2.02.04. A comprehensive confession
IV. A COMPREHENSIVE CONFESSION.
“ But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteougnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid tiiy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.” — Isaiah 64:6-7.
T is not enough to say of this brief prayer that it is figurative in the form of its expressions. It is a combination of many types. Natural analogies are piled upon each other, as the penitent strives to give all his emotions vent in language. It will be our effort to analyze the compact conglomerate, and examine in succession each of its constituent parts. A quickened and repenting people in those ancient times pour forth their confession through Isaiah’s lips. The speech is simple and sweet and tender, like the wailing of a suffering child. The conscience has been reached and melted, and here in our sight the confession flows. Obviously this sinful man “ pours out his heart unto God" he keeps nothing back.
Let us draw near and listen while an exercised human spirit makes full confession of sin to God, that we may make his prayer our own. The confession consists of six several but consecutive and closely connected parts. We shall enumerate them as they follow each other in the text, and then endeavour to obtain for ourselves the lessons which they teach. There is much meaning in each separate ingredient of this confession considered by itself, and more in the relations and union of the whole: —
1. The taint of sin, that from the springs of humanity has poisoned all its streams — “We are all as an unclean thing.”
2. The worthlessness and positive loathsomeness of all the efforts which a sinful man can make to set himself at first right with God — “ All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.”
3. The frailty, uncertainty, and shortness of human life — “ We all do fade as a leaf.”
4. The power and success of internal corruption in hurrying the man away into actual transgressions — “ Our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”
5. The inability and unwillingness of these helpless sinners, as they are drifting down the stream of sin towards the gulf of perdition, to lift themselves up and lay hold on God — “ There is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.”
6. God’s method of dealing with such a case — “Thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.”
I. The taint of sin, that from the springs of humanity has poisoned all its streams: “ We are all as an unclean thing.”
What feature of his dreadful case is first revealed to an awakening soul, we cannot tell; the beginnings of life are kept secret. Probably, as there are diversities of operation in the process of bringing a man out of death into life, there may also be diversities in the process of revealing to him that he is dead in trespasses and sins. One man, when conviction by the Spirit first begins, may have his eye chiefly fixed on one feature, and another man on a different feature, of the carnal mind. But whether the discovery begin with the root or the branches, — with the deep rebellion of the heart or the manifold transgressions of the life, — it is certain that when a really awakened sinner proceeds to make an articulate confession to God, he is inclined, like Isaiah in this text, to begin at the beginning: “ We are all as an unclean thing.” When the patriarch had learned at length to know himself and God, and to bring the two together, a short formula best expressed his experience: “ Behold, I am vile.” This is the confession of faith, on its under or subjective side, which all who are taught of the Spirit are willing to sign. This confession does not yet proclaim the way of salvation, but it has unveiled the necessities of the lost; it points not yet to the sun in the heavens, but it owns and laments the darkness which broods over the earth. This darkness does not create the light, but it makes the light welcome when God commands it to shine.
True confession of sin, like its counterpart, true faith in Christ, is not partial, but universal. It belongs to all and it belongs all to each. There is none that doeth good, and there is no good thing in any one. When one who has been convinced by the Spirit takes words and turns to God, he begins at the heart, as the spring whence the many unclean streams of thoughts and words and deeds flow out in the daily life. This simplicity is a mark of truth. It is not an in ventory of remembered shortcomings that disturbs the conscience in the prospect of the judgment. He has looked in on his own heart, and back over his past life, and forward to the great Day, and upward to the righteous Judge, and has discovered that his character is sin, his condition misery. Around the circle of his life he sees no spot where a troubled conscience can find a resting-place. When he opens his lips to express his state, the complaint is not a superficial gleaning of the bulkiest sins. He does not dally on the surface; he goes right to the root. An unclean thing. He counts himself a defiling spot on God’s fair creation, and loathes the self which, notwithstanding, he cannot fling away. “ wretched man that I Amos 1 who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
II. The worthlessness and positive loathsomeness of all the efforts which a sinful man can make to set himself at first right with God: “ All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.”
Most naturally this ingredient of the confession comes next in order. He looked first to his sins, and told what he thought of them; he next looks to his righteousness, and we shall learn what his opinion is in regard to it also. This is the natural history of the process — the process of conviction. By this way the soul went in order to reach true repentance. The path is rugged and painful.
It is a voyage of discovery, in which all that lies before you is unknown, and where every increase of knowledge is acquired at the expense of falls and bruises. When a sense of guilt and a fear of wrath force their way into the conscience, nature’s instinct prompts to the method of making peace by doing better for the time to come. There is no instinct more uniform than this recourse to self-righteousness as soon as conviction of sin becomes alarming. After the discovery of our sin, another discovery, still more terrible, remains to be made — the discovery that our righteousness will do no more for us in the judgment than our sins. In the first stages of conviction, although one by one the pretensions of innocence fail the culprit, he has still hope in another resource, — a second line of defence, — in which he may make a stand. If he must own that the sins deserve wrath, he will betake himself to righteousness, in the hope that, though it cannot be expected to be complete, it may yet go far as a protector.
It is when the fugitive soul is driven from this inner line of defence that the crisis of the case arrives. It is this feature, — this step of the confession, — that we examine now.
Perhaps the memory of some painful dream will afford us more help in the examination of this point than any phase of our waking experience. You have dreamed that you were in a strange, unknown place, and that all imaginable difficulties were gathering round you. Among other misfortunes, by some unexplained and unaccountable neglect, you were left without clothing far from home and from friends. In the dreary, shuddering apprehension of the moment you eagerly clutch at the first thing that lies to hand, and wrap it round you with convulsive haste. Glad to have gotten something that feels like a covering, you proceed on your way somewhat more hopefully for a time. The dawn, although it may be discerned in the east, does not yet sensibly diminish the darkness that broods over you and your path. You step forward with a comfortable sensation of being at least clothed. Quickly the light increases, and soon bursts into day; the path is leading to frequented thoroughfares; now you discover that the garment which you hastily snatched is a bundle of unconnected rags, very poor and very filthy. This garment is a conspicuous badge of shame, and you have none other. A sinking of the heart, and a choking in the throat, awaken you from sleep, and you discover that it was but a dream.
Gradually the wildly-pulsing heart sinks down again into its normal peacefulness, and nothing remains of the terror but an involuntary sob at intervals, like a ground-swell after a storm. Not more naturally do you in such a perplexity snatch any covering that lies within your reach than does a sinful man, when convictions first begin to prick his conscience, betake himself hastily to a self -wrought righteousness. As uniformly and necessarily as a rebound in the opposite direction follows the blow, a soul, when first alarmed by a sense of sin, endeavours to deprecate dreaded wrath by getting up a painful and forced obedience. How busily the naked, when he discovers his nakedness, labours to get a covering, and how long he labours sometimes in vain! For a time a man may be so busy gathering the rags and putting them on that he does not perceive their filthiness; more terrible, on that account, is the discovery that awaits him when the quickening Spirit sheds in a brighter light, and he learns at length that the King is coming in, while he is destitute of a wedding garment.
Those who have never experienced the distress which the dream represents cannot, even in imagination, form a conception of the dismay and sinking of heart that would overwhelm them, if they found themselves, the observed of all observers, entering the presence of royalty clothed in filthy rags. Your limbs would totter beneath you, and your tongue would cleave to the roof of your mouth. Your heart would seem to be a heavy, hard, cold stone lying within your breast and crushing it.
Such in kind, but inconceivably magnified in degree, is the dismay that seizes a sinner who has been busy preparing a righteousness for the judgment-seat, when in the light of the great white throne, now felt to be very near, he discovers that the righteousness wherewith he has covered his sins is yet more vile in God’s sight than the sins which it is employed to cover. Nor let any one lightly deem that this representation is introduced as the necessary filling up of a well-favoured theological system. The scripture and reason concur in demonstrating that the righteousness which the convicted but unreconciled soul throws over its uncleanness is itself at least equally unclean. Love is the fulfilling of the law; and in these hasty, painful efforts to provide a satisfying obedience there is no love. You make these efforts while you are strangers to pardon and reconciliation in Christ, not because you trust in God’s mercy, but because you dread his holiness. These are peace-offerings flung to an enemy, not love lavished on a friend. If you were near a lion and in his power, you would throw him a piece of flesh, in the hope that, soothed and satisfied with the morsel you had given him, he might not be disposed to tear you.
Men, stung by apprehended wrath, and not reassured by tasting mercy, treat God thus. Their diligent tread-mill round of duty, and painful penances, and costly offerings, are a stratagem cunningly contrived to occupy the attention of the omniscient Watcher while they turn round a comer and escape.
Wanting pardon and reconciling in the Mediator, there is no love in the good works which men bring to God; and wanting love, there is no life in them; and wanting life, they are dead; and the dead run to corruption; and the more of the dead you heap together, the ranker is the decay. From dead works as well as from acts of sin we must be purged through the blood of the covenant ere our service can be pleasing to God. Such prayers and penances add insult to injury. Hatred of God’s holiness is the motive of the deeds. As long as you toil unforgiven, unreconciled, unrenewed, to work a righteousness under which you may be safe from God’s displeasure, you are in effect vainly trying to throw dust in the eyes of your enemy. If you could be assured that he did not hate sin and would not punish it, you would instantly cease to strive after righteousness. Ah, these filthy rags! how intensely loathsome they seem to the dear child when Christ has made him free.
III. The frailty, uncertainty, and shortness of human life: “ We all do fade as a leaf.” The time is short, and even the short time is uncertain.
Any day, any hour, thy soul may be required of thee. This thought, coming on the back of the discovery that your righteousnesses are filthy rags, adds to the agony. Our own righteousness is worthless, and our breath may be taken away before we have time to cast about for another. We have suddenly awakened and found our lamps out and our oil-vessels empty; alas! while we go to buy the Bridegroom may pass and the door be shut.
You are in debt. It has been announced that you must be ready with payment in your hand to meet your creditor face to face whenever he may call. You stand among a crowd of fellow-debtors in the outer court. From time to time the awful voice of the judge resounds from within the veil, calling now one and now another of your neighbours by name into his presence. Every man rises and goes in the moment that he hears the summons; some enter cheerful, and some with terror in their look and trembling in their limbs, but all enter instantly as they are called. You know well that your turn cannot be far distant, but you know not at* what hour or moment it will come. Will you, in these circumstances, be at ease or in wretchedness? This depends on another question. Have you enough to pay your debt, or have you nothing? If you have enough, you await your call with composure, and obey it when it comes with a light heart; if you have nothing to pay, your heart beats hurriedly at every movement in the crowd; and when your name is called, you faint and fall to the ground.
It cannot be denied that many who would fain seem free are, through fear of death, all their lifetime subject to bondage. Two classes occupying the two opposite extremes contrive to enjoy life, although its term is short and uncertain: those on the one hand who have never been disturbed by conviction; and those on the other who have, through the Mediator, entered into peace. But to the multitude in the middle, who have been made aware of their own guilt, and not yet got it washed away in the blood of the cross.
Death in the distance darkens by his shadow all the joys of life. The fading of a leaf supplies a correct and affecting emblem of our mortality in both its main features — its certainty and its uncertainty. In one aspect nothing is more sure than the fall of the leaf, and in another nothing more uncertain. Look to this fruit or forest tree: of all the leaves that it bears to-day, glittering in the sunshine and quivering in the breeze, not one will remain in winter — all will be strewn on the ground. But when each leaf will fall is secret and unsearchable as the purposes of God.
One, touched by an imperceptible mildew, may drop soon after it has unfolded itself from the bud in spring; a second, bitten by a worm, may wither as soon as it has fully spread out iis surface to the sun of summer; a third may be shaken off by a boisterous wind, and a fourth nipped by an early frost. On what day of the season any leaf will drop no man knows; but that all will drop ere the season is over is absolutely sure.
Such is our condition in this life. We fade as a leaf fades. The generation will in a few years be laid in the dust, but the individuals composing it may be led away at any hour into eternity. This is our condition. It is a sad picture, but it is true; and it would be foolish to hide or forget it. We are on our warning, every one of us. We know not what a day may bring forth. Every day we perform a march, and every night lie down to sleep, a day’s journey nearer home. These busy hearts are beating the dead march to the grave. But the hope in Christ turns this sad world upside down; to them that are found in him, these pulsations mean a life-march to the rest that remaineth.
IV. The power and success of internal corruption in hurrying the man into actual sin: “ Our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”
It is a mark of true repentance when the penitent lays all the blame upon himself. He who tries to shift the burden so as to lay it on his neighbour, has not yet, in faith, gotten his burden laid on Christ; on the other hand, he who has gotten his sins laid on Christ, is not under the necessity of shifting the guilt upon a fellow-creature. This confession bears the mark of truth. Our iniquities have carried us away. There is indeed a spiritual wickedness in high places, as well as evil communications between man and man; but when a soul is truly convinced of sin by the Spirit, and draws near to the Father in confession, these outward enemies are forgotten, and the sin is felt to be all the sinner’s own. Every one is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lusts and enticed.
Like the wind, in the secrecy of its origin and the greatness of its effects, is the spirit of evil as well as the Spirit of grace. As the wind carries chaff away, so the impetuous passions of an evil heart overcome every resolution of amendment, and direct the whole volume of the life. It is strange that this confession follows immediately upon the reflection that we all do fade as a leaf. You might suppose that if men believed themselves immortal they might dare to sin with a high hand; but that the knowledge of death being certain, coupled with the uncertainty and suddenness of its approach, would compel them to live soberly and righteously and godly in the world. Vain expectation! The knowledge that death is sure, and the day of it uncertain, does indeed exert a force in the direction of restraining sin. It is a power which, to the extent of its ability, binds the evil spirit; but it is like a green withe round Samson’s limbs. It opposes wickedness, but it has not power to stop its career, or even to diminish its speed. A great ship is lying in deep water, dose to a precipitous beach, with two or three lines made fast to the shore, and all her canvas spread. A breeze off the land springs up, and increases to a gale. Will the ship retain her position? No; she will be driven out to sea. But is she not bound by these ropes to the shore? Yes, these lines hold her to the shore with all their might; but when such a blast fills the sails, they’ snap asunder like threads.
Such and so feeble is the thought of death to keep a man back, when the passions of his own heart carry him away like the wind. Sometimes — and the experience is by no means rare— those whose business it is every day to dig graves and handle the dead neither fear God nor regard man. The scripture is entirely accordant with experience when it intimates that the man who knows that he fades like a leaf permits his own iniquities notwithstanding to carry him away. The fear of death has not power to turn us from sin.
V. The inability and unwillingness of these helpless sinners, as they are drifting down the stream of sin towards the gulf of perdition, to lift themselves up and take hold on God: “ There is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.”
Here again we might at first sight suppose, that as there is help at hand, the feeble will grasp it, and be saved.
Because there is a God to lay hold of, we would think, those who are carried away to perdition like chaff on the wind will lay hold of God, that they may not perish. His feet have well-nigh slipped into the pit; but surely on that very account he will stay himself upon his God.
Alas! it is not so. If a man were carried down against his own will by some external force, he would gladly grasp any friendly hand that might be stretched out for help. But the state of the case is different, — is opposite. It is his own iniquities that are carrying him away. To grasp God’s hand as it is in Christ stretched out would indeed save him — would snatch him out of that impetuous flood, and hide his life with Christ in God; but this would tear the man asunder — would separate the man from himself.
He would indeed be saved, so as by fire, leaving a right eye and a right hand behind him. This kind of safety he is not yet willing to accept. If he were invited to stir himself up to lay hold of a safe heaven, he might make a shift to obey; but he has no inclination to stir himself up to lay hold of a holy God, and to abide in the light of his countenance, “ Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.” “ Put off the old man with his deeds.”
VI. God’s method of dealing with such a case: “ Thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.” The Holy One hides his face from his creatures while they live in sin.
“And hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.” I prefer to take this clause in its most literal sense, as it is given in the margin — “ Thou hast melted us by the hand of our iniquities.” God melts the hardest sinners, and he employs their own sins to make the flinty hearts flow down. If this melting take effect in the day of grace, it is repentance unto life. What a mystery is here! All are his servants. He can employ a man’s own sins as the burning coals poured on his head to melt him into confession and trust. We have often found souls undergoing this process. There is great grief and great tenderness, the fountains of the great deep seem to have been broken up within them, and their eyes have become fountains of tears. Ask what ails them, and from the groans, and cries, and broken words you soon discover that their own sins have in some way been lifted up and poured over them like melted lead. This is the hand of God. He is melting these highhanded transgressors — melting them down in order to mould them again as new creatures in Christ; and the means whereby he makes the stony hearts yield are their own sins treasured up, and poured in a scalding stream over their own consciences. Ah 1 when they are softened in that furnace they will be poured into another type, and emerge new creatures. By terrible things in righteousness the Lord is answering their cry. But if the sinful are not so melted in the day of grace, they will be melted when that day is done. By their own iniquities, too, will the judgment be inflicted. Their own sins on their own heads will be at least a material part of the doom of the lost in the great Day.
Having examined somewhat fully what the text is, we shall now, in a concluding sentence, point out where it lies.
Many lessons may be obtained from its contents; at least one, exceeding great and precious, may be drawn from its position. After having looked to the text, we shall look at that which touches it, before and behind. The gem is the chief object of attraction, but its setting may be both beautiful and precious. When a diamond of great size, of historic interest and almost fabulous worth, now the property of the Queen, was some years ago exhibited to the public, it was supported on either side by the representation of a human hand made of gold, and artistically constructed to represent at once firmness and tenderness, as a living human hand would hold fast and hold forth that which is unspeakably precious. In that case, a measure of interested attention was given by the spectators to the setting, second only to that which the gem attracted to itself.
Here, too, when, in the expanse of Scripture, a gem so precious was about to be held up to view, care seems to have been taken to give it a setting, precious in its own nature, and in its form betokening tender care and deep appreciation. A hand of gold protrudes from either side, expressively and impressively holding forth the precious and full-bodied confession of the ancient prophet. The word that touches it on the one side (end of Isaiah 64:5) is, “We shall be saved;” the word that touches it on the other side (beginning of Isaiah 64:8) is, “But now, O Lord, thou art our Father.”
It is not by chance that this great deep confession lies between these two words — is held up and held out in these two tender loving hands. “ We are saved by hope,” not by terror. It is God*s mercy that melts. If these arms of love had not been thrown round the stony heart, the stony heart would not thus have flowed down like water. When they propose to melt the rugged ore, and bring the precious metal out, they put a fire below it and a fire above it, and fan both into a sevenfold glow. Between these two fires the rock at length gives way.
It is thus that the melting of repentance and the outflow of confession are produced. Terror alone, even the terror of the Lord, does not avail. The weight of apprehended judgment lying on the guilty will only compress the soul into a harder, intenser atheism, unless redeeming love burst through. Surround a fallen human spirit with the immediate and certain apprehension of divine vengeance due to sin — leave no chink in that wall of brass to admit a ray of hope from the face of Jesus — confront the creature with the Creator’s almighty anger — and nothing more, nothing else: you will not thereby melt that human spirit into repentance and faith. That creature, though guilty now and feeble, is, in his origin and nature, great and Godlike That spirit, despairing, will curse God and die — die hard.
It is another thing than divine anger that really melts and remoulds the man. Isaiah, in this case a representative man — for the word is not of private interpretation — Isaiah, secretly conscious of sin, looks this way, and the signal hung out is, “ We shall be saved;” looks that way, and the signal displayed is, “ Thou art our Father.” Between these fires the heart is melted, and flows down into the great confession of the text. This, Isaiah, is “repentance unto life;” but the goodness of God, compassing thee behind and before — “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.”