“Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” James 1:18
If we look at the work of the Spirit on the heart, we shall see how, in all his sacred dealings and gracious movements, he invariably employs truth as his grand instrument. Does he pierce and wound? It is by the truth; for the “sword of the Spirit is the word of God,” and that we know is “the word of truth.” If he mercifully heal, if he kindly bless, it is still by means of truth; for the promise is, “Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth.” And when he thus comes, it is as a Comforter, according to those gracious words, “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.”
In fact, if we look at the new man of grace that the blessed Spirit begets and brings forth in the heart, we shall see that all his members and faculties are formed and adapted to a living reception of the truth. As the eye is adapted to light; as the ear to sound; as the lungs to the pure air that fills them with every breath; as the heart to the vital blood which it propels through every bounding artery, so is the new man of grace fitted and adapted to the truth of God. And as these vital organs perform their peculiar functions only as they receive the impressions which these external agents produce upon them, so the organs of the new man of grace only act as truth is impressed upon them by the power of the blessed Spirit. Has, then, the new man of grace eyes? It is to see the truth (Eph. 1:18, 19). Has he ears? It is to hear the truth (Isa. 55:3; Luke 9:44). Has he hands? It is to lay hold of and embrace the truth (Prov. 4:13; Isa. 27:5; Heb. 6:18). Has he feet? It is that he may walk in the truth (Psa. 119:45; Luke 1:6; 3 John 4). Has he a mouth? “Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.” It is that he may feed upon the truth, the living truth, yea, upon His flesh who is truth itself (John 6:35, 14:6).
By what steps do we usually embrace the truth as it is in Jesus? First of all, for the most part, we receive it as a doctrine; the judgment being more or less informed, the eyes of the understanding being enlightened to see it in the word. The doctrine for some time may be floating in our mind; but after a time, as the Lord leads us more into a knowledge of our own hearts, and into a deeper feeling of our necessities, he lets down the truth from our head into the heart, and it then becomes a truth. It is very sweet to have a doctrine turned into a truth. But after a time, we want something more than a truth; we want it as a blessing. When we are brought into pressing straits and severe trials, we need the doctrines which we first received into our minds as truths, now to be blessed by a divine application to our souls. Thus, what we first knew in our judgments as a doctrine, is afterwards received in our conscience as a truth, and then is applied to our very heart of hearts as a blessing; and so we find God’s word, and eat it, to the joy and rejoicing of our souls.
Thus it is with respect to Christ’s ascension. We receive it first as a doctrine, as a great and glorious part of the scheme of salvation; then we begin to see, as we are led, more and more into a knowledge of it, what a wonderful truth it is, to have a Mediator at the right hand of God; to have an Intercessor pleading by the efficacy of his atoning blood and justifying righteousness, for poor, needy, guilty souls. This draws out the faith, hope, and love of the heart to this ascended and interceding Mediator; and then, as the Lord the Spirit reveals the virtue and efficacy of this glorious Mediator in the guilty conscience, the truth becomes a rich, unctuous, and savoury blessing. So that so far from experience casting out the doctrines of grace, it only leads the soul into a vital acquaintance with them; and we might as well think of saving our lives by drawing the bones out of our body, as of blessing our souls by casting out the doctrines of grace; yea, we daily feel more deeply the need of the doctrines being brought into our heart by divine power; we feel them more to be the stay and support of our soul, as my arm when raised is stayed and supported by the bones which God has placed there.
“Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel?” Jeremiah 15:12
You see that the Lord, when he is pointing out the trials his people are passing through, compares them to “iron.” He does not diminish their weight; he does not at all lower their oppressive tendency. But, then, in order to administer a suitable remedy to Jeremiah’s soul, he brings forward something much stronger. “Shall iron,” he says, “break the northern iron and the steel?” No surely; the “northern iron and the steel” shall break through that. The common iron never can break through the northern iron, which is a metal of such a far superior nature; still less prevail against that keen well-tempered steel which can cut through everything it touches.
Now if your hearts are exercised with iron sorrows, temptations, trials, and perplexities, I am sure you will want the almighty power of God in your souls to cut them asunder. And God can do it. Are you a poor persecuted believer? God can cut down in a moment that enemy who is persecuting you. Are you tempted of Satan? He in a moment can cut his fiery darts asunder. Are you passing through a severe trial? By the application of some precious promise the Lord can in a moment cut the trial asunder. Are you entangled in some grievous snare that you feel and cry out under night and day, and yet are unable to extricate yourself? The Lord can in a moment, by the application of his precious word to your soul, cut that snare asunder. He has but to bring against it “the northern iron and the steel,” and it is done in a moment. How was it with Jeremiah? Did not he say, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart?” Why? Because keen persecutions, sharp trials, severe temptations had given him an appetite; that was the reason why the “word was found.” He fell upon it as a hungry man upon a crust. It was sweet to his soul, because it brought with it a precious deliverance from the temptations and the sorrows his soul was groaning under. Thus, we see that in proportion as we feel the iron nature of trials and sorrows, shall we experience “the northern iron and the steel” of God’s almighty power and grace to deliver. Happy are the people that are in such a case! Happy the people that have this Lord for their manifested God!
“But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light; for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.” Ephesians 5:13
Feeling is the first evidence of supernatural life; a feeling compounded of two distinct sensations, one referring to God, and the other referring to self. The same ray of light has manifested two opposite things, “for that which maketh manifest is light;” and the sinner sees at one and the same moment God and self, justice and guilt, power and helplessness, a holy law and a broken commandment, eternity and time, the purity of the Creator and the filthiness of the creature. And these things he sees, not merely as declared in the Bible, but as revealed in himself as personal realities, involving all his happiness or all his misery in time and in eternity. Thus it is with him as though a new existence had been communicated, and as if for the first time he had found there was a God. One ray of supernatural light, penetrating through the veil spread over the heart, has revealed that terrible secret—a just God, who will by no means clear the guilty. This piercing ray has torn away the bed too short, and stripped off the covering too narrow. A sudden, peculiar conviction has rushed into the soul. One absorbing feeling has seized fast hold of it, and well-nigh banished every other. “There is a God, and I am a sinner before him,” is written upon the heart by the same divine finger that traced those fatal letters on the palace wall of the king of Babylon, which made the joints of his loins to be loosed, and his knees to smite one against another (Dan. 5:5, 6). “What shall I do? Where shall I go? What will become of me? Mercy, O God! Mercy, mercy! I am lost, ruined, undone! Fool, madman, wretch, monster that I have been! I have ruined my soul. O my sins, my sins! O eternity, eternity!” Such and similar cries and groans, though differing in depth and intensity, go up out of the new-born soul wellnigh day and night at the first discovery of God and of itself. These feelings have taken such complete possession of the heart that it can find no rest except in calling upon God. This is the first pushing of the young bud through the bark, the first formation of the green shoot, wrapped up as yet in its leaves, and not opened to view. These are the first pangs and throes of the new birth, before the tidings are brought, “A manchild is born.” “What shall I do to be saved?” cried the jailer. “God be merciful to me a sinner!” exclaimed the publican. “Woe is me, for I am undone!” burst forth from the lips of Isaiah.
“Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.” John 15:3
What God does, he does by the word of his grace and the influences which accompany that word; for ever bear in mind that God does nothing but by his word. The sanctifying, cleansing effects therefore which attend the word of his grace under the operations of the Spirit are spoken of as “the washing of water by the word” (Eph. 5:26). “The word” is the written Scripture; the “water” is the power of the Holy Ghost; the “washing” is the cleansing effect of the application of the word. Let me ask you this question, if you doubt my words, How are we to get the burden and guilt of our sins off our conscience, the defilement of mind which sin produces, the bondage of spirit which sin creates, the fears and alarm of the soul which sin works? You will say, “By believing in Jesus Christ, for being justified by faith we have peace with God.” That is true; but how can we believe in Jesus Christ, so as to find this peace? By the word of his grace, accompanied by the special influence, unction, and dew of the Holy Ghost revealing and making known pardon and acceptance with God, which is therefore spoken of as “the washing of water by the word.” For as water washes the body, so the word of truth washes the soul, by washing away the guilt and filth and defilement of sin. As the blessed Lord said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” And again, “He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.” Thus as water when applied cleanses the body from natural filth, so does the word of promise, the word of truth, the word of salvation revealing and making known the Saviour’s precious blood, cleanse the conscience from the guilt, filth, and defilement of sin.
the holy” (Prov. 30:3), and the fear of the Lord, and such a connection between ignorance of the Lord and sin, that saved saints are called “wise,” and lost sinners are called “fools,” not only in the Old Testament, as continually in the Proverbs, but in the New. Many of the Lord’s people look with suspicion upon knowledge, from not seeing clearly the vast distinction between the spiritual, experimental knowledge for which we are now contending, and what is called “head knowledge.” They see that a man may have a well-furnished head and a graceless heart, that he may understand “all mysteries and all knowledge,” and yet be “nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2); and as some of these all-knowing professors are the basest characters that can infest the churches of truth, those who really fear the Lord stand not only in doubt of them, but of all the knowledge possessed by them. But put it in a different form; ask the people of God whether there is not such a divine reality, such a heavenly blessing, as being “taught of God” (John 6:45); having “an unction from the Holy One, whereby we know all things” (1 John 2:20): knowing the truth for oneself, and finding it maketh free (John 8:32); whether there is not a “counting of all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord,” and a stretching forth of the desires of the soul to “know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings;” whether there is not “a knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins” (Luke 1:77); “a knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6); a being “filled with the knowledge of his will” (Col. 1:9); an “increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10); “a growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18);—ask the living family of God whether there be not such a knowledge as this, and if this knowledge is not the very pith and marrow, the very sum and substance of vital godliness, and they will with one voice say, “It is.”
Without truth there is no regeneration; for it is by “the word of truth” that we are begotten and born again (James 1:18; 1 Peter 1:23). Without truth there is no justification; for we are justified by faith, which faith consists in crediting God’s truth, and so gives peace with God. Without the truth there is no sanctification; for the Lord himself says, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” And without the truth there is no salvation; for “God hath chosen us to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.”
And as the truth is the instrumental cause of all these blessings, the divinelyappointed means whereby they become manifested mercies, so truth enters into and is received by all the graces of the Spirit as they come forth into living exercise. Thus, without the truth, there is no faith; for the work of faith is to believe the truth. What is all the difference between faith and delusion? That faith believes God’s truth, and delusion credits Satan’s lies. “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Without truth there is no hope; for the province of hope is to anchor in the truth. “That by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us; which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil.” The two immutable things in which hope anchors are God’s word and God’s truth; in other words, the pledged veracity and faithfulness of him who cannot lie. This made holy David say, “I have hoped in thy word.” They that go down to the pit,” said good king Hezekiah, “cannot hope for thy truth.” No; it is “the living, the living who praise thee as I do this day.” And it is “through patience and comfort of the Scriptures,” that is, the consolation which the truth of God revealed in the Scriptures affords, “that we have hope.” Without truth there is no love, for it is by “the love of the truth” that the saved are distinguished from the lost. “And with all deceivableness of unrighteous ness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved.” And it is only as we speak “the truth in love that we grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.” Thus “the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, and righteousness, and truth;” and this in the Person of the Son of God, for “grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”
“Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14
The Deity of the Son of God shines all through the sacred page. It is the grand cardinal point, on which all the doctrines of grace turn; and he that is unsound there, is unsound everywhere. The Godhead of Christ does not rest upon a few texts of Scripture, but it shines all through the Scripture; it is the light of the Scripture, and it is the life of the Scripture. Take away the Deity of Jesus out of the Scripture, and you would do the same thing spiritually as though you blotted the sun out of the sky naturally; the sacred page would be one black darkness. But the Person of Jesus is not Deity only. No man can see God and live; we could not bear to look upon pure Deity. And therefore the Son of God has taken into union with himself our nature; he has “taken upon him the seed of Abraham”—that “holy thing” which was begotten by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and there united to the second Person of the glorious Trinity, that Godhead and manhood might form one glorious Person, Immanuel, God with us. Now to the eye of faith there is the greatest beauty and glory in Christ’s humanity. The enlightened soul views Deity shining through the manhood; and when it sees Jesus “going about, doing good,” when it hears the words that dropped from his gracious lips, when it views him by the eye of faith, bleeding, suffering, agonising, and dying, it sees the Godhead in all these acts, upholding and shining through the manhood. And it is this union of the two natures in one glorious Person, that fills the heart that receives it in the faith of it and in the love of it with a measure of pure affection.
Here, then, the Church has a view of the glorious Person of Jesus; and she falls in love with him. There is something in supernatural beauty which kindles spiritual affection, as there is something in natural beauty which kindles natural affection. When the quickened soul sees supernatural beauty, it immediately falls in love with it. The spiritual affections centre in spiritual beauty. And thus, when the redeemed and regenerated soul sees the glorious Person of Christ, God-man, Immanuel, God with us, and has a taste and sense of his love, the blessed Spirit thereby kindles in it spiritual affection, and attracts it with these “cords of love and bands of a man.”
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” John 10:1
Here are three marks whereby you may know whether you have entered by faith into the sheepfold. First, have you any evidence of being saved in the Lord Jesus Christ with an everlasting salvation? Secondly, have you felt any blessed and holy freedom and liberty of going in and coming out of the heavenly sheepfold? Thirdly, have you found pasture? Sometimes finding pasture in the ordinances of God’s house; sometimes in the sacred truths of the gospel, as you read or hear the word of truth; and especially in partaking by faith of the flesh and blood of the Lamb. But there may be those who are in this spot. They see plainly that Christ is the door, and are fully convinced there is no other way of entrance into the fold but by him; and yet they do not seem to have entered personally and experimentally in, so as to enjoy for themselves its privileges and blessings. But have you never entered in by hope and expectation? And how could you enter in by expectation unless something in you, which you could not give yourself, were expecting a blessing from God; unless you possessed a principle of living faith, whereby, though at present weak and feeble, you yet seem to realise the sweetness of the blessings held forth in the gospel? How different is this state of soul experience from climbing daringly and presumptuously over the wall, or taking the ladder of self-righteousness, and thus helping yourself in by some other way than the door. How much better to be lying in humility at the gate, looking to Jesus and longing to enter in, begging of him to open the door and give you admission, than to make yourself a daring and rash intruder. How different is this humble, dependent, and self-abased state of soul from self-righteousness on the one hand, and bold presumption on the other. There is everything to encourage the weak and feeble part of the flock who long to enter into the fold. To them Jesus opens his arms wide, and says in their heart and ears, “‘I am the door:’ enter through me, and by no other way. There is access to God by me, for ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ If ye enter in by me, ye shall be saved from all you justly dread and fear, both as regards this life and the life to come. Ye shall go freely in and freely out, and find pasture; lying down and feeding on my divine Person, flesh, and blood on earth, as the prelude and foretaste of enjoying me for ever in the blissful courts of heaven above.”
“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Matthew 5:16
To glorify God is the highest ambition of angels. The brightest seraph before the throne has no higher aim, no greater happiness, than to bring glory to his name. And yet a poor sinner on earth may glorify God as much, and in some way more, than the brightest angel in the courts of eternal bliss. What different views the eyes of God and the eyes of men take of events passing on the earth. What glory is brought to God by all the victories gained by one country over another? I have thought sometimes that a poor old man, or feeble, decrepit woman, lying on a workhouse pallet, fighting with sin, self and Satan, yet enabled amidst all to look to the Lord Jesus, and by a word from his lips overcoming death and hell, though when dead thrust into an elm coffin, to rot in a pauper’s grave, brings more glory to God than all the exploits of Nelson or Wellington, and that such victories are more glorious than those of Waterloo or Trafalgar. It is true that the parish officers will not proclaim such a victory; nor will bells ring or cannons roar at such exploits; but the God of heaven and earth may get more glory from such a despised creature, than from all the generals and admirals who have ever drawn up armies in battle, or sunk hostile fleets beneath the wave. Truly does the Lord say, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” It is indeed marvellous that glory should be brought to his great name by what his people do and suffer upon earth; that their feeble attempts to believe, to love, and to hope in him; to speak well of his name; and to adorn his doctrine in their life and conversation, should redound to his honour and praise. Wondrous indeed is it that a poor, insignificant worm, whom perhaps his fellow-mortal will scarcely deign to look at, or passes by with a shrug of contempt, should add glory to the great God that inhabiteth eternity, before whom the highest angels and brightest seraphs bow with holy adoration! Well may we say, “What are all the glorious exploits that men are so proud of, compared with the tribute of glory rendered to God by his suffering saints?” You may feel yourself one of the poorest, vilest, neediest worms of earth; and yet if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with a living faith, hope in his mercy, love his dear name, and in your vocation adorn his doctrine by a godly, consistent life, you are privileged above princes and nobles, yes, even above crowned heads, and all the glory of man, because you are bringing glory to God. It matters not what may be your station in life. You may be a servant, master, wife, husband, child; your rank and station may be high or low; but whatever it be, still in it you may bring glory to God. If a servant, by obedience, cleanliness, industry, and attention to the directions of your master or mistress. If a master or mistress, by kindness and liberality to your dependents, and doing all that you can to render the yoke of servitude light. There is not a single Christian who may not glorify God, though in worldly circumstances he be, or seem to be, totally insignificant. Glory is brought to God by those who live and walk in his fear, and more sometimes by the poor than by the rich. Only adorn the doctrine of God in all things, and you will bring glory to God in all things.
