Article in British and Foreign Evangelical Review, July, 1880.
(Continued from page 192.)
II. And now, secondly—which may now be comparatively a brief work—let us consider how each of these three principles necessarily excludes the presence and influence of “works.” Nay, rather, let us show—from Scripture, of course, our only source of knowledge—how the introduction of works, even in any measure, must subvert at once the grace of God as the origin, the righteousness of Christ as the ground, and the exercise of faith as the instrument, of our justification. So that by works (1) the grace of God is frustrated, (2) the death of Christ made in vain, (3) faith itself made void.
(1) If you introduce the element of works at all, in any measure, into the question of your acceptance with God, and the ground of your peace with God, you immediately fetter and thereby frustrate the grace of God. From this—from frustrating the grace of God—from such guilt, Paul shrunk back affrighted. “I do not frustrate the grace of God,” said he. It is as with a cry of agony that he flees affrighted, from such guilt. And how that fearful guilt may be incurred, he shows us by resting our acceptance on our own obedience, or expecting righteousness or justification to come by the law. “I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if righteousness come by the law, Christ is dead in vain” (Gal. ii, 21). And again, in warning the Galatians against resting anything of their acceptance with God upon the law, or imagining circumcision necessary to their justification, he cries out to them with peculiar solemnity in one of those passages in which, Luther said, Paul thundered rather than spake: “I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of none effect to you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace” (Gal. v, 3, 4).
“Ye are fallen from grace”—“Ye have frustrated grace.”
And let it be remarked, we “fall from grace”—we “frustrate grace”—not merely by excluding it altogether, but by admitting works to any rivalry or co-ordinating share of influence with it, even in the least degree. For if it is of works at all, it is no more grace. For, argues our apostle, “To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt; but to him that worketh not”—to him who in this matter, and for this end, absolutely worketh not, worketh nothing, abstains from working, obtrudes or introduces no works at all—but simply “believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Romans iv, 4, 5). Otherwise righteousness could not be imputed to him. He could not be justified. It is his entire cessation in this matter from all works that can alone admit the action of grace. To trust in works and distrust grace are more than conjoined. Self-righteousness and unbelieving dislike or suspicion of grace are indeed identical.
Let me appeal to those whom it may concern, and ask them to examine their own hearts. Why is it that you do not take your entire and trustful and hearty appeal to the free, unfettered, sovereign grace of God? Why is it that you are not content and delighted that God should be altogether sovereign in showing mercy? Why do you feel as if something grated harshly on your ear, or your heart or hopes, when the voice of the gracious Lord is heard, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion”? Why should that give you pain, or give you pause? It would not do so if you felt that you have not, and can never have, any righteousness of your own. You imagine that God, in declaring he will have mercy on you simply and only if he pleases, is overlooking and dishonouring some claim which you possess upon his mercy, some hold upon his pity which your goodness or repentance or anxieties and prayers have given you. Oh! if you would believe it, sovereign, free mercy is much more large and unbounded—much more safe and sufficient—in its perfect freedom, which you never can bring under restraint to you, than all your fancied claim could be, though it were ten thousand times stronger than your fondest imagination can conceive. Free grace is unsearchably rich. It hath multitudes of tender mercies; and it acteth “according to the multitude of its tender mercies.” Free grace, in virtue of being utterly unfettered and free, is precisely the grace that can omnipotently and all freely move and sway, in answer to your need; the helm, answering in the darkest night and the utmost tempest—”though the waters roar and are troubled, and the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.” Free grace, most sovereign, acting on the lead, and following second to no claim or work or righteousness of yours, following second to no power in earth or hell or heaven, owning no power higher than itself, but triumphing in the absolute and independent power of its own sweet royal will, reigning on its throne—its “throne of grace”—at which let no sin-stained soul ever dare to unfold his offensive claim of right, and no contrite sinner ever dread to tell his tale of woe in deep and full confession—free grace, most sovereign is that alone that can suffice for you, for it is that of which alone it can be said, “Where sin abounded, grace hath much more abounded.” Why will you not leave the grace of God to be free and independent, royal and sovereign indeed? Why will you produce any worth or works of yours, and wield them as an instrument to arrest and constrain and fasten down this grace of God? Why will you seek to tie up the hands of love? Why not acquiesce in the free and sovereign reign of grace?
Even sin hath reigned: “Sin hath reigned unto death.” Sin hath reigned with your own consent. It hath spurned control and brooked no interference with the freedom of its reign. Sin, in you, hath had the field unhindered, to itself. This is the real ground for any anxieties anent death and eternity and God. Sin hath reigned; and you have allowed it. And will you not allow Grace to reign?—to reign over you, and in you, and for you, unto your salvation and eternal life? Will you not allow it to reign, and by its own free and kingly and unhampered and triumphant action, it may justify you freely, and make you also free and kingly and unhampered and triumphant in the liberty wherewith Christ by free grace makes his people free? Your self-righteousnesses are but chains you forge wherewith to bind this king a captive for your service. Will he stoop to the infinite degradation? No: he will sit free on his own royal seat, his “throne of grace,” and acting from thence, he will save in his sovereign reign and pleasure, or not at all. If you yield not to the reign of grace, you are a slave beneath the reign of sin, and sin shall reign over you unto the second death. Why, then, will you not shake off every dependence on your own righteousness and works? Say not that you have really done so, unless you be content to rest on sovereign grace; and unless, being content and really resting, you find in that rest and that contentment some of the repose of soul which rest and contentment are sure to bring.
But if not yet content with sovereign grace alone, it is because you have not yet resigned every other hope; because you cling to something you have done, or still expect to have power (or even help from God) to do; because you desire to have something of your own by which to secure your salvation yourself, by which to tie and bind the Lord and his mercy. You cannot bear the thought of leaving God free; with all its absurdity, you would rather lay some train that would necessitate and force the action of grace. And then it would be grace no more: its very nature would be subverted, and its action frustrated. “But,” says Paul, “I do not frustrate the grace of God.”
(2) The introduction of works equally overthrows the suretyship of Christ. In that case Christ is made of none effect to you. Christ is dead in vain!
What an impeachment of the righteousness and wisdom of God! to pursue any line of action, thought, or feeling, which if right, must naturally tend to show that Christ is dead in vain, fruitlessly, uselessly, unnecessarily! But if by some works or worth of yours you can entitle yourself to the justifying grace of God, then God himself cannot be justified in requiring the satisfaction and atonement of Christ to vindicate his grace in justifying you. He, in that case, demanded a sacrifice and subjected his own Son to suffering which you undertake to prove might have been dispensed with. Away with the vain and blasphemous attempt! But how away with it? Only if, resigning every rag of righteousness, every plea and claim, we (in the first place) justify God in thus condemning us—and this we do when we say from the heart, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest”; and if (in the second place) we justify God in calling in the death of his Son as the only ground of our justification, and this we do when we flee to Christ as our refuge, counting all things but loss that we may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having our own righteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness which is through the faith of Christ—the righteousness which is of God by faith.
(3) For, thirdly, as resting on our own works subverts justification, both as originating in the grace of God, and as founded on the suretyship of Christ, so thereby also is “Faith made void”; for “if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise,” to which faith looks, “is made of none effect” (Romans iv, 14). And the reason is, that faith leaning in any measure on our works—looking to a promise suspended or conditional on our righteousness—a fallible, faltering, failing condition—faith in that case, falters and fails too. Let faith rest on sovereign, unconditional grace, on a righteousness already finished and eternal, on a promise not suspended on any condition, but absolute; then “it is of faith that it might be by grace, to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed” (Romans iv, 16). And thus, faith, claiming God’s free love, in Christ’s sure and perfect work, on the warrant of God’s absolute, unfailing word, abides fully “persuaded that what God hath promised he is able also to perform; and therefore it is imputed to us for righteousness” (Romans iv, 20, 21). Every reason for suspicion of insecurity is cleared away—every gate by which danger might enter is closed; the glory shines forth as belonging wholly to the Lord; the covenant stands impregnable as the everlasting and blessed home of our weary and waiting souls: and “being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we have access by faith into the grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”