2. How We Ought to Come
Thomas Manton
1. Come judging and condemning yourselves;
come humbled under a sense of your own vileness and unworthiness, so that Jesus Christ may become sweeter to you. Though you do not know you are the children of God, yet you must know yourselves to be sinners, condemned by the law, and needing a Saviour to reconcile and justify you. You are humbly to cast yourselves at the feet of grace, begging mercy for such a poor, vile sinner as you are.
All do not go to heaven by the hilly country; some go a lower, darker way, and it may be safer. Though they cannot look upon Christ as their Saviour and Redeemer, yet they can look upon Him as one whom they have pierced (Zec 12:10). So they acknowledge the guilt of sin, though they cannot apply to themselves the comfort of salvation. Though they cannot say with Paul: “Who loved me, and gave Himself for me (Gal 2:20), yet they can say what Paul writes elsewhere: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief” (1 Tim 1:15). They say, Surely I am sinner enough for Christ to save, and so they creep in at the back door of the promise, by a darker kind of assurance.
Certainly he that knows his unworthiness and necessities, and is affected by it, is not unwelcome to the Lord: “If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged” (1 Cor 11:31). The publican that cried, “God be merciful to me a sinner”, went away justified (Lk 18:13,14). If we cannot come with the joy of faith, let us come with brokenness of heart; if cannot come with a holy delight in Him, we must come with an earnest desire after the Saviour.
2. They must come with hunger and thirst after sacramental benefits,
after the comforts and saving graces of the Spirit. God invites such people whatever discouragements they feel: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat; yea come, buy wine and milk, without money, and without price” (Is 55:1). If you cannot come with delight, come with an appetite: “Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink” (Jn 7:37); and He has promised that those who come shall be satisfied: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Mk 5:6).
Surely Christ would not flatter you with a vain hope, for He calls such as you. Though He does not speak to you by name, yet He speaks to you by qualification. Therefore you must plead as David did: “My soul thirsteth for Thee . . . my flesh longeth for Thee” (Ps 63:1). He that is duly affected with the lack of Christ, and unfeignedly desires to be found in Him and to depart from iniquity, is not altogether a stranger to Christ and the work of His Spirit.
3. They are to bewail their unbelief, and to make what application of Christ they can.
When they cannot apply Christ to themselves, they must apply themselves to Christ; they must go to Christ with that faith they have and say as the father of the child: “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief” (Mk 9:24). They must run to Christ for refuge: “Who have fled for refuge, to lay hold upon the hope set before us” (Heb 6:18). Even if there is no assurance, yet there must be some application: Here I come to take my portion; for the bread is broken and distributed, the wine is poured out and distributed; it is said: Take, eat, every one of you. Therefore I am not merely to look on at this feast, but to act; I must not only be an idle observer, but a guest; my hand must be in Christ’s dish and, as I am able, I must lay hold on Him and take my share of the common salvation. In short, there must be an adherence to Christ, even if there is no assurance.
Because you do not see your own qualification, stir up your soul to wait on the Lord and trust in Him for these benefits. It would be, I confess, a very great satisfaction to the soul to believe that God loves us, that He is reconciled to us and takes us for His children. Come then to the Supper and see what He has done for you; was He not in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself? What is here represented to you but the death of Christ for the expiation of sin? And can you use such a duty without seeing or feeling the love of God? What is set forth before our eye but God incarnate, Christ crucified, a covenant sealed in His blood? God incarnate, who has come near to us for our converse and delight. Christ crucified, that He might pay our debts and that we might now come and put our hands into the holes of His wounded side and be healed. And a covenant sealed, that it may be the charter of our hopes. Therefore act the faith you have upon these things, and see what God will do for you.
4. Renew your consecration and consent to give yourself up to the tuition of Christ and to His service,
for the more we mind our duty, the more ready is God to prepare comfort for us. The covenant is indeed mutual: “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine” (Song 6:3). Though I cannot say He is mine, yet I am resolved to be His. You are to resign yourselves to Him with a sense of His great mercies. We first consent that we will be His before we can know that He is ours.
Now if we cannot claim by one part of the covenant, it is some confidence when we can say, I am Thine, wholly Thine, only thine, everlastingly Thine: “I am Thine, save me” (Ps. 119:94). David did not say, Thou art mine, but he could say, “I am Thine”; and thereupon he pleads with God. Though we cannot say, I am Thine because Thou hast accepted me, because Thou hast taken me for Thine own; yet I am Thine by my own resignation; I have given Myself up to thee, to serve and please Thee. As when the men of Campania came as neighbours and allies to Rome in great distress to seek for help from them against the Grecians but the Romans refused to help them, they went and gave up their whole country in vassalage to the Romans and used this plea, “If you will not help us as your allies, help us as your subjects, for we are resolved to be subjects to the Romans; what we suffer, your tributaries shall suffer”.
You have somewhat laid hold of God when you have chosen Him for your God, and given yourselves up to His service. We must with a holy art fasten ourselves upon God: Lord, I if I perish, one that is resolved to be Thine shall perish. When you thus devotedly and strongly give yourselves up to His service, though you cannot make out your claim with such boldness and with the joy of faith, yet you may rely upon Him.
1A further section of the application of a sermon on Hebrews 11:28: “Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them”. It is taken, with editing, from By Faith, a volume of Manton’s sermons on Hebrews 11. The first point was: What to do before we come to the Lord’s Supper.