by Rev. Angus Mackay, Tarbert
The State of Grace
The Fourfold State comes to show us our need of Regeneration and Boston expounds I Peter 1:23, ‘Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.’ He shows that the incorruptible seed is the word of God, and that regeneration is a supernatural real change on the whole man. He that is born again is born of the Spirit. He states what regeneration is not and how many are deluding themselves for eternity. He says that hypocrites may have the counterfeit of all the graces of the spirit and proves it from Scripture. Men may advance to a great deal of strictness in their own way of religion. The Pharisees had so much of it, that they looked upon Christ as little better than a mere libertine. Speaking of sharp convictions and pangs of conscience, we read in this book that some get awakening grace, but not converting grace, and that goes off by degrees, as the light of the declining day, till it issues in midnight darkness. They snatch at consolation, not waiting till it be given them, and foolishly draw comfort from the law that wounded them, but they are never shaken out of themselves and their own righteousness, nor brought forward to Jesus Christ. But regeneration is a real, thorough change, whereby the man is made a new creature. The Lord God makes the creature a new creature, as the goldsmith melts down a vessel of dishonour and makes it a vessel of honour. It is not a change of the substance but of the qualities of the soul. Man lost none of the rational faculties of his soul by sin, he had an understanding still, but it was darkened, he had still a will, but it was contrary to the will of God. So in regeneration, there is not a new substance created, but new qualities are infused, light instead of darkness, righteousness instead of unrighteousness.
In regeneration the mind is savingly enlightened. Then the night is over, and morning light is come, which will shine more and more unto the perfect day. Now the man is illuminated (1) in the knowledge of God, (2) in the knowledge of sin, (3) in the knowledge of himself. Regenerating grace makes man full of eyes within, knowing every one the plague of his own heart. No open sepulchre so vile and loathsome, in his own eyes, as himself. (4) He is enlightened in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. It would be our wisdom to study, prayerfully, Boston on Regeneration and preach that doctrine in love and earnestness to precious immortal souls.
The truth is, unregenerate men, though capable of preaching Christ, have not properly speaking, the knowledge of Him, but only an opinion, a good opinion of Him, but saving illumination carries the soul beyond opinion, to the certain knowledge of Christ and his excellency. Hence the regenerate admire the glorious plan of salvation through Christ crucified, rest their whole dependence upon Him, and heartily acquiesce therein. Regenerating grace is powerful and efficacious, and gives the will a new turn. It does not indeed force it, but sweetly, yet powerfully draws it, so that His people are willing in the day of His power. Love makes a net for elect souls, which will infallibly catch them, and haul them to land. The will is cured of its utter inability to will what is good. There is wrought in the will a fixed aversion to evil. Boston is expert at illustrations throwing light on his doctrines.
The mind being savingly enlightened, and the will renewed, the sinner is thereby determined and enabled to answer the Gospel call. So the chief work in regeneration is done, the fort of the heart is taken, there is room made for the Lord Jesus Christ in the inmost parts of the soul, the inner door of the will being now opened to Him as well as the outer door of the understanding. In one word, Christ is passively received into the heart. The believer’s first vital act we may conceive to be an active receiving of Jesus Christ.
The conscience is renewed. As a new light is set up in the soul in regeneration, conscience is enlightened, instructed and informed. Regenerating grace makes not only good men and good women, but makes good subjects, good husbands, good wives, children, servants, and in a word good relatives in the church, commonwealth and family. ‘Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new.’
As the child is passive in generation, so is the child of God in regeneration. If you are thus honoured to be a child of God, no thanks to you, for ‘who maketh thee to differ from another’ and what hast thou that thou hast not recceived? As there is no birth without pain, both to the mother and to the child, so there is great pain in bringing forth the new creature. The children have more or less of these birth pains, whereby they are pricked in their hearts (Acts 2:37). The soul has sore pains when under convictions and humiliation — ‘A wounded spirit who can bear?’
Then our friend Boston, goes on to give real marks of regeneration, and he puts the question, ‘Does your offending a good God affect your heart with sorrow, and do you fear sin more than suffering.’ Then for the comfort of believers and to encourage them in their faith, he gives eight cases, and O! what tender encouragement do we receive from the loving, tender lips of Thomas Boston.
‘While you are not born again,’ he writes, ‘your best works are but glittering sins, for though the matter of them is good, they are quite marred in the performance.’ To the unregenerate, he says, ‘All you have done for God, and His Cause in the world, though it be followed with temporal rewards, yet it is lost as to divine acceptance.’ An unregenerate state is hell in the bud. If you knew your case, you would cry out, O! darkness, darkness, darkness; making way for the blackness of darkness for ever! Remember whatever you are, you must be born again. Many in our day in all churches, without exception, will label Boston as a pessimist and his preaching as gloomy and dull. But he was no pessimist, he knew in his own soul the convincing, saving power of God’s Word, and he warned in love poor souls happily living in a delusion of their own fancies on the broad way to hell.
In the following chapter he comes to write on the Mystical Union between Christ and Believers. The Fourfold State brings before us twelve strokes by God’s Spirit and Word before a sinner is absolutely cut off from the old stock — the covenant of works, and then the sinner brought into a saving union with Christ. At the 5th or 6th stroke it looks as if there is saving grace in the soul, but no. At the end of the paragraph regarding the 11th stroke, we read, ‘He is as one mending the bank of a river, and while he is repairing breaches in it, and strengthening every part of it, a mighty flood comes down, and overturns his work, and drives all before it, that which was newly laid and that which was laid before. This is a stroke which goes to the heart, and by it, his hope of making himself more fit to come to Christ, is cut off. Then in the twelfth we read ‘Now the time is come, when the man, between hope and despair, resolves to go to Christ as he is, and therefore like a dying man, stretching himself just before his breath goes out, he rallies the broken forces of his soul, and tries to believe, and in some sort lays hold on Jesus Christ. And now the branch hangs on the old stock by one single tack of a natural faith, produced by the natural vigour of one’s own spirit under a most pressing necessity (Psalm 78:34-35). But the Lord, never failing to perfect his own work, fetches yet another stroke, whereby the branch falls quite off. The Spirit of God convincingly discovers to the sinner his utter inability to do anything that is good, and so he dies (Romans 7:9). Thus at length he sees that he can neither help himself by working, nor by believing, and having no more to hang by on the old stock, he therefore falls off.
While he is distressed thus seeing himself likely to be swept away with the flood of God’s wrath, and yet unable so much as to stretch forth a hand to lay hold of a twig of the tree of life, growing on the bank of the river, he is taken up, and ingrafted in the true vine, the Lord Jesus Christ giving him the spirit of faith.
But alas, a dead sleep has fallen upon this generation, they will not be awakened, let us go ever so near the quick, therefore I fear that there is another sort of awakening abiding this sermon-proof generation, which shall make the ears of them that hear it tingle. If that was true in Boston’s day, how true, how true in our day! When the sinner is united to Christ by faith, God the Father takes the pen, dips it in the Blood of His Son, crosses the sinner’s accounts and blots them out of His debt book. Then we read of the believer’s sanctification by virtue of his saving union with Christ. Although they cannot write one line of the law without blots, yet God, for Christ’s sake, accepts of the performance, in point of sanctification, they being disciples of His own Son, and led by His own Spirit. Hence we see the shadow of true sanctification among some strict professors, who yet are not true Christians, are not regenerated by the Spirit of Christ, and is of the same kind with what has appeared in many sober heathen. We are told of the believer’s need of the Fatherly chastisement of God. It is kindly for believers to be healed by stripes, although they are usually so weak as to cry out for fear at the sight of the pruning hook, as if it were the destroying axe, and to think that the Lord is coming out to kill them, when he is indeed coming to cure them. Here believers are exhorted to obtain and keep up actual communion and fellowship with Jesus Christ, to break down our idols of jealousies, and to mortify our lusts.
(to be continued)