How the Faithful Pastor Leads Sinners To Repentance.
him nor his Father, nor conceive myself in any wise obliged to obey his commands.”
Impious as this language may appear, the conduct of every irreligious Christian must be considered as equivalent to it, according to those words of our Lord, “He that despiseth” my servants, and my doctrines, “despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me,” Luke 10:16. Whatever mask such a Pharisaical professor may wear, he “loves the world:” therefore “the love of the Father is not in him,” 1 John 2:15. He hates both Christ and his Father, John 15:24, his repentance is superficial, his faith is vain, and, sooner or later, his actions or his words will testify that he is an utter enemy to Christ and his members. HOW THE FAITHFUL PASTOR LEADS SINNERS TO
REPENTANCE.
WHAT was spoken by God to Jeremiah, may in some sort be applied to the true minister: “I have set thee to root out and to plant, to pull down and to build,” Jeremiah 1:10. For before the sacred vine can be planted, the thorns of sin must be rooted up, together with the thistles of counterfeit righteousness. And before the strong tower of salvation can be erected, that spiritual Babel must be overthrown, by which presumptuous men are still exalting themselves against heaven.
To lead sinners into a state of evangelical repentance, the true minister discovers to their view the corruption of the heart, with all the melancholy effects it produces in the character and conversation of unregenerate men. After he has denounced the anathemas of the law against particular vices, such as swearing, lying, evil speaking, extortion, drunkenness, &c, he points out the magnitude of two general or primitive sins. The greatest offence, according to the law, he declares to be that by which its first and great command is violated: consequently, those who love not God beyond all created beings, he charges with living in the habit of damnable sin; since they transgress that most sacred of all laws, which binds us to love the Deity with all our heart, Matthew 22:37, 38. Hence he goes on to convict those of violating a command like unto the first, who love not their neighbour as themselves, Matthew 22:32; and to these two sins, as to their deadly sources, he traces all the crimes which are forbidden in the law and in the prophets, Matthew 22:40.
And now he proceeds to lay open, before the eyes of professing Christians, the two greatest sins which are committed under the Gospel dispensation. If the two great commands of God, under the new covenant, are to this effect, that we believe on his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, 1 John 3:23, it is evident that the two greatest sins under the Gospel are, the want of that living faith which unites us to Christ, and that ardent charity, which binds us to mankind in general, as well as to believers in particular, with the bands of cordial affection. As darkness proceeds from the absence of the sun and moon, so from these two sins of omission flow all the various offences which are prohibited by the evangelical law. And if those who are immersed in these primitive sins be withheld from the actual commission of enormous offences, they are not on this account to be esteemed radically holy, since they are possessed of that very nature from which every crime is produced. Sooner or later temptation and opportunity may cause some baneful shoots to spring forth in their outward conduct, in testimony that a root of bitterness lies deep within, and that the least impious of men carry about them a degenerate nature, a body of sin and death.
To give more weight to these observations, he sets forth the greatness of the Supreme Being, enlarges on his justice, and displays the severity of his laws. He tramples under foot the Pharisaical holiness of sinners, that he may bring into estimation the real virtues of the “new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” To awaken those who are sleeping in a state of carnal security, he denounces the most alarming maledictions, calling forth against them the thunders of Mount Sinai, till they are constrained to turn their faces Zion ward; till they seek for safety in the Mediator of the new covenant, and hasten to “the sprinkling of that blood, which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel,” Hebrews 12:24.
By this method, he conducts his wandering flock to the very point where ancient Israel stood, when God had prepared them to receive the law by his servant Moses. Now, after the people had heard the thunderings, and “the noise of the trumpet;” after they had seen “the lightning, and the mountain smoking,” Exodus 20:18; when, unable any longer to gaze on the dreadful scene, “they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us and we will hear; but let not God speak unto us, without a Mediator, lest we die,” Exodus 20:19. Then it was that Moses began to console them in the following words: “Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not,” Exodus 20:20. So in the present day, they only who are brought to this poverty of spirit are properly disposed to receive the riches of Divine mercy. As soon, therefore, as the evangelical minister has sufficiently alarmed a sinner with the terrors discovered upon Mount Sinai, he anxiously prepares him for the consolations of the Gospel, by a sight of the suffering scene upon Calvary. Many pious divines have supposed that by preaching the cross of Christ alone, mankind might be brought to true repentance. What the fathers of the Synod of Berne have said upon this point deserves the attention of those who desire successfully to use that spiritual weapon which is “sharper than any two-edged sword,” Hebrews 4:12. “The knowledge of sin,” say they, “must of necessity be drawn from Jesus Christ. The apostle writes thus: ‘God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us,’ Romans 5:8. It follows, that sin must have made us abominable and extremely hateful, since the Son of God could no other way deliver us from the burden of it, than by dying in our stead. Hence we may conceive what a depth of misery and corruption there is in the heart, since it was not able to be purified, but by the sacrifice of so precious a victim, and by the sprinkling of the blood of God,” that is, of a man miraculously formed, in whom dwelt “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” Colossians 2:9. “The apostles have clearly manifested the sinfulness of our nature by the death of Christ; whereas the Jews, after all their painful researches, were not convinced of sin by the law of Moses. After a solid knowledge of sin has been drawn from the passion of our Lord, there will naturally flow from this knowledge a true repentance; that is, a lively sorrow for sin, mingled with the hope of future pardon. To this necessary work the Holy Spirit also powerfully contributes, bringing more and more to the light, by its mysterious operations, the hidden evils and unsuspected corruptions of the heart; daily purifying it from the filthiness of sin, as silver is purified by the fire.” (Acts of Synod, chap. viii, ix, 14.)