Lecture XVII. False Comforts for Sinners (3)

I have often thought such teachers needed the rebuke of Elijah when he met the priests of Baal. “Cry aloud, for he is a God; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey; or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.” The minister who ventures to intimate that God is not ready, and that tells the sinner to wait God’s time, might almost as well tell him, that now God is asleep, or gone on a journey, and cannot attend to him at present. Miserable comforters indeed! It is little less than outrageous blasphemy of God. How many have gone to the judgment, red all over with the blood of souls, that they have deceived and destroyed, by telling them God was not ready to save them, and they must wait God’s time. No doubt, such a doctrine is exceedingly calculated to afford present relief to an anxious sinner. It warrants him to say, “Oh, yes, God is not ready, I must wait God’s time and so I can live in sin, and take it out a while longer, till he gets ready to attend to me, and then I will get religion.”

10. It is false comfort to tell an anxious sinner to do any thing for relief, which he can do, and not submit his heart to God.

An anxious sinner is often willing to do anything else, but the very thing which God requires him to do. He is willing to go to the ends of the earth, or to pay his money, or to endure suffering, or anything, but full and instantaneous submission to God. Now, if you will compromise the matter with him, and tell him of something else that he may do, and yet evade that point, he will be very much comforted. He likes that instruction. He says, “Oh, yes, I will do that, I like that minister, he is not so severe as others, he seems to understand my particular case, and knows how to make allowances.”

It often reminds me of the conduct of a patient who is very sick, but has a great dislike for a certain physician and a particular medicine; but that is the very physician who alone understands treating his disease, and that the only remedy for it. Now the patient is willing to do anything else, and call in any other physician; and he is anxious and in distress, and is asking all his friends if they cannot tell him what he shall do, and he will take all the nostrums and quack medicines in the country, before he will submit to the only course that can bring him relief. By and by, after he has tried everything without any benefit, if he does not die in the experiment, he gives up his unreasonable opposition, calls in the physician, takes the proper medicine, and is cured. Just so it is with sinners. They will eagerly do anything, if you will let them off from this intolerable pressure of present obligation to submit to God. I will mention a few of the things which sinners are told to do.

(1.) Telling a sinner he must use the means. Tell an anxious sinner this—You must use the means, and he is relieved. “Oh, yes, I will do that, if that is all. I thought that God required me to repent and submit to him now. But if using the means will answer, I will do that with all my heart.” He was distressed before, because he was cornered up, and did not know which way to turn. Conscience had beset him, like a wall of fire, and urged him to repent now. But this relieves him at once, and he feels better, and is very thankful, he says, that he found such a good adviser in his distress. But he may use the means, as he calls it, till the day of judgment, and not be a particle the better for it, but will only hasten his way to death. What is the sinner’s use of means, but rebellion against God? God uses means. The church 328uses means to convert and save sinners, to bear down upon them, and bring them to submission. But what has the sinner to do with using means? Will you set him to use means back upon God, and so make an offset in the matter? Or is he to use means to make himself submit to God? How shall he go to work with his means to make himself submit? It is just telling the sinner, “You need not submit to God now, but just use the means awhile, and see if you cannot melt God’s heart down to you, so that he will yield this point of unconditional submission.” It is a mere cavil to evade the duty of immediate submission to God. It is true that sinners, actuated by a regard to their own happiness, often give attention to the subject of religion, attend meetings, and pray, and read, and many such things. But in all this, they have no regard to the honor of God, nor do they so much as mean to obey him. Their design, is not obedience, for if it were, they would not be impenitent sinners. They are not, therefore, using means to be Christians, but to obtain pardon, and a hope. It is absurd to say that an impenitent sinner is using means to repent, for this is the same as to say that he is willing to repent, or in other words, that he does repent, and is not an impenitent sinner. So, to say that an unconverted sinner uses means with design to become a Christian, is a contradiction, for it is saying, that he is willing to be a Christian, which is the same as to say that he is a Christian already.

(2.) Telling the sinner to pray for a new heart. I once heard a celebrated Sunday-school teacher do this. He was almost the father of Sunday-schools in this country. He called a little girl up to him, and began to talk to her. “My little daughter, are you a Christian?” No, sir. “Well, you cannot be a Christian, yourself, can you?” No, sir. “No, you cannot be a Christian, you cannot change your heart yourself, but you must pray for a new heart, that is all you can do, pray to God, God will give you a new heart.” He was an aged and venerable man, but I felt almost disposed to rebuke him openly in the name of the Lord, I could not bear to hear him deceive that child, telling her she could not be a Christian. Does God say “Pray for a new heart?” Never. He says, “Make you a new heart.” And the sinner is not to be told to pray to God to do his duty for him, but to go and do it himself. I know the Psalmist, a good man, prayed. “Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.” He had faith and prayed in faith. But that is a very different thing from setting an obstinate rebel to pray for a new heart. No doubt, an anxious sinner will be delighted 329with such instruction. “Why, I knew I needed a new heart, and that I ought to repent, but I thought I must do it myself, I am very willing to ask God to do it, I hated to do it myself, but have no objection that God should do it, if he will, and I will pray for it, if that is all that is required.”

(3.) Telling the sinner to persevere. And suppose he does persevere. He is as certain to be damned as if he had been in hell ever since the foundation of the world. His anxiety arises only from his resistance, and if he would submit, it would cease. And now, will you tell him to persevere in the very thing that causes his distress? Suppose my child should, in a fit of passion, throw a book or something on the floor. I tell him “Take it up,” and instead of minding what I say, he runs off and plays. “Take it up!” He sees I am in earnest, and begins to look serious. “Take it up, or I shall get a rod.” And I put up my arm to get the rod. He stands still. “Take it up, or you must be whipped.” He comes slowly along to the place, and then begins to weep. “Take it up, my child, or you will certainly be punished.” Now he is in distress, and sobs and sighs as if his bosom would burst, but still remains as stubborn as if he knew I could not punish him. Now I begin to press him with motives to submit and obey, but there he stands, in agony, and at length bursts out, “Oh, father, I do feel so bad, I think I am growing better.” And now, suppose a neighbor to come in, and see the child standing there, in all this agony of stubbornness. The neighbor asks him what he is standing there for, and what he is doing. “Oh, I am using means to pick up that book.” If this neighbor should tell the child, “Persevere, persevere, my boy, you will get it by and by,” what should I do? Why, I would turn him out of the house. What does he mean by encouraging my child in his rebellion.

Now, God calls the sinner to repent, he threatens him, he draws the glittering sword, he persuades him, he uses motives, and the sinner is distressed to agony, for he sees himself driven to the dreadful alternative of giving up his sins or going to hell. He ought instantly to lay down his weapons, and break his heart at once. But he resists, and struggles against conviction, and that creates his distress. Now will you tell him to persevere? Persevere in what? In struggling against God! That is just the direction the devil would give. All the devil wants is to see him persevere in just the way he is going on, and his destruction is sure. Satan may go to sleep.

(4.) Telling the sinner to press forward. That is, “You are in a good way, only press forward, and you will get to heaven.” This is on the supposition that his face is towards heaven, when in fact his face is towards hell, and he is pressing forward, and never more rapidly than now, while he is resisting the Holy Ghost. Often have I heard this direction given, when the sinner was in as bad a way as he could be. What you ought to tell him is, “STOP—sinner, stop, do not take another step that way, it leads to hell.” God tells him to stop, and because he does not wish to stop, he is distressed. Now, why should you attempt to comfort him in this way?

(5.) Tell a sinner that he must try to repent and give his heart to God. “Oh, yes,” says the sinner, “I am willing to try. I have often tried to do it, and I will try again.” Ah, does God tell you to try to repent? All the world would be willing to try to repent, in their way. Giving this direction implies that it is very difficult to repent, and perhaps impossible, and that the best thing a sinner can do is to try and see whether he can do it or not. What is this but substituting your own commandment in the place of God’s. God requires nothing short of repentance and a holy heart. Anything short of that is comforting him in vain, “seeing in your answers there remaineth falsehood.”

(6.) To tell him to pray for repentance. “Oh yes, I will pray for repentance, if that is all. I was distressed because I thought God required me to repent, but if he will do it, I can wait.” And so he feels relieved, and is quite comfortable.

(7.) To tell a sinner to pray for conviction, or pray for the Holy Ghost to show him his sins, or to labor to get more light on the subject of his guilt, in order to increase his conviction.

All this is just what the sinner wants, because it lets him off from the pressure of present obligation. He wants just a little more time. Anything that will defer that present pressure of obligation to repent immediately is a relief. What does he want more conviction for? Does God give any such direction to an impenitent sinner? God takes it for granted that he has conviction enough already. And so he has. Do you say he cannot realize all his sins? If he can realize only one of them, let him repent of that one, and he is a Christian. Suppose he could see them all, what reason is there to think he would repent of them all, any more than that he would repent of that one that he does see? All this is comforting the sinner by setting him to do that which he can do and will not submit his heart to God.