334 ...Our Savior says, 'Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. matthew 16.25 if a man aims at his own interests, he will lose his own interests. if saving his won soul is supreme objective, he will lose it. he must make the good of others his supreme object or he will be lost.
there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for my sake and the gospel's who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time; houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions; ans in the age to come, eternal life. here some people may stumble and say,
'there is a reward held out as a motive'.
but what are we to do?
forsake self for the sake of a reward to self?
no, we must forsake self for the sake of Christ and His gospel
and the consequences will be as stated.
this is the important distinction.
True Submission is Love
in i corinthians 13 paul gave a full description of disinterested love or charity, without which a person is nothing v2. note how much a person may do and still be nothing:
though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
I have become a sounding brass of a clanging cymbal.
335 and though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love,
I am nothing.
and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned,
but have not love,
it profits me nothing. I corinthians 13.1-3
true gospel benevolence is of this character:
love suffers long and is kind;
love does not envy;
love does not parade itself,
is not puffed up;
does not behave rudely,
does not seek its own,
is not provoked,
thinks no evil;
does not rejoice in iniquity, but
rejoices in the truth;
bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things. I corinthians 13.4-7
love has no selfish end but seeks the happiness of others as its great end. without this kind of benevolence, we know there is not a particle of true christianity.
many people wonder why the threatenings of the Word of God are given if it is selfishness to be influenced by fear. man dreads pain.
the SCRIPTURE THREATENINGS ANSWER MANY PURPOSES.
ONE IS TO ARREST THE SELFISH MIND and
LEAD IT TO EXAMINE THE REASONS TO LOVE AND OBEY GOD.
when the Holy Spirit gets the sinner's attention, then He rouses his conscience and challenges him to
CONSIDER AND DECIDE ON THE REASONABLENESS AND DUTY OF SUBMITTING TO GOD.
it is wrong to be influenced by pleasure and pain?
no, it is neither right nor wrong.
these susceptibilities have no moral character.
suppose you stand on a cliff: if you throw yourself down, you will break your neck.
you are warned against it.
now, if you do not regard the warning but throw yourself down and destroy yourself and destroy your life, that is sin.
but heeding the warning is no virtue.
it is simply a prudent act.
there is no virtue in avoiding danger, although it may often be sinful not to avoid it.
to resist the wrath of God is sinful.
but to be afraid of hell is not holy, no more than the fear of breaking your neck is holy.
we may seek our own happiness with respect to its real value, and we are to do so.
he who doesn't do this commits sin.
336 but no one can be happy while he makes his own happiness his supreme objective.
happiness consists in the gratification of virtuous desires.
but to be gratified, the thing must be obtained that is desired.
for a person to be happy, therefore, the desires that are gratified must be right and
they must be disinterested desires.
two things are indispensable to true happiness. first, there must be virtuous or righteous desire. if the desire is not virtuous, conscience will oppose it and gratification will be accompanied by pain. Second, the object must be desired for its own sake , or the gratification will not be complete, even if it is attained...
if everyone pursues his own happiness as the ultimate goal, the interests of different individuals will clash and destroy the happiness of all. this is what we see in the world. it is the reason for all the fraud, violence, oppression and wickedness in earth and hell. as each pursues his own goals, interests clash. the only way to secure our own happiness is to pursue the glory of god and the good of the universe. the question is not whether we should desire and pursue our own happiness at all, but whether we should make our own happiness our supreme end.
Rebels in a Holy Empire
we are not simply under a government of naked law. this world is a province of God's empire. we have rebelled, and by a new and special provision, God offers us mercy. the conditions are that we obey the precepts of the law and submit to the justice of the penalty. God's gospel supplements His government of law.
the Gospel requires the same obedience as the law.
it requires sinners to yield to the justice of the penalty.
if the sinner were under mere law,
337 it would require that he submit to the infliction of the penalty.
but man is not and never has been, since the Fall, under the government of mere law.
he has always known, more or less clearly, that mercy is offered.
it has, therefore, never been required that men be willing to be punished.
in this respect, gospel submission differs from legal submission.
under naked law, submission would consist in willingness to be punished.
but under God's government, submission consists in one's yielding to the justice of the penalty
and regarding oneself as deserving the eternal wrath of God.
the duty of every sovereign is to see that all his subjects submit to his government.
if every individual obeys perfectly, his laws will promote the public good to the highest possible degree.
then, if anyone refuses to obey, the ruler must force that rebel to serve the public interest
in the best way.
if he will not serve voluntarily, he should be made to do it involuntarily.
God is a sovereign ruler and the submission that He requires is exactly what He must require.
He would be neglecting His duty as a ruler if He did not require it.
if you have refused to obey this requirement, you are bound to throw yourself into His hands
for Him to punish you in the way that will best promote the interests of the universe.
you have forfeited all claim to the happiness of the universe of the favor of God.
God requires that you acknowledge the justice of His law
and leave your future entirely and unconditionally at His disposal.
you must submit all you have and all you are to Him.
true submission requires complete acceptance of the terms of the Gospel.
they are repentance, holiness, faith, perfect trust and confidence toward God.
this leads you, without hesitation, to throw body and soul into His hands
to do with you as He thinks good.
to receive Christ as mediator, advocate, atoning sacrifice, ruler, teacher -
and in all the offices in which He is presented in God's Word - is true submission.
this is true acquiescence to God's appointed way of salvation.
the church is full of false hopes.
many people embrace what they consider the Gospel without yielding to the law.
338 they look at the law with dread
and regard the Gospel as a scheme to get away from the law.
these tendencies have always been seen in men. many hold to the Gospel and reject the law,
while others accept the law and neglect the Gospel.
the truth is that the rule of life is the same in both and both require disinterested benevolence.
if a person thinks that under the gospel he may give up the glory of God as his supreme objective and,
instead of loving God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, may make his own salvation his supreme objective, his hopes are false. he has embraced another gospel - which is no gospel at all.
Submission unto Salvation
FAITH IS NOT BELIEVING THAT YOU WILL BE SAVED
BUT BELIEVING GOD'S WORD CONCERNING HIS SON.
He has revealed the fact that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. I timothy 1.15
what you call faith is more properly hope.
the confident expectation that you will be saved is an inference from the act of faith
and and inference that you have a right to draw
when you are conscious of obeying the law and believing the Gospel.
that is, when you exercise the feelings required in the law and Gospel,
you have a right to trust in Christ for your own salvation.
God wills that every soul be saved.
that fact exercises disinterested benevolence.
suppose a man came to me and asked, 'what must i do to be saved?
and I told him, 'IF YOU EXPECT TO BE SAVED, YOU MUST DESPAIR OF BEING SAVED.
what would he think?
what inspired writer ever gave such direction?
the correct answer is, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart (luke 10.27), 'Repent' (Acts 2.38), 'Believe in the gospel' (Mark 1.15, and so on.
is there anything here that implies despair?
sinners do despair before they obtain true peace. but what is the reason?
despair is not essential to true peace.
many anxious sinners despair because
they get a false impression that they have sinned away their day of grace
or that they have committed the unpardonable sin.
sometimes they despair because they know that mercy will be provided as soon as they comply with the terms,
339 but they find all their efforts at true submission useless.
they find they are proud and obstinate and cannot consent to the terms of salvation.
perhaps most individuals who do submit come to a point where they give up all as lost.
but is that necessary?
nothing but their own wickedness drives them to despair.
they are unwilling to accept God's mercy.
their despair, then, instead of being essential to true submission, is inconsistent.
no man ever embraced the Gospel while in that state.
to say despair is essential to true submission is saying that sin is essential to true submission!
every christian knows that God desires sinners to be saved.
the true ground for salvation is that a man must not seek his own salvation,
but must seek the glory of God.
what did the apostles tell sinners when they asked what they must do to be saved?
what did peter tell them at pentecost?
what did paul tell the jailer?
to repent, forsake their selfishness and believe the Gospel. (see Acts 2.38; 16.31)
...340 The Father's Broken Heart
the offer of mercy can be perverted, as every good thing can be and then it can give rise to selfish religion.
God knew this when He revealed the Gospel.
but nothing is calculated to subdue the rebellious heart of man other than God's mercy.
there was a father who had a stubborn and rebellious son, and he tried to subdue him by chastisement. he loved his son and longed to have him virtuous and obedient. but the child seemed to harden his heart against his repeated efforts. finally, the poor father was discouraged and burst into a flood of tears. 'My son! what can I do? can I save you? I have done all that I can to save you! what more can i do?
the son had never yielded to the rod. but when he saw the tears rolling down his father's cheeks and heard his sobs, he, too, burst into tears. he cried out, 'whip me, Father! but don't cry! the father had found the way to subdue that stubborn heart. instead of holding the iron hand of law over him, he poured out his should before him and what was the effect? to crush him into hypocritical submission? no, the rod did that. the gushing tears of his father's love broke him down at once to true submission to his father's will.
the sinner braves the wrath of almighty God and hardens himself to receive the heaviest bolt of thunder. then he sees the love of his heavenly Father's heart. when he sees God manifested in the flesh, stooping to take human nature, hanging on the cross and pouring out His soul in tears, bloody sweat and death, his heart melts. he cries out, 'do anything else, and i can bear it; but the love of the blessed Jesus overwhelms me.
341 to be thus influenced is the very nature of the mind.
DO NOT BE AFRAID TO EXHIBIT THE LOVE OF GOD TO SINNERS;
this is the only way to make them truly submissive. the law makes hypocrites, but only the gospel can draw souls to truly love God.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment