April 27

Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? - Romans 7:24.

THIS acknowledgment, and this solicitude, is expressed by the Lord’s people now; and there is abundant consolation for such. And we may mention four things to incite and animate them. First, they should remember that the complaint is not peculiar to them; they sometimes feel that no one ever sighed or groaned like them, or was condemned like them. But they are forgetting the lessons of Scripture. They do not remember that the Jews in their passage, when they crossed the Red Sea, came to Marah, where the waters were bitter, as well as Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and threescore and ten palm-trees. Or that in the immortal Pilgrim’s Progress there were in the way of “the shining light” the Valley of Humiliation and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as well as the Delectable Mountains. They forget that a very eminent servant of God has said, from his own experience, that “the way to heaven was heaven and hell by turns.” They forget that the emblem of the church is a bush burning with fire and not consumed; and that the motto of the church is, “Without are fightings, and within are fears.” They forget that in reading the Scriptures they have found one saying, “I am cast out of his sight,” and another, “I am cut off from before his eyes,” and another, “I sink in deep mire where there is no standing,” and another, “On my eyelids is the shadow of death.”

Secondly, We should remember that this experience is a mercy, and a great mercy; that it is essential to all real religion; that it is previous to all true consolation; that it is a proof of the divine agency. “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh.” That it is a pledge of the divine favour; that God says, “To that man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word.” That the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart he will not despise. “Is Ephraim,” says he, “my dear son? Is he a pleasant child? for, since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still; therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him.”

Thirdly, we should remember that all in us is not evil now. We are liable sometimes to mistake in this matter. When we read the writings of Luther and the earlier reformers, we sometimes are rather surprised that they say so much against what they call good works. But we should remember that the good works they thus spoke against were the good works of Popery,-works uncommanded of God:-“Touch not, taste not, handle not, which things have a show of wisdom in will-worship and humility.” These they absolutely condemn, but not what we mean by good works, which proceed from a principle of divine grace, and are devoted to the glory of God: they never speak against these. When they were taken out of their places,-when they were placed in the room of Christ,-then indeed they spoke against them, but never otherwise; never as things by which divine grace is endeared, by which we glorify God and serve men, by which we are “made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.”

Let us beware, therefore, that we never depreciate not only what God has done for us, neither what he has done in us. The work of the Holy Spirit is called a “good work in you;” and it is a good work. “I will put my Spirit in him,” says God; and his Spirit is good. “The water that I shall give him,” says the Saviour, “shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” The Christian, with all his complaints, has something in him more valuable than gold, and which God himself delights in; something which partakes of his image as well as of his own operations. Lastly, as all is not evil in the believer now, so nothing will be evil in him long. No: “The night is far spent, and the day is at hand,” and our warfare will soon be accomplished.

“What though our inward lusts rebel?

’Tis but a struggling gasp for life.

The weapons of victorious grace

Shall slay our sins, and end the strife.”