“Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.”— Rom. iv. 8.
“THE wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in his death.” “The wicked shall be turned into Hell and all nations that forget God.” “And those shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.” Yes, those who forget and neglect God’s offer of reconciliation shall now pass into eternity unreconciled. How solemn to think that great numbers of the kindly and friendly people we mix with daily will come to this awful end. Men who were moral without being devout, honest before men yet in their prayerless lives dishonest before God, generous to their fellows yet ungenerous to God’s inviting mercy, amiable and neighbourly but cruel in their decided exclusion of God from heart and home—all these self-respecting, law-abiding and otherwise thoughtful folk shall be driven away in their wickedness. Yes, driven away under God’s ban, His unending, uncompromising and just condemnation.
Undoubtedly their moral life gave them careful thought while on earth, but the state of condemnation into which they were born and under which they lived troubled them not a whit. Now with divine finality the word goes forth: “He that is unjust let him be unjust still.” Condemned by God in life, that sentence is now confirmed eternally. Death changes neither the nature nor the standing of a man. The appearance of the best of men, clothed in nothing better than the rags of nature shall then be marked by the one word which shall denote both their standing and their destiny—condemnation. Born condemned, lived condemned, before God condemned, now eternally condemned. “These shall go away,” yes, eternally to vindicate the justice that condemned them. In the presence of God their conscience must vindicate him, but a Satanic hatred of God will fill their hearts the while they render it. Sweetly do the gracious sing, “That thou mayest be clear when thou judgest,” but with what bitterness will this confession be forced from the lost. Surely this is no small portion of that fire that shall not be quenched. Surely, too, the condemnation which you now carry is no small part of the fuel which shall everlastingly feed it.
Consider how the sureness of these things should make your reconciliation to God a matter of supreme importance. In the precious mouth of God’s Son there are most loving invitations addressed to you. Is it a small matter that you should increase your condemnation through neglecting an offer to relieve you of all condemnation? Listen to him, “Why will ye die?” Remain unreconciled to God, you must die, but why will ye die? Will you not now consider your state as God regards it? Whether you will consider it or not, rest assured of this—God has no delight in your death. No delight whatever in passing sentence of condemnation upon you. Why die, when God has drawn near you and is even now “just and the justifier of him that believeth in Christ.” Why die, indeed.
While men are content to remain in a state of condemnation, and light-heartedly go on their way to confirm it, there are men and women around them who have been ushered by grace into an estate of unending justification. No matter how great or how many their sins have been, no matter though their worst sins have been committed after their reconciliation, no possible circumstance can arise to bring them into condemnation. By Divine appointment condemnation has been rolled from off them, and a state of justification, as immutable as the nature of God itself, has been gifted to them. Our text is only one of many which gives assurance of this, and in our present search we shall seek to find this blessed man. What are his characteristics, his experiences, and upon what grounds is his security based? May the Lord, holding aloft the lamp of his Word, lead us to this happy man.
“Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” This reference is taken by Paul from the 32nd Psalm, and it is generally understood that Psalms 51 and 32 refer to the one experience of David’s return to God after his fall into grave sin. There are those who see in Psalm 32 an acknowledgment of God’s answer to the prayers in Psalm 51, and there is some evidence that this view is correct. Be that as it may, we cannot go wrong if we look for Paul’s man in both these Psalms.
From God’s side, reconciliation evinces his desire for peace, it is a matter of the heart, wherein God, having removed the legal grounds of his quarrel with a sinner, now for the sake of Christ fully forgives all sin. On the sinner’s part there must be some measure of real frankness, for as surely as God is clear when he judges, so surely must the sinner be clear in his confession. So we begin with noting the heart condition of the man we are seeking, and this is what we find. In Psalm 32 confession without guile is recognised, while in Psalm 51 a confession is made that makes guilelessness an impossibility. “Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
Thus we see that there is a danger of seeking God with guile.
It is one of the contradictions of fallen nature that while God cannot be deceived, we straightway seek to do this very thing, and this tendency is common among natural men seeking God. Eve sought to beguile God when she blamed Satan for her own sin. Our conception in sin answers to the heart that is deceitful and desperately wicked, and again that heart answers to God’s description of our natural tendency to lie. “They go astray from the womb, speaking lies.” From a nature of this kind we can expect nothing but what is guileful, cunning, hypocritical and self-righteous. We can expect nothing but what will justify ourselves, what will seek to belittle great sin, and exaggerate our supposed goodness. Such a nature will seek by excuse or otherwise to circumvent God, if that were possible. Seeking to make itself supreme, guile would make God subservient to itself, and the man thinks that because he has made some kind of approach to God he is therefore worthy of God’s favour.
It was to religious persons of this kind that our Lord addressed his most weighty warnings. God is Truth, and if our confession to him is to possess the necessary frankness and freedom from guile, we must be wrought upon by a power from beyond that, of these treacherous natures of ours. A power external to ourselves and greater than nature must enter. Hence David’s prayer, “Renew a right spirit within,” and in God’s answer to that prayer is our only guarantee that our confession shall be free from guile and that it shall be accepted by God.
And now we must look for the man who has come under this power of truth, and I think that it is here that the “heavy hands” come to view. We find them in Psalm 32. They do many good things and one of these is the removal of guile from the man who is to approach to God. This they do by laying up truth in the inward parts. This is so completely a work of grace that we must ascribe the whole of it to these capable hands—to God the Holy Spirit. “When with rebuke thou dost correct man for iniquity, thou wastes his beauty like a moth, sure each man is vanity.”
When these “hands” lay hold on a man’s spirit they press the vanity out of him. The lesson used is elementary, but it is tremendously important—”Thou, Lord, seeth me.” The man now learns that he has always been, and continues to be, subject to the scrutiny of the all-seeing One, and that God’s standards of being and conduct are widely different from those with which he has hitherto measured himself. God has been assessing his words and deeds according to his own standards. And, oh, the woe of it! God’s standards are independent and they remain unaffected by the excuses and pleas of men. Under the light of this “truth most pure,” he sees that God is supremely worthy of the most loving obedience to all his commands. And God goes on making these demands whatever the man may say.
The Sovereignty of His Holy Place offers nothing but silence to man’s complaint, that the law is too exacting. Yes, all complaint is met by a silence awful in its finality. God’s standards accommodate no weakness, bend to no excuse. And so, whatever the outcome, the God of truth takes possession of the heart, and directs and controls the man in the matter of his relationship to God. A true knowledge of God brings a true knowledge of man. There may be guile in the man possessing this knowledge, but it will be something he hates, and something he will not love to practice.
Truth laid in the heart by the Holy Spirit cannot be simply a negative thing, it must be positive and active, and because of that the man finds that come what may he is being forced to seek a true relationship with God. Dreading this Great Person who has hemmed him in on every side by the majesty of his law, he greatly fears to approach to him. Yet the truth within forces him, so that he fears still more to remain at a distance. He has learned something of the great distance, moral and otherwise, that lies between himself and the God of his condemnation, but he must approach, he must confess, and his confession must be without guile.
The question of a fitting approach to God weighing so heavily upon him that now he not only fears guile, he watches against it, protests against it, and even prays to be delivered from it. “Search me, try me that no wicked way be in me” becomes frequent and earnest prayers. He has come so far from the duplicity natural to him that he now feels a strange satisfaction in seeking out and casting aside the very appearance of guile. Even though he knows that further discoveries of guile will humble him and enormously increase his distress and sense of unworthiness, he will still seek it out. Such is the triumph of truth in the inward parts, and such is part of that preparation made by the loving hands upon him, who is to be favoured with God’s justification.
Let us look again at these two Psalms, and this time we find the “man” complaining sadly about his “bones.” He complains that they are losing moisture, becoming old and brittle, and in Psalm 51 his case is even worse—they are broken. As bones are to the body so these “other” bones are to the soul, they are supporting structures, and the work upon them is again the work of the “hands” upon the man whom God will bless.
In common with all men, this man found natural supports sufficient, for all that was required to gain a good standing before God, but the time has now come when they all fail him. Supports such as Church connection, parentage, good living, religion, men’s esteem and others in which he has hitherto trusted, are to be cast aside as unreliable. He is to be brought to examine them, to condemn them and to cast them aside. He is to learn that earthly supports for winning a Heavenly kingdom are worse than useless, and that even to trust in them is sinful.
The representations of life and death, condemnation and judgment are never revealed to the natural man on any plane higher than the natural, and in consequence the natural man can know them only in an unreal way. Under the faithful “hands” these solemn matters are now presented under the unbiased and pure light of absolute truth. How different do they now appear as the man for the first time discerns them spiritually. In this light the man is made to examine his foundations again and again, now under the light of one truth, now under the light of another, and the longer he looks and the deeper he sees into them, the more is he persuaded that all of them are worse than useless. These false foundations had been nourished and strengthened by him; he loved every one of them dearly; they had served him during many a minor crisis, and he is loath to cast them aside. But he is to come to regard each and all with utter disgust and loathing. He wearies himself as in turn he hopes, he searches, he weighs, he condemns and relinquishes one and all. Under the searchlight of pure truth, his wondering and despairing eyes see flaws where before he saw strength, rottenness where before he saw soundness, disorder and confusion where before he saw an orderly and well established Babel rising up to Heaven. His last support has been examined, it too is wanting, nothing remains but the confusion of utter bankruptcy. “The truth shall make you free,” yes, free from false supports, yes, gloriously free to lay hold on the Heavenly supports which a merciful and loving God has laid up for him in the everlasting arms.
He is like a man who possesses and holds a considerable number of bank notes against the time of need. The time of need comes, and hopefully he goes to his store, only to find, alas, that all his notes are clever forgeries. He is not merely unexpectedly poor, but he finds that he has a number of humbling and embarrassing questions to answer, as to how he came to possess these notes at all. In a man’s approach to God, broken bones appear to be but a poor preparation for an event so lofty, but in as much as a man is delivered from false hopes, he is made ready to welcome the Heavenly helps when they are brought to his notice.
(To be continued.)