Two Sermons by John Duncan
The second and third of five sermons on this text; it was preached in Edinburgh in 1857 and is taken, with editing, from Duncan’s Pulpit and Communion Table. The first sermon appeared in the February 2022 issue of this Magazine.
Psalms 51:13. Sinners shall be converted unto Thee.
Sermon 2. Sinners are away from God. What they need is to come back. They cannot return to God by the old way of human righteousness, but God has opened up a new way for the sinner’s return. And now all that God wants from the sinner is simply that he come back again. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” It is not to do this or that; God is simply asking of you to be converted. That is, as you have been turning your back on God, you now turn your face; that as you have been going away from Him, you now come back; God is simply requiring that. But there is something necessary somehow, and you feel it. Yes, something necessary on your part.
It is plainly indispensable that the sinner must know the God from whom he has departed, that he must know how impossible it is to get back to God by the old way, and that he must know how certain eternal perdition is if he continues in that way. Also he must know what this new and living way is which God has opened up, and he must be made willing to come back by that way.
Now God has made provision for this in the work of His Holy Spirit. For while nothing is required of a sinner but just simply to come back, power is needed for bringing the sinner back – “the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost”. Not that God would refuse the sinner coming back, if he came of himself; but that the sinner will not come. The ignorant sinner must be taught by God that the obstinate and hardened sinner must have the iron sinew taken out of his neck and the brass out of his brazen brow. Notice that conversion, as wrought by the Spirit of God, is God’s act; conversion, as wrought within a sinner, denotes His acting also. The Spirit of God is a moral agent. The work of the Spirit is set forth in this prayer, “Turn Thou us,” and the duty on the sinner’s part is set forth in such commands as these: “Be converted”; “Turn ye at my reproof”.
I would speak a little on the nature of conversion. We tread on delicate ground when we consider conversion as the work of the Holy Ghost; when we come to consider it as wrought in the human soul there is less danger. The danger I speak of is this, whilst God’s active work of converting a sinner has an order in it as regards principles and results, there is room for diversity; and consequently, when we set forth the operation of the Spirit of God in conversion in His most common, ordinary method, we are apt to tie up the Spirit of God to that method, and thus to make those who have been taught of God, but not quite in that method, question whether it has been God’s work, because it did not come quite in the order and method set down by their religious teachers. That is one danger; but there is, on the other hand, the danger often arising out of the desire to avoid the former one: of leaving the thing quite vague and indefinite – the greater danger of the two.
In conversion, there is ordinarily the following method. And even when the Spirit of God goes from this method at the time of conversion, He very much afterwards brings things into this regular order.
1. (1.) There is conviction. God is requiring of you simply that you come back; but will you, can you, come back? No, you must be convinced. God does not need that to commend you to Him; but you will not – and as a rational creature you cannot – turn till you have been convinced that you are all in the wrong, and that God is all in the right. Now, there is nothing bad in God’s moral perfections; there is nothing wrong in God’s being holy, just and good, infinitely and eternally. There is nothing bad in that; it is gloriously good. Again, there is nothing bad in God’s making man in His own image, holy, just and good. Again, there is nothing bad in the holy, just and good God giving to the holy, just and good, although finite, creature, a holy, just and good law. There is nothing wrong in all that – in what God is, in what He has made, in what He has commanded.
If there is nothing wrong in all that, there is evil in sin; for sin is the only thing that is contrary to all that. Sin is contrary to God’s nature, contrary to man’s original constitution, and contrary to God’s law. And sin, as contrary to God’s law, is crime; as contrary to man’s constitution, it is a monstrous, unnatural thing; as contrary to God’s nature, it is an infinite evil. You must be convinced of this. And as this is necessary in order to your returning to God, call on God for conviction. But do not think you are doing your duty when you call for conviction; do not think that prayer for conviction will stand in place of the thing. If you are to pray for this, it is implied that in converting a sinner, God comes and deals with him; else you pray to nothing; you are only speaking into the air.
Yes, God comes. His law is living. His commandment can come; He can send it. God arrests a man, erects a tribunal in his conscience. God brings home the law – whether the law as written in the conscience, where there are some remnants of it in all men, or the law as written in the Book. God brings it home, shows the equity of it, shows that the commandment is good, that the breaking of it is bad. The knowledge both of God and of law is presupposed to the knowledge of sin.
Now I prescribe no order to the Spirit of God in dealing with a sinner, but very probably some such order as this may be observed. First of all, individual sins start up. Doubtless as the sinner’s life has been all away from God, it has been all sin. Yet there may be some sins that stand out in blacker colours than others, about which memory, hardened though it was, would have spoken, if it dared. These now start up, and stand in all their horrible magnitude before the soul. Then habitual sin starts up. For as in every believer there is a sin that more easily besets, in every sinner there is some foremost, principal, reigning lust. This is seen: I have been feeding, cherishing my darling corruption; I have been giving up my whole mind not only to sin, but to a sin; it has been my business to gratify it.
Then probably some such thought as this arises: What am I that have done, that am doing, all these things? How do I come to break all these commandments? How do I come to forget God, to disobey God, to be proud, passionate, unclean? Why, just because I am a sinner; because I sin just as I breathe. It all proceeds from a corrupt nature.
Then the sinner may be led a step further. He looks around him and sees – what does not lessen his distress – that he belongs to an alienated race: I am a guilty, polluted creature; but I am also one of a guilty, polluted race. When God is not seen, the sinner is concealed among the crowd, hidden among the mass. When God catches him, He individualises him. But then he looks round and sees that he is one of a wicked race. And does that make his wickedness less? No, it magnifies it. Then there is, it may be as yet, a somewhat extorted compliance, but a compliance with what God commanded all the people to do when the curse was pronounced on Mount Ebal: “Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen”. What a thing for a sinner himself to say, “Amen”, when God pronounces the curse on him!
2. There is compunction. “They were pricked in their heart.” You may have some conviction of sin without returning to God. Natural conscience by the Word of God may produce some surface conviction, or it may be produced by some remote dealing of the Spirit of God. There must be compunction. The sinner sees his sin – that is conviction. He feels it – that is compunction. The serpent bites, and its bite is felt. He tries to shake off the venomous creature, but it cleaves to him. “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me?” The effect of compunction is that the sinner cannot endure sin; compunction makes sin intolerable. “Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that My fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts.” And so, sin now being intolerable, the sinner seeks to rid himself of it. He takes to reading and praying, to church-going and to reformation. He tries to tear sin and his soul away from one another – and he fails.
3. There is humiliation. I do not mean here evangelical humiliation, the Christian grace of humility, but the soul’s situation when the sinner finds that he cannot save himself and is forced to submit to the fact that another must do this great work for him. When he finds he can do nothing to deliver himself, he looks around for a friend. And that friend must be a Saviour.
Sermon 3. Sinners are away from God; and being so, can neither be holy nor happy. But sinners may be converted. Not all sinful beings may be converted, but sinful men and women may. There is another order of sinners – there is no conversion for them – but sinners of the race of Adam may be converted; which implies, not only that their faces may be turned Godward, but that there is a way of return to God. The provision for this is found in the covenant of grace. There is no covenant of grace for fallen angels; so their conversion is an impossibility. But for sinners of mankind there is a covenant of grace; so their conversion is a possibility.
As we have seen, God asks nothing of sinners but that they be converted – nothing. Men went away from God in the fall; and God is not asking of men anything but that they come back again. Sinners think God is requiring a great deal at their hand. So He is. His law remains unchanged, and the law speaks to them that are under the law. And yet, as regards salvation, God is not asking sinners to do anything in order to return. True, God needs to do a great deal to sinners, in order to turn them; but God is requiring nothing of sinners but that they return. God is requiring nothing but that; but sinners are in such a situation that they will not do that. God says to the sinner, Come back again, and he will not.
Why are sinners unwilling to be converted? One cause is the love of sin, preferring sin to Christ, preferring sin to pardon and salvation. Along with pardon, God says, “A new heart also will I give you”; but the sinner does not want a new heart – he likes the old one better. God says, “From all your idols and filthiness will I cleanse you”; but the sinner does not want to be so cleansed. The love of sin: “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil”. Light was in the world, and darkness came into it; but light, brighter than the original, shone again into the world. Why is it then that those who have gone away will not come back again? Because they love the darkness better. And that is the condemnation. It is not, if we perish under the gospel, because of Adam’s fall, but because we preferred sin to salvation by Christ. There are other sufficient reasons for it; but this is one reason why we need not complain of Adam’s fall, when we prefer to continue in the state into which it brought us rather than be saved by Christ.
Another cause is diabolical darkness. “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” This darkness obscures, hides all the spiritual objects which it is necessary for a sinner to be fully aware of in order to his conversion – God, law, sin, self; these things it hides. Though every man acknowledges himself a sinner, by nature we have little idea of what sin means. For no one can know sin without the knowledge of the law, and no one can know the law without the knowledge of God and His perfections.
God is only asking sinners to come back, but they are not in a state to obey God’s call. So, when God has a purpose of mercy, He sends His Spirit to convince of sin. And the instrument which the Spirit uses is the law, the law seen in the light of the perfections of the Lawgiver, the law seen in its equitable requirements on the nature of man. By the law, the sinner is convinced of a total depravity and an infinite guilt. Before that, sin sat very lightly; but when there is conviction and compunction – when the man has both seen and felt himself to be a sinner, and fears the vengeance that is coming on such people – he seeks to rid himself of sin.
And where does he go to rid himself of sin? He goes to the law for righteousness, and he goes to nature for strength. He sets himself to keep the law, that he may thus rid himself of sin and of the wrath sin brings. Therefore, that a sinner may be converted, he needs to be taught that the old way is blocked up. It is necessary that the convinced and pricked sinner be humbled. I mean here the position in which a man is who was too proud to be indebted to another, when he is at last obliged to stoop.
The sinner then has been convinced, pricked and humbled under a sense of impotence. Under this mighty load of sin and misery, he has put forth his utmost effort to deliver himself, and he finds his utmost effort is just nothing. He needs someone to deliver him; someone must interpose to deliver him from sin and wrath, or he is gone. What he needs is just a Saviour.
The sinner is willing to be saved, but by whom? He has heard of Christ. He had heard of the law before he was convinced by means of it, but now it has taken its real, effectual hold on him. And now the gospel is to him very much what the law was to him. He lived as if he was without law, and yet he had heard of the law; now, convinced of sin by the law, he has heard of Christ. He has found the law, and he has heard by the hearing of the ear – from his fellow-men, from apostles and prophets – of a Saviour. But the same Spirit who has taught him his sin and misery instructs him in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now he makes many earnest inquiries about this gospel. For the sinner sees thus far that, if the gospel is true, there is help for him; and that if it is not true, there is no help for him but he must perish like the fallen angels. Then there is some discerning, it may be, of mercy in God – that this is His name: “The Lord God merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin”. The Spirit of God sustains the soul, keeps the sinner from sinking into absolute despair, by the consideration that he is in the hands of a merciful God, a God with whom there is forgiveness and plenteous redemption. All these things, which sound unheeded in the ears of others, are matters of deep interest and engrossing thought to such a person. He puts a thousand questions about them: God is merciful; yes, but how can He be just? What is to become of this law of His, which is holy, just and good?
What he knows about the law by the Spirit’s teaching comes in: Am I to be pardoned at the expense of this law? After there has been some sight of the mercy of God, there are often questions about the congruity of mercy and justice. But here the Mediator of the new covenant comes in; God’s grace is seen to be set forth in the form of a covenant. That is very important as seen at this stage. God’s mercy, grace, compassion, as in the Divine nature, are infinite, unbounded – an infinite ocean. God’s mercy is not distinct from His essence, or being; therefore it is infinite. But, in its outgoing, the quality of mercy does not flow from God by any necessity: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy”.
Therefore it is not enough for the sinner that God is a merciful God; He must have a merciful purpose. But it is that merciful purpose that is now apprehended. It is seen that it is God’s end and intention to receive into His favour every returning sinner. It is seen that what the sinner was striving to do and could not – to put away sin – God has done. It is seen that salvation is by a Redeemer, who has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Then there is the question: The Mediator of the new covenant, through whom a gracious God accomplishes His purpose to save, who is He? Here comes in the Person of Christ, as God and man, in two distinct natures and one Person. Christ asked the man whose eyes had been opened: “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” If men were in earnest, the question which would oftener be put: “Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him?”
Now, some things are so clearly laid down in Scripture, that some knowledge of them is necessary to a spiritual belief in a Saviour. There is this: that Christ is both very God and very man, and He has these two natures in one Person. No further proof of the latter point is necessary than that He says always “I”, not “We”. “I came down from heaven.” It was necessary that Christ should be man. A man was our first covenant-head, and a man is our second covenant-head. God never dealt directly with more than two – Adam and Christ. He dealt with all other men mediately, through a covenant-head. Christ must be man; for unless a perfect human obedience was given, there could be no salvation for sinners. If we had a holy human nature (as God gave it and never took it away); a continual keeping of the law and the endurance of the full penalty in the case of any sin – that would be a righteousness, but we do not have it. If we are to be saved, a human righteousness answering all the demands of the law must be found. A Saviour who had wrought out, and who could give a righteousness such as that to you, would be the Saviour for you, sinner!
But it was also necessary that Christ should be God. It was necessary, because sin as an infinite evil, against an infinitely holy God, demands an infinite punishment. The sinner can never endure this; therefore he endures punishment eternally. He must be always, always, always at it, because he can never fully endure it. It was not necessary that an eternal punishment should be endured, else there could have been no salvation, but an infinite punishment. The eternal punishment endured by the sinner can never be finished as the infinite punishment endured by Christ was; it will ever fall short of legal acquittal. Again, it was necessary that Christ should be God, because you need one to teach you infallibly, and infallibility can be found only in God; and because you need one to be subject unto, in whom you can place unbounded confidence and trust, and that can only be God.
The sinner is now convinced that he cannot himself put away his sin. But then he sees that what he could not do, “what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,” has done. He sees that God is merciful, but that mercy does not flow from God by any necessity of nature – that mercy must ever be sovereign – but he sees that God has a covenant of grace and mercy. And these three things he is called to attend to: the God of the covenant, the provisions of the covenant, the Mediator of the covenant. God is infinitely gracious and merciful, with a certain revealed, gracious purpose. Then the provisions of the covenant, are they ample to meet the sinner’s condition? He can have no hope if the covenant does not contain all that is needful to bring him out of a state of sin and misery into a state of complete blessedness. But it does contain all things needful; and then the Mediator of the covenant is there – Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and man, the Daysman who is able to lay His hand upon us both.
But why all this? you say, is God not waiting only till we turn? Yes, God is requiring nothing of you but that you turn. You ask again, What is the use of all this then? You will not turn without it. God is not requiring it; but you require all this, in order to turn. You cannot turn unconvinced, unpricked in heart, unhumbled. You cannot turn without Christ, and you cannot come to Christ in ignorance of Him. All these things are necessary in order to conversion, but God may accomplish them in a very short time – in less time than I have taken to speak of them. If I were to describe a landscape to a blind man, it would take some time: I must go over it in order, part by part. But if his eyes were opened, he would see it at a glance. So, if the sinner’s eyes are opened, he might at once see God, law, sin, self, death, hell; he might see at once sin and salvation, himself and Christ.
Well then, seek sound conversion. Do not delay, turn this moment; yet do not too readily judge yourself converted. Turn this moment, but make full proof of having turned. Do it now; but do it well; be in earnest about it.