14. CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 14 NECESSITY OF FAITH IN CHRIST The general use of the previous directions How to accomplish the work aimed at: act with faith in Christ Several ways through which this may be done Consider the sufficiency of Christ for relief Great expectations from Christ Grounds for these expectations: his mercifulness and faithfulness Events of these expectations: on the part of Christ; on the part of believers Faith on which we act is based on the death of Christ, Romans 6:3-6 The work of the Spirit in all of this
All the considerations previously expressed prepare us to mortify sin, rather than accomplish it. I have been focusing on sufficiently preparing the heart for the work itself. Without this preparation, mortification will not be accomplished. Specific directions for the work itself are very few. They follow: 1. Set your faith on enlisting Christ to kill your sin. His blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls. Live in this belief, and you will die a conqueror. Truly, you will live to see your lust dead at your feet through the good providence of God. “How does faith enlist Christ for this purpose?” Several ways:
(1.) By faith, fully consider the provision we have in Jesus Christ for this purpose.
If you do, then all your lusts, including the particular lust you are entangled by, may be mortified. By faith ponder this: although you are unable to conquer your disease by yourself, and you are weary of fighting with it, and you are exhausted by it, there is enough strength in Jesus Christ to bring you relief. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”245 It sustained the prodigal son when he was ready to faint, knowing that there was enough bread stored in his father’s house. 246 Although he was still at a distance, the knowledge that it was there relieved him, and braced him. In your greatest distress and anguish, consider that fullness of grace. 247 Consider those riches, those treasures of strength, might, and help, that are stored in Christ for our support. “They that wait on the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles.”248 Let these considerations enter and remain in your mind. Consider that he is “lifted up and made a Prince and a Savior to give repentance to Israel.”249 If he is a Savior to give repentance, then he is a Savior to give mortification, without which there is no repentance. Christ tells us that we obtain purging grace by remaining in him.250 If we act in reliance on the fullness we have in Christ, then we have an excellent way to remain in Christ, because both our grafting in and our indwelling come by faith.251
Let your soul admit this: “I am a pitiful, weak creature, unstable as water. I cannot excel. This corruption is too hard for me, and it is on the verge of ruining my soul. I do not know what to do. My soul has become like parched ground, and a habitat for dragons. I have made promises and broken them; vows and engagements have meant nothing to me. I have had many temptations over which I got the victory. I should be delivered, but I am deceived. So I can plainly see that without some superior help, I am lost. If I continue on this path, I will be triumphed over until I completely relinquish God. But although this is my condition, let the hands that hang down be lifted up, and the weak knees be strengthened. Behold the Lord Christ, who has all the fullness of grace in his heart and all the fullness of power in his hand. 252 He is able to slay all these who are his enemies.” There are sufficient provisions in Christ for my relief and assistance. He can take my drooping, dying soul and make me more than a conqueror.253
Why do you say, my soul, that my way is hidden from the LORD, and my case is passed over by my God? Have you not known or heard that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not faint, and is not weary? There is no searching his understanding. He gives power to the faint; and to those that have no might he increases strength. Even the youths will faint and be weary, and the young men shall completely collapse: but those that wait on the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run, and not be weary; they will walk and not faint.254
He can make the “dry, parched ground of my soul become a pool, and my thirsty, barren heart springs of water.” Indeed, he can make this habitat of dragons, this heart, so full of abominable lusts and fiery temptations, a place for “grass” and fruit for himself.”255 When tempted by his thorn, God braced Paul by considering his grace: “My grace is sufficient for you,”256 Though he was not given grace immediately to free him from his temptation, the fact that there was sufficient grace in God to do just that, was enough to brace his spirit. So then, by faith consider the supply of grace and its fullness in Jesus Christ. Consider how he can give you strength and freedom at any time. By considering this, even if you do not conquer it, you will remain in the chariot so that you will not flee the field until the battle is over. You will be kept from complete despair, and from collapsing under your unbelief. You will be kept from turning to false means and remedies that do nothing to relieve you. The effectiveness of this consideration will be found only by practicing it.
(2.) Bolster your heart by faith to expect relief from Christ.
Relief in this case is like the prophet’s vision, “It is for an appointed time. But after, it will speak and not lie. Though it takes its time, wait for it, because it will surely come. It will not be late.”257 While you are still troubled, the wait may seem long to you. Nonetheless, relief will surely come at the appointed time of the Lord Jesus (which is the best season). If you can bolster your heart to definitely expect relief from Jesus Christ, then your soul will be satisfied. If your eyes are towards him “as the eyes of a servant to the hand of his master” when he expects to receive something from him, 258 then he will certainly rescue you. He will slay the lust, and you will realize peace. Only look for it in his hand; expect when and how he will do it. “If you will not believe, surely you will not be established.” 259 You may ask, “What grounds do I have for such an expectation, so that I may not be deceived?”
You do not have a choice. Of necessity you must take this course. You must be relieved and saved in this way or not at all. To whom will you go? 260 There are countless things in the Lord Jesus to encourage and engage you in this expectation. I spoke of its necessity before, when I demonstrated that mortification is the work of faith, and it is for believers only. “Without me,” says Christ, “you can do nothing.” He was speaking especially of purging the heart from sin.261 Mortification of any sin must be by a supply of grace. We cannot do it ourselves.
Now, “it has pleased the Father that in Christ all fullness should dwell,”262 so that “of his fullness we might receive grace for grace.”263 He is the head from which the new man must receive his influence of life and strength, or he will decay every day. If we are “strengthened with might in the inner man,” 264 it is by “Christ’s dwelling in our hearts by faith.”265 I have also shown before that this work is not to be done without the Spirit. From where, then, do we expect the Spirit? From whom do we look for him? Who has promised him to us, having procured him for us? Shouldn’t all our expectations for the Spirit’s help be on Christ alone? Let this, then, be fixed in your heart: if you do not have relief from Christ, then you will never have any relief at all. All ways, all endeavors, and all struggles that are not prompted by this expectation of relief from Christ, and from him alone, serve no purpose. They will do you no good. Indeed, if they do anything other than support your heart in this expectation, or if they are not the means appointed by Christ to receive help from him, then they are useless. To further engage you in this expectation, (1.) Consider Christ’s mercifulness, tenderness, and kindness.
He is our great High Priest at the right hand of God. Certainly he pities you in your distress. He says, “As one comforted by his mother, so I will comfort you.”266 He has the tenderness of a mother to a suckling child. “Therefore, in all things he was obliged to be made like his brothers, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the things of God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered being tempted, he is able to relieve those that are being tempted.”267
How is Christ’s ability affected by his suffering? “Because he himself suffered being tempted, he is able…” Did the sufferings and temptations of Christ add to his ability and power? Not in themselves. The ability here refers to its readiness, proneness, and willingness to exert itself. It is an ability of will against all dissuasions. He is able, having suffered and been tempted, to break through all dissuasions to the contrary, to relieve poor tempted souls: “He is able to help.” [NT:1426 dunamai “power”] It is a figure of speech for the effect. He can now be moved to help, having been so tempted. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our frailty. He was in all ways tempted as we are, yet he did not sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in our time of need.268 The exhortation in Hebrews 4:16 speaks to the issue of expecting relief from Christ, which the apostle calls “grace for opportune help,” [NT:5485,996,2121 charis… boetheia eukairos]. Says the soul, “If ever help were opportune, it would be right now. This is what I long for: grace for opportune help. I am ready to die, to perish, to be lost forever; wickedness will triumph over me if help does not come.” The apostle is saying, “Expect this help, this relief, this grace from Christ.” Indeed, but on what basis? The basis is laid down in verse 15: Christ sympathizes with our frailty. Note verse 16, “that we may obtain mercy.” The word which we have translated to “obtain” is [NT:2983 lambano], “That we may receive it.”
Suitable and opportune help will come. Bolster the soul by faith. Expect relief from Jesus Christ269 because of his mercifulness as our high priest. This one thing will do more to ruin your lust and affliction, and do it better and faster, than the most rigid means of self-denial any man ever engaged in. Truly, let me add that no one who could bolster his soul by faith to expect relief from Jesus Christ,270 ever did or ever will perish by the power of a lust, sin, or corruption.
(2.) Consider the faithfulness of the One who has promised. This may bolster and confirm you while you are waiting expectantly for relief. He has promised to relieve us in such cases, and he will fulfill his word completely. God tells us that his covenant with us is like the “ordinances” of heaven, the sun, moon, and stars, which have their certain courses.271 Accordingly, David said that he watched for relief from God “as one watched for the morning.”272 It is a thing that will certainly come in its appointed season, and so will your relief from Christ. It will come in its season like dew and rain on parched ground, because the one who has promised is faithful. Specific Scriptural promises for this purpose are found throughout the Bible. Always be ready to furnish someone with a few that seem uniquely suited to his condition.
Now, there are two excellent advantages which always attend this expectation of assistance from Jesus Christ:
[1.] Such expectation enlists Christ’s quick and complete assistance.
If someone has offered to help and promises to give relief, then nothing will enlist his heart to be useful and helpful more than someone else expecting it. Our Lord Jesus has encouraged this expectation in us by his kindness, his care, and his promises. Certainly our expectation must engage him to assist us accordingly. The Psalmist gives us this as a reliable maxim, “You, LORD, never abandon those who put their trust in you.”273 Once the heart is won to rest in God, to repose on him, God will certainly satisfy it. He will never be like water that fails to quench. Nor has he said at any time to the seed of Jacob, “You seek my face in vain.” If Christ is chosen as the source of our supply, then he will not fail us.
[2.] Such expectation makes the heart attentively listen for Christ.
Such expectation makes the heart diligently pay attention to all the ways and means through which Christ is likely to communicate himself to the soul. It accepts the real assistance of all graces and ordinances. If we expect something from a man, we apply ourselves to all the ways and means through which his help may be obtained. The beggar who expects an alm lies in the doorway or in the path of the person from whom he expects to receive it. Christ’s ordinances are the way through which he ordinarily communicates himself to us. Someone who expects something from him must attend to his ordinances. It is faith’s expectation that sets the heart to work in this way.
I am not talking about an idle, or groundless hope. If there is any strength, effectiveness, and power to mortify a sin through prayer or sacrament, then this expectation of relief from Christ will certainly make a man interested in it. Hence, I reduce all my behavior, whether by prayer, meditation, or the like, to this foundational truth: I can expect help from Christ by it. There is no other need to emphasize these disciplines when they are founded on this base and spring from this root. They are uniquely suited to this purpose of expecting help, and no other.
Now, as for this direction to mortify a prevailing lust, you may have a thousand proofs that expecting help from Christ is crucial to mortifying sin. Anyone who has walked with God under such temptation, has found it useful and successful. I will leave this topic without adding any more. I will only mention some particulars relating to what has been.
First, let your faith act specifically on Christ crucified and slain.
Let your faith act specifically on the death, blood, and cross of Christ; that is, on Christ crucified and slain. Mortification of sin flows uniquely from the death of Christ. He died to destroy the works of the devil. It is one exceptional outcome of the death of Christ that will certainly be fulfilled. Whatever came over our nature by the devil’s first temptation, whatever gains strength in us by the devil’s daily propositions, Christ died to destroy it all. “He gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all wickedness, and purify for himself a special people, zealous of good works.”274 This was his aim and intent in giving himself for us (and he will not fail). His design was to free us from the power of our sins, and purify us from all our defiling lusts. “He gave himself for the church, that he might sanctify and cleanse it, that he might present it to himself a glorious church. It would not have a spot, a wrinkle, or a blemish, but instead it would be holy.”275 And, in varying degrees, this will be accomplished as a result of his death. For this reason, our washing, purging, and cleansing is attributed to his blood.276 Sprinkling it on us “purges our consciences from dead works to serve the living God.”277 This is what we aim at. This is what we pursue: to purge our consciences from dead works, and root out these acts of death, destroying them so they no longer have a place in us. This will certainly be brought about by the death of Christ, and virtue will bloom from it for this purpose. Indeed, all supplies of the Spirit, all communications of grace and power, come from the death of Christ, as I have shown elsewhere.278 This is how the apostle states it: “How can we, who are dead to sin, live in it any longer?”279 Dead to sin by profession; dead to sin because it is our obligation; dead to sin because virtue and power are provided to kill it; dead to sin because of our union with and our regard for Christ through whom it is killed: how can we live in sin?
Paul presses this using several considerations in the ensuing verses. All of them are taken from the death of Christ. This must not be: “Do you not know that those of us who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?”280 Baptism is evidence that we are implanted into Christ, baptized into him. But what interest do we gain in him by being baptized? “His death,” Paul says. If we are indeed baptized into Christ, beyond mere formality, then we are baptized into his death. The apostle gives us an explanation of being baptized into the death of Christ in Romans 6:4; Romans 6:6. “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, we may also walk in newness of life. Knowing that our old man is crucified with him, rendering the body of sin without effect, we should not serve sin as a slave anymore.” He is saying, “This is being baptized into the death of Christ, namely, to be dead to sin, to have our sins put to death just as he was put to death for our sins. This was done so that we may be raised up to grace and newness of life, just as he was raised up to glory.” He tells us why we have this baptism into the death of Christ: “Our old man is crucified with him, so that the body of sin might be destroyed,”281 [NT:4957 sustauroo]. It is “crucified with him,” not as to its timing, but as to its cause. We are crucified with him, • meritoriously, in that he procured the Spirit for us to mortify sin;
• efficiently, in that from his death virtue blooms to enable us to crucify sin;
• representatively, in that we will certainly be crucified to sin, just as he was for our sin. This is what the apostle means: by his death, Christ destroyed the works of the devil, procured the Spirit for us, and killed the reign of sin in believers in such a way that it will not realize its goal, which is to control and destroy us.
Secondly, expect power and then endeavor to conform to Christ.
Let your faith act on the death of Christ in two ways: first by expecting power, and then by endeavoring to conform.282 For the first, the general direction I gave above should suffice. As for the latter, the apostle’s direction may shed some light. Let faith look on Christ as he is described in the gospel: dying and crucified for us. Look at him under the weight of our sins, praying, bleeding, and dying.283 By faith bring him in that condition into your heart. Apply his blood, shed for you, to your sin - and do it daily. I might go on at great length using various examples, but I must come to a close.
2. The work of the Spirit in mortification.
All I have left to add is the work of the Spirit in this business of mortification, which is so uniquely assigned to him. This whole work, which I have described as our duty, is accomplished in all its aspects by the power of the Spirit. Such as, (1.) The Spirit alone convicts the heart of its sin.
He alone clearly and fully convinces the heart of the evil, the guilt, and the danger of the immorality, lust, or sin that is to be mortified. Without this conviction, or while it is so faint that the heart can hardly wrestle with or absorb it, there will be no progress. An unbelieving heart (as we all partly have) will sidestep any consideration of sin until it is overpowered by clear and obvious convictions. Now, this is the proper work of the Spirit: “He convicts the world of sin.”284 He alone can do it. If men’s rational consideration of the word were able to convince them of sin, we would see more convictions than we do. Preaching the word lets men understand that they are sinners, and that certain things are sins, and that they are guilty of them, but this light is not powerful enough. It does not lay hold of the practical beliefs of the soul in a way that conforms the mind and will to them, and produces behavior appropriate to such an understanding. And so wise and knowledgeable men, who do not have the Spirit, do not consider the behavior associated with lust to be sins at all. The Spirit alone convicts them of it. This is the first thing the Spirit does to mortify a lust. It convinces the soul of all the evil of its lust. It cuts off all of its protests, discovers all its deceits, stops all its evasions, and answers all its pretenses. It makes the soul own its abomination, and makes it submit in recognition of it. Unless this is done, all that follows is in vain.
(2.) The Spirit alone reveals to us the fullness of Christ for our relief. This is the consideration that keeps the heart from false ways and from despair.285 (3.) The Spirit alone bolsters the heart to expect relief from Christ. This is the great sovereign means of mortification, as we discovered.286 (4.) The Spirit alone brings the cross of Christ into our hearts with its sin-killing power. The Spirit baptizes us into the death of Christ (5.) The Spirit is the author and finisher of our sanctification.
He gives new supplies and influences of grace for our holiness and sanctification, when the control of sin is weakened.287 (6.) The Spirit supports the soul’s petitions to God. In all the soul’s petitions to God while it is in this condition, it has support from the Spirit. Where do the power, life, and strength of prayer come from? Where does its effectiveness come from to prevail with God? Do these not come from the Spirit? He is the “Spirit of earnest prayer” promised to those “who look at the one they have pierced,”288 who enables them “to pray with sighs and groans that cannot be expressed.”289 This is the great way that faith prevails with God. That is how Paul dealt with his temptation, whatever it was: “I pleaded with the Lord that it might leave me.”290 It is the work of the Spirit in prayer that assists us and makes us victorious. It is not my present intent to demonstrate how and by what means he does that, nor what we are to do so that we may enjoy his help for that purpose.291 The End