The first article, last month, spoke of conversion, a love for the Bible as from the Holy Spirit, and a delight in the Spirit of grace and supplications, as marks of sanctification.
4. The acts of true faith show the holy beauty of spiritual life.
True faith works by love. O the happiness of the man who can say, “I am my Beloved’s and my beloved is mine”. But this is the language of assurance. As William Gurnall says, assurance is “the cream of faith”; it is like the sunflower: it seems to fade when the sun hides its face; but true faith, even where assurance of sense is absent, can “make its way to heaven in a dark night”.
True believers are afraid of presumption. They read of some professors who “had no root” and so “they withered away” (Mt 13:6), and of others who “for a while believe and in time of temptation fall away” (Lk 8:13). They had joy and made a profession of faith but they did not have saving union to “the Root of David”.
True believers receive blessings and say, “I love the Lord because my voice and prayers He did hear”, but when the warmth of the blessing fades, they may be ready to say it was a delusion. They are afraid that, though they keep company with the wise virgins, they themselves are like the foolish virgins who kept company with the wise. Lachlan Mackenzie spoke for the relief of those who entertain such doubts regarding themselves; we think the esteemed preacher says much about true and sweet believing which is to the point: “The true Christian will be afraid of false peace and can never take peace till he sees his warrant from the Word of God”. What is the warrant? “The Spirit shines on the promise and makes him see that it belongs to him.” How does the Spirit do this? “By breaking the power of unbelief and by convincing the conscience of the truth of the promise, as He formerly convinced him of the truth of the threatening. The law says to the conscience, Thou art a sinner. The Spirit shines upon the Word to the soul [saying], The Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to save lost sinners. In some such way the blessed Spirit speaks peace to the soul.”
(1.) Faith works in the mortification of sin.
Christ sees His weak bride, in her love to Him, take the kingdom of heaven by force. He observes her offering violence to sin, Satan and self, the most malevolent forces in the created universe. This spectacle is a matter of wonder. It was she who was the occasion of that inspired exclamation of wonder: “Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?” (Song 6:10).
Engaged in the sorest battle – the conflict with self in the conquest of sin – the soul must learn to oppose the deceitfulness of sin by believing thoughts of the cost of sin. “Study to be well skilled in the unmasking of the mystery of iniquity”, says Ebenezer Erskine, “and in detecting the wiles and stratagems of the tempter, and to provide yourselves with suitable antidotes against every attack of the enemy. For instance, if he tells thee sin is pleasant, ask him if the gripings [pains] of the worm of conscience be pleasant too; and if one day in God’s house be not better than a thousand in the tents of sin. If he tells thee that nobody sees, ask him if he can shut the eye of the omniscient God, whose eyes are as a flame of fire and who setteth ‘our [most] secret sins in the light of [His] countenance’. If he tells thee that it is but a little one, ask him if there be a little God, or if His displeasure be a little thing. If he tells thee that it is profitable, ask him what is man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul.”
(2.) Faith is also active in quickening, or vivification.
Does the Happy Man have a promise that he is “kept by the power of God through faith” (1 Pet 1:5)? The power of God is available in the provision of the covenant of grace for his sanctification. Pledges by the Father to the Son and by the Son to the Father, with the Holy Ghost, about the believer’s victory over the defilement of sin, assure him of a holy and happy eternity. By availing himself of them in a way of sweet believing, his soul is “bound in the bundle of life with the Lord [his] God” (1 Sam 25:29). By abiding “in the secret place of the Most High . . . under the shadow of the Almighty”, the believer avails himself of “the strength of the Lord” and “the power of His might” in the faithful use of the ordinary, ordained means of grace. Holy obedience to God’s law is the duty of everyone, but the heart of the natural man has no liking for it.
For “The Happy Man” by Lachlan Mackenzie, see the December 2019 issue of this Magazine, p 304.
Therefore he is a happy man who, by the grace of Christ, has “the Redeemer’s yoke on his neck”; who “does acts of self-denial”; who has “a vain world under his feet”. How unspeakably “happy is the life of that man who believes firmly, prays fervently, walks patiently, works abundantly, lives holily, dies daily, watches his heart, guides his senses, redeems his time, loves Christ and longs for glory”. The man who lives thus, in any true sense of these terms, takes no glory to himself but with much shame is most humbly grateful to God. He regards it as an act of love and friendship on the part of Christ if he finds in his deceitful heart an inward holy principle of spiritual life and love to God drawing him voluntarily to deny self, resist the devil, take up the cross and follow Christ – what rises from “Christ in you the hope of glory”. He is a happy man who finds himself enabled to entertain believing, heart-affecting thoughts of grace, mercy and peace; the unfathomable love and friendship of Christ; with the effect that “the love of Christ constraineth” him (2 Cor 5:14).
In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Prudence asked Christian how temptations to embrace vain thoughts are to be vanquished. He answered, “When I think of what I saw at the cross, that will vanquish vain thoughts; when I look on my broidered coat” [the righteousness of Christ given freely to him], “that will do it; when I look on the roll that I carry in my bosom” [the evidence of his interest in Christ], “that will do it; when my thoughts wax warm about whither I am going, that will vanquish vain thoughts”. Strength is obtained by entertaining believing thoughts of Christ.
Rutherford’s thoughts of heaven were popularised in a poem called “Immanuel’s Land”. In it he says,
“The Bride eyes not her garment, but her dear Bridegroom’s face.
I will not gaze at glory, but on my King of grace;
Not at the crown He gifteth, but on His piercèd hand;
The Lamb is all the glory of Immanuel’s land”.
If this is the activity of heaven, then nothing can advance sanctification in this world more effectively than constantly looking away from ourselves, and looking with believing thoughts upon the face of the same glorious Bridegroom. How often has a poor bruised, wounded, embattled Christian warrior cried out, “O that I knew where I might find Him!” The sense of His love soothes every bitter blow, mollifies every spiritual wound, and lightens every spiritual burden. And by putting a mantle of pardoning love over every spiritual defilement, He wipes every tear from this warrior’s eyes.
Insofar as his “King of grace” is all the glory that the Happy Man longs to see here, he has indisputable evidence that holy beauties from the womb of the eternal decree exist in his soul. He has indisputable evidence also that he has seen the morning of spiritual and eternal life.
5. Repentance is a manifestation of the holy beauties of spiritual life.
While repentance and sanctification are distinct privileges and duties, they overlap at several points. A little consideration will demonstrate that the person who has the one has the other. Side by side they war with sin, their common enemy. They are both gracious privileges of the covenant of grace yet they are both also duties of the same covenant. They come into existence at the same moment and leave the scene of battle victorious in the same hour.
Some of the terms used in The Larger Catechism (Q 76) to describe repentance could as well describe sanctification. Is repentance “unto life”? So is sanctification. Is repentance properly called “a saving grace”? So is sanctification a work of God’s saving grace. Is repentance “wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit and Word of God”? So is sanctification (Jn 17:17; 2 Th 2:13). Is repentance a living principle which, “out of the sight and sense, not only of the danger, but also of the filthiness and odiousness of [one’s] sins, and upon the apprehension of God’s mercy in Christ to such as are penitent, [enables one to grieve] for and [hate] his sins, [so] that he turns from them all to God, purposing and endeavouring constantly to walk with Him in all the ways of new obedience”? So is sanctification.
Repentance and sanctification are not the same, but true repentance promotes true sanctification in a most sweet and winning way. Repentance is a tear on the face of the Happy Man, who, despite being set free from the guilt of all His sins, mourns the presence of God-dishonouring sin in him while he is in this world. But the still small whisper of covenant promises on the lips of the God-man, who cannot lie, encourages repentance to say, “Surely that which concerneth me the Lord will perfect make: Lord, still Thy mercy lasts; do not Thine own hands’ works forsake” (Ps 138:8).