God Loves… Himself

Are you troubled by sin? Are you an empty creature, full of all manner of ill but empty of good? Are you without courage, even sometimes without courage to pray? Do you feel like a piece of hell? Do you feel wickedness rising and often prevailing? Do you feel that your own righteousnesses are as filthy rags? Do you feel it an awful solemn thing to have to do with God? Do you sometimes meditate upon what is before you, namely that you must stand before the judgment seat of Christ? Are you troubled about your own rags, about your failings and fallings into sin; and do you, realizing these things, feel sometimes full of distress, gloom, bondage, fear, feel tormented by the fear of death, fear coming short?…And now I will show this to you—this is God’s way of preparing you to have the joy of Christ fulfilled in you. This is God’s way, you cannot improve on His way. You cannot get better in yourselves, you cannot do better by yourselves. O but to be a poor, condemned, and as it were dead creature, ready to be swallowed up of hell! If you feel like that, well what is this but having a place in you for the joy of Christ? And how will it come? By the removal of your sins; by the sovereign power of the blood of Christ; by the sweet testimony of God the Holy Ghost. I do not set before you something for you to climb up to, but I speak of something that God the Holy Ghost can bring down to you. You cannot reach these things, He can bring them nigh. He can speak them home, He can make them your own. Yes, blessed by God! An empty vessel is the proper vessel for the fountain. A lost soul is a proper soul for a Savior, A sinner is suitable for a Savior. A guilty conscience is suitable for the blood of the everlasting covenant, and sovereign grace is suitable to one who feels as if sin must soon have the mastery. This is Christ’s joy, O what a joy it is to a sinner to believe and feel that he is redeemed. To believe that the work of grace is in him; to believe that he has a robe of righteousness imputed to him; to believe that God is his God, God and Father in Christ; and to that he has an interest in that message which Christ sent after His resurrection to his disciples, scattered for the moment; “Go, tell My disciples, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, to My God and your God”.

What a joy it was to Christ after His desertion by His Father, after the hours of darkness on the cross, to see once more that face that He had eternally looked on, to see that face in all its brightness, all its smiles, all its glory! And O my friends, this is just what awaits every new-born sinner! “God, who commanded the light to shine our to darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” There is no better heaven on earth than to see God’s well-pleased face. There is no sweeter heaven on earth than to know that that well-pleased God is your God and Father as He is the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.    J.K. Popham

Men are carried away with the notion that through religious instruction, training and favorable opportunities, children of men are made Christians; that men enter the kingdom of God through teaching and moral persuasion….A man does not have to be born again in order to be religious; he may be infatuated with religion, and be taught to observe most rigidly forms and ceremonies, and to subject himself to the strictest discipline; to mutilate his body and deprive himself of all earthly comforts; to yield perpetual obedience to priestcraft; to pray three times a day and give tithes of all he possesses; take up the sword in defense of his religion, or lay down his life in testimony of his zeal; but except he be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. A man must be born again in order to receive Christ, or embrace His doctrine in truth and reality. H.M Curry

There is no more important event, which occurs in our world, than the new birth of an immortal soul. Heirs to titles and estates, to kingdoms and empires, are frequently born, and such events are blazoned with imposing pomp, and celebrated by poets and orators; but what are all these honors and possessions but the gewgaws of children, when compared with the inheritance and glory to which every child of God is born an heir!

The implantation of spiritual life in a soul dead in sin, is an event, the consequences of which will never end. When you plant an acorn, and it grows, you expect not to see the maturity, much less the end of the majestic oak, which will expand its boughs and strike deeply into the earth as roots. The fierce blast of centuries of winters may beat upon it and agitate it, but it resists them all. Yet finally this majestic oak, and all its towering branches, must fall. Trees die with old age, as well as men. But the plants of grace shall ever live. They shall flourish in everlasting verdure. Archibald Alexander

We shall add two reasons further, to confirm, and some way to clear, why it is that the Lord works, and must work thus distinctly, inwardly, really, powerfully, and immediately, in working faith, and converting sinners.

The first is draws from the exceeding great deadness, indisposition, averseness, perverseness, impotency, inability, and impossibility that is in us naturally for the exerting faith in Christ. If men naturally are dead in sins and trespasses, if the mind is blind, if the affections are quite disordered, and the will is utterly corrupted and perverted; then that which converts, and changes and renews them, must be a real, inward, peculiar, immediate, powerful work of the Spirit of God. There being no inward seed of the grace of God in them to be quickened, that seed must be communicated to them and sown in them, ere they can believe, which can be done by no less nor lower than the power of God’s grace. It is not oratory as I said, nor excellency of speech that will do it; it is such a work as begets the man again, and actually renews him.

The second is drawn from God’s end in the way of giving grace, communicating it to some, and not to others. If God’s end, in being gracious to some and not to others, is to commend His grace solely, and to make them alone in grace’s common or debt; then the work of grace in conversion must be peculiar and immediate, and wrought by the power of the Spirit of God, leaving nothing to man’s free will to difference himself from another or on which such an effect should depend. But if we look to Scripture, we will find that it is God’s end in the whole way and conduct of His grace, in election, redemption, calling, justification, etc, to commend His grace solely, and to stop all mouths, and cut off all ground of boasting in the creature as it is in I Cor 4:7. “Who makes thee to differ from another? And what hast thou that thou hast not received? Now if thou didst receive it, why dos thou glory as if thou didst not receive?” This being certain, that if the work of grace in conversion were not a distinct, inward, peculiar, real, immediate work, and did not produce the effect of itself by its own strength, and not by virtue of anything in man, the man would still be supposed to have had some power for the work in himself, and some way to have differenced himself from another. But the Lord designed the contrary, and therefore the work of grace in conversion must be suitable to His design. (Christ Crucified: The Marrow of the Gospel in 72 Sermons on Isaiah 53, pages 169-170; James Durham)

John Howe: “We are to desire the enjoyment of God for His own glory.”
Comment on: Shall the Sabbath day, which is given by a thrice holy God, really be given to men just for the sake of men?

John Howe: “However all the acts and operations of true and living religion be in themselves delightful, yet apply yourselves to the doing of them for a higher reason, and with a greater design than your own delight. Other wise you destroy your own wor therein, and despoil you acts of their substantial, moral goodness, and consequently of their delightfulness [true delightfulness] also. That is not a morally good act, which is not referred to God, and done out of (at least) an habitual devotedness to him, so as that he be the supreme end thereof. You would therefore, by withdrawing and separating this reference to God, ravish from them their very life and soul; yea, and perfectly nullify those of them that should ve in themselves acts of religion.”

John Howe: And if this be not the thing, but merely self-satisfaction, which you chiefly have in pursuit under the name of delight in God, you beat the air, and do but hunt after a shadow. For there is no such thing as real, solid delight in God anywhere existing, or ever will be, separately and apart from a supreme love and addictedness of heart to him and his interest, as our chief and utmost good; which temper of spirit towards him, must be maintained and improved by our fixed intuition and view of his glorious greatness, and absolute excellency and perfection, and the conguity and fitness which we thereupon apprehend, that we and all things (as all are of him) should be wholly to him, that he alone may have the glory.”

Comment: The Sabbath day cannot be for the good of man unless it is intended to enable men to delight in and glorify God for the glory of God Himself.

What follows below is from an author (1700’s time period) that is not known to me. However, the author has a message that needs to be heard in our self-confident and rationalistic age.  Surely there are dangers and perhaps not everything is safe, but the general thrust should be listened to. We must always remember that our ability to reason is fallen as well.

It is certain from Scripture, that the Spirit of God dwells within us, that a “manifestation of this Spirit is given to us to profit withal,” and that this is “the true Light, which gives light to every man that comes into the world.” “This is the grace of God, which brings salvation, and which has appeared to all men; teaching us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.” But we make too little account of this internal Teacher, which is the soul of our soul, and by which only we are able to form good thoughts and desires. God ceases not to reprove us for evil, and to influence us to that which is good; but the noise of the world without, and of our own passions within, deafen us, and hinder us from hearing him.

We must retire from all outward objects, and silence all the desires and wandering imaginations of the mind; that in this profound silence of the whole soul, we may hearken to the ineffable voice of the Divine Teacher. We must listen with an attentive ear; for it is a still, small voice. It is not indeed a voice uttered in words as when a man speaks to his friend; but it is a perception infused by the secret operations and influences of the Divine Spirit, insinuating to us obedience, patience, meekness, humility, and all other Christian virtues, in a language perfectly intelligible to the attentive soul. But how seldom is it that the soul keeps itself silent enough for God to speak! The murmurs of our vain desires, and our self-love, disturb all the teachings of the Divine Spirit. Ought we then to be surprised, if so many persons, apparently devout, but too full of their own wisdom, and confidence in their own virtues, are not able to hear it; and that they look upon this internal Word as the chimera of fanatics? Alas! What is it that they aim at with their vain reasoning? The external word, even of the gospel, would be but an empty sound without this living and fruitful Word in the interior, to interpret and open it to the understanding.

Christ says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock—if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in unto him, and sup with him, and he with me.” His knocks are the monitions of His Spirit; which touch us, and operate in us. And to attend to these monitions and follow them, is to open unto Him.

He peaks to impenitent sinners; but these, engrossed in the eager pursuit of earthly pleasures, and the gratifications of their evil passions, are not able to hear Him. His word with them passes for a fable. But woe to those who receive their consolation in this life. The time will come when their vain joys shall be confounded.

He speaks in sinners who are in the way of conversion; these feel the remorses of their conscience, and these remorses are the voice of the Spirit, which upbraids them inwardly with their vices. When they are truly touched, they have no difficulty to comprehend the secret voice, for it is this that so pierces them to the quick. It is that two-edged sword within them, of which Paul speaks, which goes even to the dividing of the soul from itself; “The word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow; and it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

He speaks in persons enlightened, learned, and whose life, outwardly regulated, seems adorned with many virtues, but often these persons, full of themselves, and of their knowledge, give too much ear to themselves to listen to His teachings. God, who seeks only to communicate Himself, finds no place (so to speak) where to introduce Himself into these souls, that are so full of themselves, and so over-fed with their own wisdom and virtues. He hides His secrets from the wise and prudent, and reveals them to the low and simple; Jesus said, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes.” It is with the humble and childlike that He delights to dwell, and to disclose to them His ineffable secrets. It is these who are more peculiarly qualified for receiving in a greater measure the gift of faith; for, being willing that the pride of reason should be laid in the dust, they obstruct not the entrance of this gift by their vain arguments, but believe with simplicity and confidence.

When preachers do neglect to ground in the people’s heart great joy for the greatness of the free given treasures of Christ that work and cause filial fear, loving inclination, dutiful, and true sincere affections; and go about to square God’s children, according to the corrupt pattern of natural children, corrupted with slavish fear, with blows and beatings; they do quench in them the true filial fear, and establish in them the servile fear that should be cast out; {I Jn.4:18;} and cause in the children of God this eye service, which if it be taught in sanctified servants to their earthly masters, {as the Apostle saith, Eph.6:6,} how abominable is that much more in the children of God to their heavenly Father, and makes but hypocrites. – When preachers of the Gospel, not seeing in their hearts the vigor and power of the free given treasures of Christ, do not trust to, nor rely upon the pressing of them as sufficient {where they are felt and enjoyed} operative causes of all holy walkings and godly conversation; then they do degenerate and decline thereby to the legal teaching of the Old Testament, more agreeable to the light of nature described of constraining men to holiness and righteousness with legal arguments of large blessings, if they do well; and with terrors of correction and punishment for their evil doings, which either does little good at all, or at the best makes but self-deceiving zealous hypocrites, and so go not with a right foot to the truth of the Gospel, {Gal.2:14,} and purity of apostolic preaching of constraining men to holiness and righteousness by joy and love, by preaching with joyful inflamed hearts and fiery tongues, {Acts 2:4,} the exceeding excellency and glory of the unsearchable riches of Christ; which as it was the true course of the first manner of preaching of the Gospel in the primitive Church, as is evident in the Scriptures; {Acts 8:8, 38-39, 13:38,39, 42-44, 52, I Pet.1:8;} and which Paul defines to be the very essence of a true preacher of the Gospel, {Eph.3:8,} saying in the person of all true preachers of the Gospel, “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;” {Eph.3:8;} so it is the only means sanctified with the blood of Christ, to cause people to abound in all godly and zealous conversation. And thus I have somewhat the more largely hunted and taken this little fox, {Cant.2:15,} because it is so nourished not only by the Papists that press it exceedingly out of the examples of the Old Testament against the perfection of justification maintained by Protestants; but also some of the Protestants by lisping the language of Ashdod do go about with the same to undermine the very root of the Lord’s Vine; that is, free justification, by going about to prove by it, that we are not by the wedding garment of Christ’s righteousness made perfectly holy and righteous from all spot of sin in the sight of God freely, full sufficient of itself {the more it is rightly known} to constrain us with all joy to holiness and righteousness, not by fear, but by love and evangelical zeal as strong as fire and death. {Cant.8:6,7, Tit.2;14} (John Eaton, Honeycombe of Free Justification by Christ Alone, 1642).

One sort of objectors to free justification are such as being in name Protestants, and professing themselves utter enemies to Papists, in that {as they say} they will not give the least piece of justification to works and holy walking, and will seem both to themselves and others to hold free justification perfectly; and yet, because of their being in the dead faith, they do not spiritually understand it; and because by conceiving it after a carnal human witted fashion, they feel no sweetness therein. Therefore declining in affection unto the establishing of their own righteousness, they not only nullify the truth regarding justification, and make it as good as nothing; but also making the light of nature, {described in Rom.2:14,15,} and natural reason their chiefest guide, they thus weaken the faith of others, by running into the very objections of the Papists; and shake hands with them in the main points of salvation, with whom they profess to be at utter variance. And all this because they lie in a dead faith, whereby they understand not the nature and excellency of free justification; and yet one such may do us more harm in weakening our faith than many Papists; not only, because they profess to be one with us and the same confession in letter, and so are like homebred flattering enemies; but also, because by great literal learning and teaching, they may bear a great name, as such as are alive, when by their false faith they be dead indeed. {Rev.3:1} Therefore that these objectors do not weaken our faith, we must learn to discern these underminers of truth.

Peradventure some will say, how may we discern them? I answer, by knowing and diligently marking the nature of dead faith; which is this, to hold the very truth of God’s Word after a sort, as far as the light of nature, good memory, and good human wit can reach; and herein to think themselves rich and increased in goods, having need of nothing; {Rev.3:17;} being ashamed not to hold as contrary to what a sound profession is thought to hold, sticking fast to such phrases of Scripture as seem to agree with their human wit and reason; but because such by hearing, do hear only after a literal manner, but do not understand; and by seeing, do see after a carnal human witted fashion, but do not perceive; {Mt.13:13,14;} therefore they talk of that which they hold, as men talk of things in their sleep, and can say Sibboleth, but not Shibboleth; {Judges 12:6;} that is, can say something, but not make a clear and perspicuous confession of the mysteries of Christ. – Then with Nicodemus they count it absurd, and do judge it very foolishness itself, {I Cor.2:14,} and cry out, “What thing is this? What new doctrine is this?” {Mk.1:27} “How can these things be?” {Jn.3:9} Then they fall a wrangling with Nicodemical conclusions, and do not keep neither in word nor deed to that which they hold; but speak like men in a spiritual frenzy with flat contradictions; and then fall to sophisticating, raging and calumniating; that is, to a changing and wresting one’s words and meaning; and finally, if at length they be not renewed and changed with Nicodemus, they fall to railing and persecuting. {Acts 13:45-50} Thus by the excellency of Christ’s benefits laid open, the thoughts of many hearts are opened to be very bad, that seemed a long time by an appearance of holy walking to be very good. {Lk.2:34,35} John Eaton {Honeycombe of Free Justification by Christ Alone, 1642}

A new creation is the bringing forth the soul in a likeness to God. The end therefore of the new creature is the glory of God. As God is the cause, so he is the pattern of the new creature, according to which he doth frame the soul; it is “after God, created in righteousness,” &c. Eph 4:24. There can be no likeness to God, where the creature dissents from him in the chief end. Without such an agreement, there can be nothing but variance between God and the creature. All the commotions and quarrels upon earth, are founded upon the difference of ends. God aims at his own glory, so doth the new creature; otherwise it were impossible he should walk with God, or follow him, as a dear child. It consists also in a likeness to Christ; his resurrection is the pattern, and cause of our regeneration; “Ye are risen with Christ.” What, to contrary ends? Did Christ rise only to live to himself? No; but to live to God, as the great end for which he was appointed Mediator. Did he design to glorify God on earth, and doth he live to dishonor God in heaven? No, he lives to the same end there for which he lived and died here. Our spiritual resurrection is not only a restoring us to spiritual life, but to the ends of this life, a living to God and Christ, and to the ends of his mediation. Surely the new creature cannot be so brutish, as not to mind the honor of that nature, to which it is so nearly allied, the glory of that God unto whom it hath the honor to bear a resemblance. A new creature hath a mighty sprightliness, and a height of spirit in some measure, when any thing in his hands concerns God, more than when it concerns himself; for his will being framed according to the will of God, is filled with an ambition for promoting the excellency of his name.                  Stephen Charnock

My prayer on your behalf, my good friend, to the Holy Ghost shall be, that it may please him to teach you how to make use of every thing you see and feel in yourself, to look wholly to Christ. There is in Christ every thing you want for life, death, and eternal glory. His person, blood, and righteousness, is the whole ground of all your hope in God; his word believed in, brings into your heart a sense of his love; “thou art,” saith Jesus, “all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.” In Christ you are a perfection of beauty: he presents you in himself, holy, unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight.

May the Holy Spirit open to your view the very heart of Jesus, shew you the love with which he loves you, and give you some precious cordial draughts, such as may fill you with everlasting consolation. Jesus is your friend: as such he will make use, and take the advantage from all which befall you in this vale of tears, to prove himself your fast and faithful friend. There is no feeling of your mind, no sigh nor tear, no groan nor pain, you are the subject of, but Christ sees and keeps his eye on. He will cause all, every thing which befall you, to be for your real good; his everlasting arms are underneath you. He saith unto you, “Fear not, I have redeemed thee, I have graven thee on the palms of my hands; I will remember thee with everlasting kindness.” “I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” “I am thy God, and will by thine everlasting light and thy glory.”
You may safely venture to believe these exceeding great and precious promises, which the mouth of the Lord hath spoken. Trust, and be not afraid; Jesus saith to you, “Be not afraid, only believe.” Cast therefore all your cares and burthens on him, who saith, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my sayings he shall never see death.” “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die.”

All may fail, nature may fail; life, strength, flesh and heart may fail, but Jesus will not, Jesus cannot fail you. May you live and die, looking wholly to him. O that he may continually, in a manifestative influential way, look on you, and fill you with all peace and joy in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.

This love (which to use Dr. Goodwin’s expression) ran like a river under ground from everlasting, brake forth in the heart of Christ, when he hung on the cross, and was “made sin and a curse for us.” Here, my friend, you may view as in a mirror, the love of God towards you. It shines forth in Christ in a full blaze of splendour, yes, it shines and is reflected on us, in the person and mediation of Jesus Christ. “God commendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Chist died for us.” These are some of the greatest acts of God’s love to us in our fallen sinful state. His so loving, as to give his only begotten Son; his laying help on him; laying, and causing to meet on him the iniquities of us all: and this is one of the highest expressions of it, “it pleased the Lord to bruise him.”

When God gave his Son, he bestowed him on us, with all the love of his heart: gave him freely, gave him fully, to be the purifier; or, in other words, to be a covenant for the people. This was a gift indeed, which is unspeakable: you and I may well cry out, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.” Our Christ hath openly displayed his love to us; and the highest acts of it towards us as sinners were, his covenant engagements on our behalf; his giving himself for us; his bearing our sins, and the curse due to them: “When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” He hath purged away sin by the sacrifice of himself. His most precious blood, cleanseth us from all sin: his most perfect life of obedience is our righteousness in the sight of God; we are more pure in Christ, than we are sinful in our fallen nature; we are more righteous in Christ, than we are unrighteous in ourselves; we have life in Christ, which sin cannot destroy, Satan cannot reach, death cannot put an end to. We have a fulness of grace in Christ, which all our wounds and wants can never exhaust. We have a full, free, complete, and finished salvation in Jesus, in which we may trust with the utmost confidence, and shall never be confounded; in which we may make our boast, and perpetually triumph: on which we may live, and derive from it every blessing we need.

My dear friend, it is to be greatly lamented, few, very, very few know Christ; and it is impossible souls should be enamoured with the love, beauties, grace, and salvation of Jesus, who have no knowledge of him. The generality of professors trifle with the everlasting gospel of the blessed God. Ask questions, which, if they receive replies to, are of no service to their souls; it is the Holy Ghost alone, who can quicken souls, and make them alive to God by faith which is in Christ Jesus.

I look on you to be one of those who feed secretly on Christ by faith. My dear Mrs. Hodge, you find it is, as you contemplate Jesus and his finished work, your heart is revived. When you view his righteousness and blood to be the whole of your salvation; his word to be your ground and warrant to believing; and rest simply on this truth, that “the blood of Jesus Christ, (the Son of God) cleanseth from all sin:” it is this brings in peace to your mind.

My views of the gospel are, that it is the Father’s revelation of Jesus Christ, who is set forth in it, with all the love of his heart, in all the bowels of his mercy, with all the excellency and efficacy of his righteousness, in the full perfection of his sacrifice and most precious blood-shedding, to sinners as sinners. And this is God’s method of grace and salvation: it is no matter what the sinner is; be he as vile as hell, as guilty as sin can make him, stained and blackened as much as sin can; yea, could it be proved, that in point of sinfulness he had and did exceed all the damned in hell, yet Christ’s blood cleanseth from all sin; and in believing this, the sinner is justified from all things. This is God’s remedy for guilty conscience, for filthy sinners, for lost guiltly men,–“Whoever will, let him come, and take of the water of life freely: whosoever will, let him come to me,” saith Jesus; “and him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out, nor cast off.”