of their principles, and the presumptuousness of their hope. For, except they, and the characters already alluded to, be converted, and become as little children, they cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.