By the REV. J. P. MACQUEEN.
“Behold, now is the day of salvation,” (II Cor. vi, 2).
THE subject of our text is, by far, the most important one that can occupy human attention. It is that on which the glorious attributes of a triune God have been most conspicuously displayed, while it is a subject that engages the deep attention and sublime interest of holy angels, who desire to look into, and contemplate with heavenly delight, the things that pertain to our everlasting salvation. It is not surprising, therefore, that the inspired apostle addresses his readers and hearers in the unspeakably solemn words of interrogation: “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” Its importance is further emphasised by the fact that it was the Divine Author of salvation Himself who first proclaimed it, having come from Heaven, and assumed human nature, to do so, while it was confirmed by His ear-and-eye apostolic witnesses, God Himself bearing them witness with signs, wonders, divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost. Christ came into the world to bear witness to the truth. “I am the truth.”
Let us endeavour to consider this important passage, so pregnant with those solemn matters that pertain to the eternal destiny of countless millions. Let us notice (I) Salvation; (II) the Day of Salvation; and (III) the supreme attention it demands from us. “Behold!” intimating something of very great importance.
(I) Salvation implies captivity, wretchedness, misery, and danger, while it includes deliverance from them.
Man, by sinning, and therefore a transgressor of the Law, is in captivity in the prison-house of Divine, infinite, inflexible justice, and also wretched, miserable, poor, blind, diseased, and naked. He is guilty, for he sinned wilfully against the clearest light, knowledge and privileges, and he is consequently in a dangerous state. He is a rebel justly condemned, under sentence of eternal death. “For every sin deserves the wrath and curse of God both in this life and in that which is to come.” Sin is a transgression of the Divine Law of infinite love: “Love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength, and thy neighbour as thyself!” That is the perfect, royal law of holy liberty. The rational conscience, whether regenerate, or unregenerate, must confess that that law is good which requires us to love God, Who is Love, and Who is our Creator, Preserver, and bountiful Benefactor. Every conscience must confess that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. If we offend in one point we are guilty of all, whether that one point be in thought, word or deed. “Though hand join in hand the wicked shall not go unpunished.” “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the Law to do them.” Man’s condition, therefore, in a state of nature, is one of extreme wretchedness and imminent peril. He is so ruined in sin that he needs to be supernaturally convinced of the fact. “By the Law,” supernaturally and omnipotently applied by the Holy Spirit, “is the knowledge of sin.” When He, the Spirit of truth, will come, He will convince the world of sin. It is the peculiar honour, glory, and prerogative of the Holy Ghost that He is the only being in the Universe Who can convince a sinner of his sinnership, in the real Scriptural sense of the word. How indispensably necessary it is for preacher and hearer, therefore, to pray for the Holy Spirit.
The Gospel salvation alone provides deliverance from this awful danger, and restoration from this misery and wretchedness. Man’s greatest need, therefore, is to be acquitted, or, in the language of Scripture, justified, and provision is accordingly made that man may be acquitted, or justified, by faith in Jesus Christ, which is more than mere acquittal, for perfect righteousness is imputed to him, and received by faith alone, to the glory of Divine sovereign grace. Nevertheless, let no one’s confidence outstrip his holiness of heart, lip and life.
The Gospel salvation proclaims pardon for the sinner’s crimes, and a healing soothing balm for all his sinful maladies. He died, “the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” Thus, the believing penitent sinner is accepted in the Beloved, without a stain attached to the infinite Divine moral rectitude.
This salvation, which is the product of Divine sovereign grace and love; the effect of the Redeemer’s atoning vicarious death, and the supernatural omnipotent work of the Holy Spirit, and which is received by faith which is of the operation of God, is perfect in its nature. It is God, the Father, representing the Godhead, Who designed this glorious plan of salvation, to the praise of infinite wisdom, grace, and love; it was God, the eternal Son, Who executed the plan, in our nature, at the cost of His unspeakable sufferings and precious blood, while it is God, the Holy Ghost, the third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity, Who, supernaturally and omnipotently, applies the redemption purchased by Christ. Just as the Holy Ghost is honoured and glorified in the exercise of His unique royal prerogative of convincing a sinner of his sins, so He is also honoured and glorified in exercising His singular prerogative of glorifying Christ in the soul of the individual, as it is written: “He shall glorify Me, for He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you.” He, the Holy Spirit, is thus the only One, Who can manifest Jesus of Nazareth to the soul by supernatural manifestation, as God in our nature, or “God manifest in the flesh,” for none can call Jesus, Lord, or God, in truth and sincerity, but by the Holy Ghost. He alone, through the instrumentality of Gospel truth, causes supernatural spiritual light to shine into our darkness, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Thus, is vital godliness, or life that shall never end, introduced into, or imparted to, the individual soul. Let the sinner flee from the wrath to come, to the only Refuge set before sinners in the Gospel—Christ and Him crucified—as our God is otherwise a consuming fire against unpardoned sin.
This salvation is perfect in its nature, as it is adapted to our state, and commensurate with all our misery and crimes. It embraces both the body and the soul, for as its consummation, relative to the soul, is perfect conformity to the image of Christ, so the ultimate consummation of Gospel salvation regarding the body is to fashion it, on the resurrection morning, “like unto His glorious body,” and this constitutes the acme of the holy bliss of Heaven—the full enjoyment of God to all eternity. This is “the inheritance of the saints in light.”
This salvation is a present deliverance from the reigning power and dominion of sin, and the present cancellation of the soul’s guilt. “There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus,” and there never shall be in time nor in Eternity. Once reconciled to God, through the blood of the Cross, reconciled for evermore, for who shall separate such from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, the Lord? It is a salvation revealed now, freely offered now, and it must be received now. “Now is the day of salvation.” “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
It is a salvation universal in its offer, notwithstanding what hyper-Calvinists may say to the contrary. “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature,” leaving results with God. “Look unto Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved, for I am God, and there is none else.” Jesus Christ is “the Saviour of the world,” and we need not qualify that Scriptural designation, by adding “of an elect world,” for it means exactly what it says. This lost, rebellious, sin-ruined world has only one Saviour. “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under Heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.” There is balm in Gilead; there is a Physician there. A fountain has been opened, in our otherwise hopelessly-sinful world, “for sin and for uncleanness,” and “the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,” and it does not say “to save the elect.” We should be careful to leave Scripture as we find it, while sincerely believing in the Scriptural doctrines of election and predestination. “He came to seek and to save that which was lost,” and we must, under the supernatural teaching and quickening power of the Holy Spirit, find ourselves in the category of lost sinners, before we can value the Saviourhood of Christ, or the fact that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” We must repent, or inevitably perish. The whole counsel of God, eternal life and eternal death, must be faithfully and fearlessly proclaimed.
This salvation is freely communicated, as it is not bestowed because of human merit, for none exists spiritually, but without money and without price. It is not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. It is all of grace, not by works, lest anyone should boast. It is as free as the air we breathe, or as the stream that trickles down the mountain side. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.”
This salvation is eternal in its duration. It is the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” “He became the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him.” “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.” “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ the Lord.” “There the blessing God commands, life that shall never end.” “Having loved His own, that were in the world, He loved them unto the end.”
(II) Day of Salvation.
This day may include the history of mankind in the world, since the first promise was made to Adam about the seed of the woman, when God addressed the Serpent, “It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” This was the first glimmer of Gospel salvation after the world had been overtaken by otherwise impenetrable mid-night darkness and awful gloom, following mankind’s fall in Adam. Thus, the day of salvation extends from the time of the promise to Adam till the end of the Gospel dispensation, in other words, the end of time. But the day of salvation, regarding the individual, is the brief, uncertain period of human life—the present moment, as “we know not what a day or an hour may bring forth.” “My times are wholly in Thine hands.” “Be ye reconciled to God,” in a day of mercy and grace. “If the tree falls towards the south, or towards the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.” “He that believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.” “These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” Thus eternal life and eternal death are set before us. Love to God and love to man must be the actuating motive of the preacher.
“Hell is at the end of a Christ-less life,” as the godly man said to the sceptic. As for those who think they are honouring and safe-guarding the doctrine of Divine sovereignty when they deny or disparage the equally-Scriptural doctrine of human responsibility and accountability, we have no hesitation in stating that they are lamentably deceiving themselves. “Everyone of us must give an account of himself to God.” Rationality involves responsibility and accountability as to how we hear, and do, the Word of God. To the impartial reader of Scripture, who has no preconceived interpretation to uphold, at all costs, the one doctrine is as prominent as the other, and we are not asked to reconcile, but to proclaim, and to believe, them. God has not lost His right to command, though we have lost our ability to obey.
(III) The supreme attention salvation, and the day of salvation, demands of us.
It claims our most scrutinising investigation. Christianity, having nothing to hide, candidly, fearlessly and faithfully challenges impartial examination of its truths and principles in the ingenuous words, “Come and see.” What then, are we as rational creatures doing relative to the supremely important matter of our soul’s eternal destiny and security? Where do we stand in relation to God, sin, salvation, death, the Judgment-seat, and eternity? There is no neutrality, armed or benevolent, in the warfare between the flesh and the spirit, between grace and sin, between good and evil, between truth and falsehood, between Christ and Satan. “He that is not with Me is against Me; he that gathereth not with Me, scattereth abroad.” We need not be professed aggressive militant atheists to be against Christ. We are all practical atheists by nature. “I would thou wert either cold or hot.” Lukewarmness in this solemn matter is intolerable.
The important question, therefore arises: has the natural enmity of the carnal mind in us, against God, been overcome by the experience of the free, sovereign, everlasting, immutable love of God, in Christ Jesus, being shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost, through the Word? Nothing short of an experience, or manifestation, of the love of God, in Christ, can break and melt into genuine contrition, penitence, and holy, humble, submission, the sin-hardened human heart. Here self, in what ultimately proves its death-blow, receives a blow for the first time in its history that will send it tottering to its final fall. Here the hitherto rebellious soul is found sitting prostrate in utter self-abasement and self-humiliation, at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in its right mind, filled with the peace that passeth understanding, love that passeth knowledge, joy that is unspeakable and full of glory, with holy mourning, godly sorrow for sin, and a chastened comfort and soothing consolation; all the fruit of a sense of pardoning mercy and reconciliation with God, through a blood-washed conscience, looking by faith to Him Whom the individual pierced by his (or her) sins, and Who was “wounded for our transgressions.” Our sins must be atoned for by the glorious Surety and Substitute, or we must suffer eternally. There is no alternative to faith and repentance, in a day of mercy, but everlasting perdition.
This salvation has a claim on our most serious consideration, and on our faith. We have now had presented to us the Cross, the Gospel, the Scriptural doctrinal instruction, the holy infallible warrant of Divine Revelation, and the great and precious promises, so that “he that believeth shall be saved.” We are careful, troubled, and diligent about earthly things, generally speaking, as we are by nature. This solemn matter of our soul’s salvation demands our supreme and most earnest diligence. We have Hell to escape, Heaven to gain, our souls must be saved or irretrievably lost; we have to prepare for Eternity, so “give diligence to make your calling and election sure.” Let us be earnest about this salvation ourselves, and let us press its unspeakable significance on the attention of all around us. “Let the sinner forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” It is salvation, full, free, perfect, and everlasting. “Only believe, and thou shalt see the glory of God.” “None perish that Him trust.” “He is faithful that promised.” The love of God in the heart is a foretaste of the infinite felicity of Heaven.
The Lord’s blessed, if often poor and afflicted, people, may well address an unconverted world, in the language of Moses: “We are journeying to a place of which the Lord said, I will give it you. Come thou with us, and we will do thee good, for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel.” May the Advocate with the Father cleanse us from the sins of our holy things, and may the Covenant-keeping, promise-fulfilling God give an answer in peace, and bless to us His truth, through the blood of the everlasting Covenant, and to His name shall be the praise.—Amen.