Now, they are plunged in darkness. They know nothing about our way of salvation, nothing about the pardon of sin, nothing about purity, nothing about righteousness, nothing about heaven. We want to multiply their chances to rid themselves of sin, and to take hold upon life, and make their way in the path of peace. And the Master seems to so think it that He says: "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations." And if they will believe it, as I read, they will be saved. "But how can they believe if they have not heard? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach except they be sent?" So the Master says, Go, send quick, everywhere. That I take to be the teaching of the Book concerning their needs.
But there is another side of it, and that is the side that swings in under the passage I have read this morning, and that is our side of it, our relation to the cause: "If any man have not the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, he is none of his."
Now, what is the spirit of Christ? I will tell you: He came not to be ministered unto. Please remember that. Not to see how much He could gather into His own bosom out of the lives of others. Not to be ministered unto; not to be petted, and dandled, and lifted along and fed all the way, with no burden and no care and no work—not that. He came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister; to pour out of His life into the lives of others; to see what He could do to make others blest; and "to give his life a ransom for many." Not merely to give the little pittance that He could spare and not know it any more than one would miss the farthing with which he would buy his ride on the street car, but to give His life a ransom for many. And if any man have not that spirit, he is none of His.
Now I preach you a doctrine of salvation by faith only, and I put the emphasis on the word only. That is exactly what I need as a sinner: I want some sort of release from my past transgressions that will give me a new start. I have gotten behind; I am borrowing money to pay interest with, and I see no way out. I must have a spiritual bankruptcy law. Somebody must come in to my relief, or I am everlastingly undone. And so I preach this blest doctrine of the Book of God: "By grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves: it (the salvation) is the gift of God." I take salvation as a divine gift, and take it with a glad heart. It gives me a new chance; it unhinges my present struggle for heaven from the past transgressions of my life, and gives me an open door to heaven that I could not reach on any other platform. And so I preach this doctrine to sinners, knowing that it is exactly what they need.
There is another part of it that covers the question of our pardon; that takes all my past sins and wipes them out; that gives me a new chance for righteousness. Now mind: That pardon, that new life, that new chance works out all the time necessarily from my finger-ends; it shows itself in my life, absolutely, as certainly as it is there; and if I cannot find the fruit of it in the fruits of the Spirit, in the interest in God's cause, in patience and teachableness, in gentleness and love, I have the absolute demonstration that I have not the thing itself. Saved by faith, kept alive, kept saved by work, in work, by grace in work. Let me touch that theology just a little. If you are pardoned, you are pardoned by the Lord in a second, through faith—when you believe, that is. Pardon is an operation in God's mind concerning myself; you cannot pardon yourself. God pardons. If we are pardoned He can do it in a second, when we believe.
The next step in the case is, that there is not anything in the Book of God that gives us any ground to believe that in that same faith, or believing, or pardon, we will be instantly lifted up into the stature of a man in Christ Jesus. What I mean to say is this: That there is not one word in this Book that will justify any man in believing that he may be brought by any process to the stature of a man in Christ Jesus in a minute. But some good brother will say: "Oh! now I am just a little afraid that you are striking against that blest old Methodist doctrine of sanctification." No, I am not. I haven't said anything about sanctification. But I will. If you are sanctified, or cleansed, that is God's work, through faith, and He can do it in a second. Now, understand me definitely, you cannot cleanse yourself. God cleanses you through faith in the cleansing blood of His Son. It is His work. You cannot grow into it. You can grow in it, but if you don't grow in it you may know you are not in it—you are in something else. But you can grow in it, because it is God's work, and He will do it when you believe. But what of that? What are you after you are cleansed? I will tell you. You are a clean baby: that is all. You are not a man in Christ Jesus; you are only a babe—cleansed, indeed, and greatly improved by the process, too, but you are not matured. Do not miss, now, the broad distinction between purity and maturity. You are purified, through faith, in a second; you are matured through many a struggle and many a year. God cannot make a twenty-one-year-old saint in one second less than twenty-one years. There is no platform marked over with faith upon which a man may step and be lifted up into the perfect stature of a man in Christ Jesus in a minute. It is not the teaching of the Book. But all the year, loving, and giving, and fighting, and praying, and walking in righteousness, you will mature characters, and by and by you will grow into the manhood in Christ Jesus that is set before us in the gospel. Now, if you come in here and tell me that there is a baby over yonder in the next square, that is three weeks old, and can talk Greek and Latin, and Spanish and Italian, and solve all the problems in mathematics, I will tell you that that is a monstrosity, and you don't want that kind of babies in your house: they will turn you out in a few days. So, if you come in here and tell me that you have, down in your prayer-meeting, a spiritual baby three or four weeks old, that can teach all the old saints, and can tell them all about God, and heaven, and faith, and theology, and all about everything in the Church, I will tell you that that is a monstrosity. And you don't want that kind in your prayer-meeting; they will turn you out before a great while. St. Paul says: "Ye are born babes, and ye are fed on milk"; and the trouble with too many of us is that we keep on that diet when we ought to be eating meat. The Master says: "First the blade, then the ear; after that, the full corn in the ear." So I am free to say that God's plan of making saints is to give them the divine germ—if you please, the supernatural principle; or, as our scientists would say, with proper environments, "That have the divine initial impulse," but as our fathers would have said, "They got through at the altar"; born of God, and then cleansed of God in the true process of education and faith, they matured at the harvest. God gives us the start and the cleansing, and we have to do all the rest of it. He will give us opportunity for growth by loading and goading us, by setting on our track every sort of force to test us—to "polish us," as the old Hebrew word means. When Abraham was tested he was "polished." He will put us on such lines that, if we stand true to our convictions and walk according to the light we have, He will bring us on to manhood.
See how wonderfully the Word of God fits down upon this? Take that remarkable passage that, to me, is as beautiful as anything can be, where He says: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor"—I know what that means in the struggle under sin—"all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give"—I will give: it is mine. You cannot earn it: you cannot buy it; you cannot find it; you cannot dig it out. It is mine—"I will give you rest"—the blest pardon that only God can give. Then, in the very next second and breath, He says: "Take my yoke upon you"—that means work—"and learn of me"—that is more work—and, "For I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find"—that is yours; I do not give that to you; that is not mine to give; that is yours. "Ye shall find rest to your souls." That is the rest that comes from the crystallization of the character in righteousness; that comes from the habit of believing, and the habit of obeying, and the habit of praying; from the habit of righteousness, until the old saint is ready for any struggle, and never expects to be turned aside. That, I take it, is God's plan of building up saints, and for fitting them for the rest that is in God, that abides.