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Chapter 6
The worst thing about many zealous churchmen is their total ignorance of what their own prayer book contains. Whether we are churchmen or not, one thing is certain. This Christian warfare is a great reality and a subject of vast importance.
It is not a matter like church government and ceremonial, about which men may differ and yet reach heaven at last. Necessity is laid upon us. We must fight.
There are no promises in the Lord Jesus Christ's epistles to the seven churches, except to those who overcome. Where there is grace, there will be conflict. The believer is a soldier.
There is no holiness without a warfare. Saved souls will always be found who have fought a fight. It is a fight of absolute necessity.
Let us not think that in this war we can remain neutral and sit still. Such a line of action may be possible in the strife of nations, but it is utterly impossible in that conflict which concerns the soul. The boasted policy of non-interference, the masterly inactivity which pleases so many statesmen, the plan of keeping quiet and letting things alone, all this will never do in the Christian warfare.
Here at any rate no one can escape serving under the plea that he is a man of peace. To be at peace with the world, the flesh and the devil, is to be at enmity with God and in the broad way that lead us to destruction. We have no choice or option.
We must either fight or be lost. It is a fight of universal necessity. No rank or class or age can plead exemption or escape the battle.
Ministers and people, preachers and hearers, old and young, high and low, rich and poor, gentle and simple, kings and subjects, landlords and tenants, learned and unlearned, all alike must carry arms and go to war. All have by nature a heart full of pride, unbelief, sloth, worldliness, and sin. All are living in a world beset with snares, traps, and pitfalls for the soul.
All have near them a busy, restless, malicious devil. All from the queen in her palace down to the pauper in the workhouse, all must fight if they would be saved. It is a fight of perpetual necessity.
It admits of no breathing time, no armistice, no truce. On weekdays as well as on Sundays, in private as well as in public, at home by the family fireside as well as abroad, in little things like management of tongue and temper as well as in great ones like the government of kingdoms, the Christian's warfare must unceasingly go on. The foe we have to do with keeps no holidays, never slumbers, and never sleeps.
So long as we have breath in our bodies, we must keep on our armor and remember that we are on an enemy's ground. Even on the brink of Jordan, said a dying saint, I find Satan nibbling at my heels. We must fight till we die.
Let us consider well these propositions. Let us take care that our own personal religion is real, genuine, and true. The saddest symptom about so many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight in their Christianity.
They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a scanty round of formal religious services once or twice a week. But the great spiritual warfare, its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests, of all this they appear to know nothing at all. Let us take care that this case is not our own.
The worst state of soul is when the strong man armed keepeth the house and his goods are at peace, when he leads men and women captive at his will and they make no resistance. The worst chains are those which are never felt nor seen by the prisoner. We may take comfort about our souls if we know anything of an inward fight and conflict.
It is the invariable companion of genuine Christian holiness. It is not everything, I am well aware, but it is something. Do we find in our hearts of heart a spiritual struggle? Do we find anything of the flesh lusting against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh so that we cannot do the things we would? Galatians 5.17 Are we conscious of two principles within us contending for the mastery? Do we feel anything of war in our inward man? Well, let us thank God for it.
It is a good sign. It is strongly probable evidence of the great work of sanctification. All true saints are soldiers.
Anything is better than apathy, stagnation, deadness and indifference. We are in a better state than many. The most part of so-called Christians have no feeling at all.
We are evidently no friends of Satan. Like the kings of this world, he wars not against his own subjects. The very fact that he assaults us should fill our minds with hope.
I say again, let us take comfort. The child of God has two great marks about him, and of these two we have one. He may be known by his inward warfare as well as by his inward peace.
I pass on to the second thing which I have to say in handling my subject. True Christianity is the fight of faith. In this respect, the Christian warfare is utterly unlike the conflicts of this world.
It does not depend on the strong arm, the quick eye or the swift foot. It is not waged with carnal weapons but with spiritual. Faith is the hinge on which victory turns.
Success depends entirely on believing. A general faith in the truth of God's written word is the primary foundation of the Christian soldier's character. He is what he is, does what he does, thinks as he thinks, acts as he acts, hopes as he hopes, behaves as he behaves for one simple reason.
He believes certain propositions revealed and laid down in the Holy Scripture. He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. A religion without doctrine or dogma is a thing which many are fond of talking of in the present day.
It sounds very fine at first, it looks very pretty at a distance. But the moment we sit down to examine and consider it, we shall find it a simple impossibility. We might as well talk of a body without bones and sinews.
No man will ever be anything or do anything in religion unless he believes something. Even those who profess to hold the miserable and uncomfortable views of the deists are obliged to confess that they believe something. With all their bitter sneers against dogmatic theology and Christian credulity, as they call it, they themselves have a kind of faith.
As for true Christians, faith is the very backbone of their spiritual existence. No one ever fights earnestly against the world, the flesh, and the devil, unless he has engraven on his heart certain great principles which he believes. What they are he may hardly know, and may certainly not be able to define or write down.
But there they are, and consciously or unconsciously, they form the roots of his religion. Wherever you see a man, whether rich or poor, learned or unlearned, wrestling manfully with sin and trying to overcome it, you may be sure there are certain great principles which that man believes. The poet who wrote the famous lines, For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, He can't be wrong whose life is in the right, Was a clever man, but a poor divine.
There is no such thing as right living without faith and believing. A special faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, person, work, and office, is the life, heart, and mainspring of the Christian soldier's character. He sees by faith an unseen Savior, who loved him, gave himself for him, paid his debts for him, bore his sins, carried his transgressions, rose again for him, and appears in heaven for him as his advocate at the right hand of God.
He sees Jesus and clings to him. Seeing his Savior and trusting in him, he feels peace and hope, and willingly does battle against the foes of his soul. He sees his own many sins, his weak heart, a tempting world, a busy devil, and if he looked only at them he might well despair.
But he sees also a mighty Savior, an interceding Savior, a sympathizing Savior, his blood, his righteousness, his everlasting priesthood, and he believes that all this is his own. He sees Jesus and casts his whole weight on him. Seeing him he cheerfully fights on, with a full confidence that he will prove more than conqueror through him that loved him.
Romans 8 verse 37 Habitual lively faith in Christ's presence and readiness to help is the secret of the Christian soldier fighting successfully. It must never be forgotten that faith admits of degrees. All men do not believe alike, and even the same person has his ebbs and flows of faith, and believes more heartily at one time than another.
According to the degree of his faith, the Christian fights well or ill, wins victories, or suffers occasional repulses, comes off triumphant, or loses a battle. He that has most faith will always be the happiest and most comfortable soldier. Nothing makes the anxieties of warfare sit so lightly on a man as the assurance of Christ's love and continual protection.
Nothing enables him to bear the fatigue of watching, struggling, and wrestling against sin, like the indwelling confidence that Christ is on his side and success is sure. It is the shield of faith which quenches all the fiery darts of the wicked ones. It is the man who can say, I know whom I have believed, who can say in time of suffering, I am not ashamed.
He who wrote those glowing words, we faint not. Our light affliction, which endureth but for a moment, worketh in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, was the man who wrote with the same pen. We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.
For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. It is the man who wrote, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who said in the same epistle, the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. It is the man who said to me to live as Christ, who said in the same epistle, I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.
I can do all things through Christ. The more faith, the more victory. The more faith, the more inward peace.
I think it impossible to overrate the value and importance of faith. Well, may the Apostle Peter call it precious. 2 Peter 1.1 Time would fail me if I tried to recount a hundredth part of the victories which by faith Christian soldiers have obtained.
Let us take down our Bibles and read with attention the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews. Let us mark the long list of worthies whose names are thus recorded, from Abel down to Moses, even before Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, and brought life and immortality into full light by the gospel. Let us note well what battles they won against the world, the flesh, and the devil.
And then let us remember that believing did it all. These men looked forward to the promised Messiah. They saw him that is invisible.
By faith the elders obtained a good report. Hebrews 11 verses 2 through 27 Let us turn to the pages of early church history. Let us see how the primitive Christians held fast their religion even unto death, and were not shaken by the fiercest persecutions of heathen emperors.
For centuries there were never wanting men like Polycarp and Ignatius who were ready to die rather than deny Christ. Fines and prisons and torture and fire and sword were power of imperial Rome. The mistress of the world proved unable to stamp off the religion which began with a few fishermen and publicans in Palestine.
And then let us remember that believing in an unseen Jesus was the church's strength. They won their victory by faith. Let us examine the story of the Protestant Reformation.
Let us study the lives of its leading champions, Wycliffe and Huss and Luther and Ridley and Latimer and Hooper. Let us mark how these gallant soldiers of Christ stood firm against a host of adversaries, and were ready to die for their principles. What battles they fought, what controversies they maintained, what contradiction they endured, what tenacity of purpose they exhibited against a world in arms.
And then let us remember that believing in an unseen Jesus was the secret of their strength. They overcame by faith. Let us consider the men who have made the greatest marks in church history in the last hundred years.
Let us observe how men like Wesley and Whitfield and Venn and Romaine stood alone in their day and generation and revived English religion in the face of opposition from men in high office and in the face of slander, ridicule, and persecution from nine-tenths of professing Christians in our land. Let us observe how men like William Wilberforce and Havelock and Hedley Vickers have witnessed for Christ in the most difficult positions and displayed a banner for Christ even at the regimental mess table or on the floor of the House of Commons. Let us mark how these noble witnesses never flinched to the end and won the respect even of their worst adversaries.
And then let us remember that believing in an unseen Christ is the key to all their characters. By faith they lived and walked and stood and overcame. Would anyone live the life of a Christian soldier? Let him pray for faith.
It is the gift of God and a gift which those who ask shall never ask in vain. You must believe before you do. If men do nothing in religion, it is because they do not believe.
Faith is the first step toward heaven. Would anyone fight the fight of a Christian soldier successfully and prosperously? Let him pray for a continual increase of faith. Let him abide in Christ, get closer to Christ, tighten his hold on Christ every day that he lives.
Let his daily prayer be that of the disciples, Lord increase our faith. Luke 17 verse 5 Watch jealously over your faith if you have any. It is the citadel of the Christian character on which the safety of the whole fortress depends.
It is the point which Satan loves to assail. All lies at his mercy if faith is overthrown. Here, if we love life, we must especially stand on our guard.
Number 3 The last thing I have to say is this. True Christianity is a good fight. Good is a curious word to apply to any warfare.
All worldly war is more or less evil. No doubt it is an absolute necessity in many cases to procure the liberty of nations, to prevent the weak from being trampled down by the strong, but still it is an evil. It entails an awful amount of bloodshed and suffering.
It hurries into eternity myriads who are completely unprepared for their change. It calls forth the worst passions of men. It causes enormous waste and destruction of property.
It fills peaceful homes with mourning widows and orphans. It spreads far and wide poverty, taxation, and national distress. It disarranges all the order of society.
It interrupts the work of the gospel and the growth of Christian missions. In short, war is an immense and incalculable evil and every praying man should cry night and day, give peace in our time. And yet there is one warfare which is emphatically good and one fight in which there is no evil.
That warfare is the Christian warfare. That fight is the fight of the soul. Now what are the reasons why the Christian fight is a good fight? What are the points in which his warfare is superior to the warfare of this world? Let me examine this matter and open it out in order.
I dare not pass the subject and leave it unnoticed. I want no one to begin the life of a Christian soldier without counting the cost. I would not keep back from anyone that if he would be holy and see the Lord, he must fight and that the Christian fight, though spiritual, is real and severe.
It needs courage, boldness, and perseverance. But I want my readers to know that there is abundant encouragement if they will only begin the battle. The scripture does not call the Christian fight a good fight without reason and cause.
Let me try to show what I mean. A. The Christian fight is good because fought under the best of generals. The leader and commander of all believers is our divine Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, a Savior of perfect wisdom, infinite love, and almighty power.
The captain of our salvation never fails to lead his soldiers to victory. He never makes any useless movement, never errs in judgment, never commits any mistake. His eye is on all his followers, from the greatest of them even to the least.
The humblest servant in his army is not forgotten. The weakest and most sickly is cared for, remembered, and kept unto salvation. The souls whom he has purchased and redeemed with his own blood are far too precious to be wasted and thrown away.
Surely, this is good. B. The Christian fight is good because fought with the best of helps. Weak as each believer is in himself, the Holy Spirit dwells in him, and his body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.
Chosen by God the Father, washed in the blood of the Son, renewed by the Spirit, he does not go to warfare at his own charges, and is never alone. God the Holy Ghost daily teaches, leads, guides, and directs him. God the Father guards him by his almighty power.
God the Son intercedes for him every moment, like Moses on the mount, while he is fighting in the valley below. A threefold cord like this can never be broken. His daily provisions and supplies never fail.
His commissariat is never defective. His bread and his water are sure. Weak as he seems in himself like a worm, he is strong in the Lord to do great exploits.
Surely, this is good. C. The Christian fight is a good fight because fought with the best of promises. To every believer belong exceeding great and precious promises, all yea and amen in Christ.
Promises sure to be fulfilled, because made by one who cannot lie, and has power as well as will to keep his word. Sin shall not have dominion over you. The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.
He that has begun a good work will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the floods they shall not overflow thee. My sheep shall never perish, neither shall anyone pluck them out of my hand.
Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out. I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
Words like these are worth their weight in gold. Who does not know that promises of coming aid have cheered the defenders of besieged cities, like Lucknow, and raised them above their natural strength? Have we never heard that the promise of help before night had much to say to the mighty victory of Waterloo? Yet all such promises are as nothing compared to the rich treasure of believers, the eternal promises of God. Surely this is good.
D. The Christian fight is a good fight because fought with the best of issues and results. No doubt it is a war in which there are tremendous struggles, agonizing conflicts, wounds, bruises, watchings, fastings, and fatigue. But still every believer, without exception, is more than conqueror through him that loved him.
Romans 8.37 No soldiers of Christ are ever lost, missing, or left dead on the battlefield. No mourning will ever need to be put on, and no tears to be shed for either private or officer in the army of Christ. The muster roll, when the last evening comes, will be found precisely the same that it was in the morning.
The English guards marched out of London to the Crimean campaign, a magnificent body of men. But many of the gallant fellows laid their bones in a foreign grave and never saw London again. Far different shall be the arrival of the Christian army in the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Hebrews 11.10 Not one shall be found lacking. The words of our great captain shall be found true. Of them which thou hast given me I have lost none.
John 18.9 Surely this is good. E. The Christian's fight is good because it does good to the soul of him that fights it. All other wars have a bad, lowering, and demoralizing tendency.
They call forth the worst passions of the human mind. They harden the conscience and sap the foundations of religion and morality. The Christian warfare alone tends to call forth the best things that are left in man.
It promotes humility and charity. It lessens selfishness and worldliness. It induces men to set their affections on things above.
The old, the sick, the dying are never known to repent of fighting Christ's battles against sin, the world, and the devil. Their only regret is that they did not begin to serve Christ long before. The experience of that eminent saint, Philip Henry, does not stand alone.
In his last days he said to his family, I take you all to record that a life spent in the service of Christ is the happiest life that a man can spend upon earth. Surely this is good. F. The Christian's fight is a good fight because it does good to the world.
All other wars have a devastating, ravaging, and injurious effect. The march of an army through a land is an awful scourge to the inhabitants. Wherever it goes, it impoverishes, wastes, and does harm.
Injury to persons, property, feelings, and morals invariably accompanies it. Far different are the effects produced by Christian soldiers. Wherever they live, they are a blessing.
They raise the standard of religion and morality. They invariably check the progress of drunkenness, Sabbath breaking, profligacy, and dishonesty. Even their enemies are obliged to respect them.
Go where you please. You will rarely find that barracks and garrisons do good to the neighborhood. But go where you please.
You will find that the presence of a few true Christians is a blessing. Surely this is good. G. Finally, the Christian's fight is good because it ends in a glorious reward for all who fight it.
Who can tell the wages that Christ will pay to all his faithful people? Who can estimate the good things that our divine Captain has laid up for those who confess him before men? A grateful country will give to her successful warriors medals, Victoria Crosses, pensions, peerages, honors, and titles. But it can give nothing that will last and endure forever, nothing that can be carried beyond the grave. Palaces like Blauheim and Stockford, say, can only be enjoyed for a few years.
The bravest generals and soldiers must go down one day before the King of Terrors. Better, far better, is the position of him who fights under Christ's banner against sin, the world, and the devil. He may get little praise of man while he lives, and go down to the grave with little honor.
But he shall have that which is far better, because far more enduring. He shall have a crown of glory that fadeth not away. 1 Peter 5.4 Surely this is good.
Let us settle it in our minds that the Christian fight is a good fight, really good, truly good, emphatically good. We see only part of it as yet. We see the struggle, but not the end.
We see the campaign, and not the reward. We see the cross, but not the crown. We see a few humble, broken-hearted, penitent, praying people, enduring hardships and despised by the world.
But we see not the hand of God over them, the face of God smiling on them, the kingdom of glory prepared for them. These things are yet to be revealed. Let us not judge by appearances.
There are more good things about the Christian warfare than we see. And now let me conclude my whole subject with a few words of practical application. Our lot is cast in times when the world seems thinking of little else but battles and fighting.
The iron is entering into the soul of more than one nation, and the mirth of many a fair district is clean gone. Surely in times like these, a minister may fairly call on men to remember their spiritual warfare. Let me say a few parting words about the great fight of the soul.
Number one. It may be you are struggling hard for the rewards of this world. Perhaps you are straining every nerve to obtain money or place or power or pleasure.
If that be your case, take care. Your sowing will lead to a crop of bitter disappointment. Unless you mind what you are about, your latter end will be to lie down in sorrow.
Thousands have trodden the path you are pursuing, and have awoke too late to find it end in misery and eternal ruin. They have fought hard for wealth and honor and office and promotion, and turned their backs on God and Christ in heaven and the world to come. And what has been their end? Often, far too often, they have found out that their whole life has been a grand mistake.
They have tasted by bitter experience the feelings of the dying statesman who cried aloud in his last hours. The battle is fought. The battle is fought, but the victory is not won.
For your own happiness' sake, resolve this day to join the Lord's side. Shake off your past carelessness and unbelief. Come out from the ways of a thoughtless, unreasoning world.
Take up the cross and become a good soldier of Christ. Fight the good fight of faith, that you may be happy as well as safe. Think what the children of this world will often do for liberty without any religious principle.
Remember how Greeks and Romans and Swiss and Tyrolese have endured the loss of all things, and even life itself, rather than bend their necks to a foreign yoke. Let their example provoke you to emulation. If men can do so much for a corruptible crown, how much more should you do for one which is incorruptible? Awake to a sense of the misery of being a slave.
For life and happiness and liberty arise and fight. Fear not to begin and enlist under Christ's banner. The great captain of your salvation rejects none that come to him.
Like David in the cave of Adullam, he is ready to receive all who apply to him, however unworthy they may feel themselves. None who repent and believe are too bad to be enrolled in the ranks of Christ's army. All who come to him by faith are admitted, clothed, armed, trained, and finally led on to complete victory.
Fear not to begin this very day. There is yet room for you. Fear not to go on fighting if you once enlist.
The more thorough and wholehearted you are as a soldier, the more comfortable will you find your warfare. No doubt you will often meet with trouble, fatigue, and hard fighting before your warfare is accomplished, but let none of these things move you. Greater is he that is for you than all they that be against you.
Everlasting liberty or everlasting captivity are the alternatives before you. Choose liberty and fight to the last. 2. It may be you know something of the Christian warfare and are a tried and proved soldier already.
If that be your case, accept a parting word of advice and encouragement from a fellow soldier. Let me speak to myself as well as to you. Let us stir up our minds by way of remembrance.
There are some things which we cannot remember too well. Let us remember that if we would fight successfully, we must put on the whole armor of God and never lay it aside till we die. Not a single piece of the armor can be dispensed with.
The girdle of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit, the helmet of hope, each and all are needful. Not a single day can we dispense with any part of this armor. Well says an old veteran in Christ's army who died 200 years ago, In heaven we shall appear, not in armor, but in robes of glory.
But here our arms are to be worn night and day. We must walk, work, sleep in them, or else we cannot be true soldiers of Christ. Vernal's Christian Armor Let us remember the solemn words of an inspired warrior who went to his rest 1800 years ago.
No man that wore us entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. 2 Timothy 2.4 May we never forget that saying. Let us remember that some have seemed good soldiers for a little season and talked loudly of what they would do and yet turned back disgracefully in the day of battle.
Let us never forget Balaam and Judas and Demas and Lot's wife. Whatever we are and however weak, let us be real, genuine, true, and sincere. Let us remember that the eye of our loving Savior is upon us morning, noon, and night.
He will never suffice us to be tempted above that we are able to bear. He can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, for he suffered himself being tempted. He knows what battles and conflicts are, for he himself was assaulted by the prince of this world.
Having such a high priest, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. Hebrews 4.14 Let us remember that thousands of soldiers before us have fought the same battle that we are fighting and come off more than conquerors through him that loved them. They overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and so also may we.
Christ's arm is quite as strong as ever, and Christ's heart is just as loving as ever. He that saved men and women before us is one who never changes. He is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him.
Then let us cast doubts and fears away. Let us follow them who through faith and patience inherit the promises and are waiting for us to join them. Hebrews 7.25 Chapter 6.12 Finally, let us remember that the time is short, and the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
A few more battles, and the last trumpet shall sound, and the Prince of Peace shall come to reign on the renewed earth. A few more struggles and conflicts, and then we shall bid an eternal goodbye to warfare, and to sin, to sorrow, and to death. Then let us fight unto the last and never surrender.
Thus saith the Captain of our salvation, He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my Son. Revelation 21.7 Let me conclude all with the words of John Bunyan in one of the most beautiful parts of Pilgrim's Progress. He is describing the end of one of his best and holiest pilgrims.
After this it was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant-for-Truth was sent for by a summons by the same party as the others. And he had this word for a token that the summons was true. The pitcher was broken at the fountain.
Ecclesiastes 12.6 When he understood it, he called for his friends and told them of it. Then said he, Many accompanied him to the riverside, into which as he went down he said, O death, where is thy sting? And as he went down deeper he cried, O grave, where is thy victory? So he passed over, and all the trumpet sounded for him on the other side. May our end be like this.
May we never forget that without fighting there can be no holiness while we live, and no crown of glory when we die. Chapter 5, starting on page 68. The Cost Which of you, intending to build a house, didst not down first and counteth the cost? Luke 14.28 The text which heads this passage is one of great importance.
Few are the people who are not often obliged to ask themselves, What does it cost? In buying property, in building homes, in furnishing rooms, in forming plans, in changing dwellings, in educating children, it is wise and prudent to look forward and consider. Many would save themselves much sorrow and trouble if they would only remember the question, What does it cost? But there is one subject on which it is especially important to count the cost. That subject is the salvation of our souls.
What does it cost to be a true Christian? What does it cost to be a real holy man? This, after all, is the grand question. For want of thought about this, thousands, after seeming to begin well, turn away from the road to heaven and are lost forever in hell. Let me try to say a few words which may throw light on the subject.
1. I will show firstly what it costs to be a true Christian. 2. I will explain secondly why it is of such great importance to count the cost. 3. I will give, in the last place, some hints which may help men to count the cost rightly.
We are living in strange times. Events are hurrying on with singular rapidity. We never know what a day may bring forth.
How much less do we know what may happen in a year. We live in a day of great religious profession. Scores of professing Christians in every part of the land are expressing a desire for more holiness and a higher degree of spiritual life.
Yet nothing is more common than to see people receiving the word with joy and then after two or three years falling away and going back to their sins. They have not considered what it costs to be a really consistent believer and holy Christian. Surely these are times when we ought often to sit down and count the cost and to consider the state of our souls.
We must mind what we are about. If we desire to be truly holy, it is a good sign. We may thank God for putting the desire into our hearts but still the cost ought to be counted.
No doubt Christ's way to eternal life is a way of pleasantness but it is folly to shut our eyes to the fact that His way is narrow and the cross comes before the crown. Let there be no mistake about my meaning. I am not examining what it costs to save a Christian's soul.
I know well that it costs nothing less than the blood of the Son of God to provide an atonement and to redeem man from hell. The price paid for our redemption was nothing less than the death of Jesus Christ on Calvary. We are bought with a price.
Christ gave Himself a ransom for all. 1 Corinthians 6.20 and 1 Timothy 2.6 But all this is wide of the question. The point I want to consider is another one altogether.
It is what a man must be ready to give up if he wishes to be saved. It is the amount of sacrifice a man must submit to if he intends to serve Christ. It is in this sense that I raise the question, what does it cost? And I believe firmly that it is a most important one.
I grant freely that it costs little to be a mere outward Christian. A man has only got to attend a place of worship twice on Sunday and to be tolerably moral during the week and he has gone as far as thousands around him ever go in religion. All this is cheap and easy work.
It entails no self-denial or self-sacrifice. If this is saving Christianity and will take us to heaven when we die, we must alter the description of the way of life and right. Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to heaven.
But it does cost something to be a real Christian according to the standard of the Bible. There are enemies to be overcome, battles to be fought, sacrifices to be made, and Egypt to be forsaken, a wilderness to be passed through, a cross to be carried, a race to be run. Conversion is not putting a man in an armchair and taking him easily to heaven.
It is the beginning of a mighty conflict in which it costs much to win the victory. Hence arises the unspeakable importance of counting the cost. Let me try to show precisely and particularly what it costs to be a true Christian.
Let us suppose that a man is disposed to take service with Christ and feels drawn and inclined to follow Him. Let us suppose that some affliction or some sudden death or an awakening sermon has stirred his conscience and made him feel the value of his soul and desire to be a true Christian. No doubt there is everything to encourage him.
His sins may be freely forgiven, however great and many. His heart may be completely changed, however cold and hard. Christ and the Holy Spirit, mercy and grace, are all ready for him.
But still he should count the cost. Let us see particularly, one by one, the things that his religion will cost him. 1. For one thing it will cost him his self-righteousness.
2. He must cast away all pride and high thoughts and conceit of his own goodness. 3. He must be content to go to heaven as a poor sinner saved only by free grace and owing all to the merit and righteousness of another. 4. He must really feel as well as say the prayer book words that he has erred and gone astray like a lost sheep, that he has left undone the things he ought to have done and done the things he ought not to have done, and that there is no health in him.
5. He must be willing to give up all trust in his own morality, respectability, praying, Bible reading, church going, and sacrament receiving, and to trust in nothing but Jesus Christ. Now this sounds hard to some. I do not wonder.
Sure said a godly plowman to the well-known James Hervey of Weston Saville, It is harder to deny proud self than sinful self. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats.
Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail-order catalog, contain thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes, and videos at great discounts, is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email at swrb at swrb dot com, by phone at 780-450-3730, by fax at 780-468-1096, or by mail at 4710-37A Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6L 3T5. You may also request a free printed catalog. And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart.
From his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to his commands, they pervert true religion.
And if this principle was adopted by the papists, all those fictitious modes of worship, in which they absurdly exercise themselves, would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears.
Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying his word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The prophet's words then are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind. As though he had said that men assume too much wisdom, when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.