Man's Inability to Save Himself

IT T AS it ever occurred to the reader to mark in almost numberless passages in the Bible, the half-magical power of the little word but Like an enchanter’s wand, it suddenly turns light to darkness, or darkness to light; makes the dweller in dust to awake and sing, or fills the festive hall with horror, as if a handwriting from heaven had appeared on the wall. After considerable trouble. King David’s plot against Uriah succeeds at last; the impracticable soldier will appear no more in Jerusalem; Bathsheba is brought to the palace; and amid the festivity and gladness of a royal wedding;, the ugly parts of the business seem in a fair way to be forgotten. Suddenly, however, as we read the history the whole scene is bathed in gloom; a portentous darkness comes down, — all at the bidding of the word but, which demands the insertion of a little extra clause in the narrative — But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, In another place we have a striking sketch of a Syrian warrior — a picture of a prosperous man into which every brilliant colour seems to enter. ‘Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria,, was a great man with his master, and honourable, because by him the Lord had given deliverance unto Syria; he was also a mighty man of valour.’ At this point, however, the painter seems suddenly to dip his brush in ink, and dash it remorselessly against the brilliant colouring; and in our English Bible it is at the bidding of the same little word the sudden change is made — ’ but he was a leper In the concise forms of the Hebrew tongue it is not even necessary to express the ‘but.’ The contrast is marked by the single word, ’ a leper; ’ standing in its naked expressiveness at the close of the gorgeous description it needs no disjunctive particle to indicate the change of view; no more than if you were to describe a man as being in the best of health, and after dwelling elaborately on the healthy state of every organ were to add m a moment that he had just swallowed a dose of deadly poison.

The most striking cases, however, of the talisman-power of the word but in our Bible, are those in which man’s state as a sinner is contrasted with his state of salvation throug-h Christ.

‘O Israel, thou havSt destroyed thyself; but in me is thy help.’’ ‘’The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal, At that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of

Christ, Perhaps the most remarkable instance of any occurs m the beginning of the second chapter of Ephesians. Nothing can be blacker than the picture drawn there of the natural condition of the members of that church. They were dead in trespasses and sins. Dead however, in a sense that implied neither rest nor peace, because they were possessed and driven by lusts of evil and spirits of darkness, that like the devils in the herd of swine were forcing them to the brink of a terrible precipice. The first three verses of the chapter (omitting the words in italics, hath he quickened in the first verse, which at that place rather hurt the sense than improve it) are a dramatic representation of this frightful scene. A host of human beings, blind and ghastly as corpses, are hurrying tumultuously along, impelled by wild, infernal impulses, down a steep place to the edge of the gulf. Their doom seems inevitable, they are rushing at such a pace and with such momentum, that no power on earth can save them. Suddenly, however an arm is stretched out from heaven. Mans extremity is Gods opportunity. As though it were in a dissolving vieWj the picture of wild tumult and ghastly ruin gives place all of a sudden to one of heavenly life and tranquillity. And the change is again introduced by the same magical word: But Godj who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.’

There can be little doubt that these frequent and striking contrasts of the two states are introduced in Scripture on purpose; and a slight measure of reflection will show to any intelligent reader what that purpose must be.

I. Thus, in the first pla,ce, they make it very plain that the two states are essentially separate from each other — the state of sin and the state of grace in Christ.

But for such remarkable contrasts we might suppose — what at all times we are prone enough to do — that there is no great difference between the one state and the other; that men differ from each other or differ from their former selves only in this that in some there is more evil and less good and in others more good and less evil. We might suppose that the only distinction between men in a moral sense, lay in the proportions in which good and evil entered into their character and that as these proportions are all but infinitely varied, so their classification must be equally diversified and that no hard division of men into two great states, or into two great classes, would even be practicable. But abounding as the Bible does with the sharp contrasts we have referred to, such a view cannot be held. The testimony of Scripture is explicit that there are just two grand states — a state of sin and a state of grace, a state of death and a state of life. No doubt many difficult questions arise out of this doctrine. On these it were wise for us to leave the veil of obscurity as it is left in the Bible; but that this is the doctrine of the Bible can hardly be denied. And who does not see how thoroughly this view is borne out by the personal teaching of Christ himself? What feature of that teaching is so remarkable as the division of his hearers into two great classes? The two gates, the wide and the strait; the two ways the broad and the narrow; the twofold terminus, destruction and life; the two kinds of builders, on the rock and on the sand; the two classes of virgins, those with oil in their lamps and those without oil; the wheat and the chaflf; the branches for fruit and the branches for fuel; and, to mention but one other, the grand division on the great day of judgment of the sheep and the goats, the striking contrasts brought out between the lives of the two classes, and the awful solemnity of the Judge’s sole alternative, Come, ye blessed,^ or Depart, ye cursed,^ — all show the prominence of this grand division in the mind of Christ, and the vast pains he took to leave a clear and most solemn impression of it on the hearts of all who heard Him.

2. Another purpose of these striking contrasts is to show clearly that sinful man cannot be his own Saviour.

In all ages his tendency has been to believe in his ability to save himself. In no age of the world was this tendency ever more strong than it is in some quarters at the present day. We should remark, however, that the word save is not a proper word in such a connection. Wherever man holds himself sufficient, or nearly sufficient to remedy the evils of his condition, he cannot believe that he is lost, and it is only the lost that need to be saved. It is but some spots of dust he has got on his garments, some slight dislocations his machinery has undergone, some stupid errors into which he has ignorantly fallen, or which have been handed down from his fathers, and out of which education and experience will by-and-by be sure to extricate him. And so there are men in our day, of highest culture and scholarship too, who have discovered that there is no need for God to help human creatures up the heights of improvement — nay, that there is no such being as a personal God at all! The gospel of these men, according to their most recent oracle, is the gospel of avrapKeia, the creed of self-sufficience, which sees for man no clearer or deeper duty than that of intellectual self-reliance, self-dependence, self-respect — an evangel not to be cancelled or supplanted by any revelation of mystic, or prophet, or saint, This is the boldest utterance that the spirit of self-dependence has ever yet given out. It is needless surely to remark that the self-dependence here extolled is quite unlike that healthy self-reliance which teaches a man not to depend on his fellow-creatures for anything that with Gods help he can do himself. What you are here taught js, not that you are to be independent of your fellow-men, but independent even of God!

Into such a wild extreme as this, no one that reads these pages is ever likely to fall. But how prone are we to fancy, nevertheless, that to a large extent we are able to save ourselves! The debt we owe to God’s justice, may we not pay at least a part of it by our penitence for the past, our increased diligence for the future, our better lives our abounding good works? The power that sin has got in our hearts, may we not check it, and in some degree overcome it, if we are only watchful of our habits — if we are but on our guard against temptation, and earnest in our efforts to control ourselves? True, we are weak and frail: at best we come far short of perfection. But will not Christ make up for our deficiencies, and will not God by His Spirit help our infirmities? If we try to do our best, what need we fear? What more can be expected of us than that we should do what we can? How can it be supposed that a righteous God will exact impossibilities, and demand of us a perfection which we can no more give than we can fly to the stars?

To all these questions there is at least one answer. They all assume that man can more or less save himself. They assume, therefore, the opposite of what is taught by those vivid contrasts between mans state by nature and his state by grace, to which we have so often adverted. If man can be his own saviour, these contrasts have no meaning. There is no propriety in speaking of death as the wages of sin, and eternal life as the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord; there is no propriety in speaking of man as self-destroyed, and affirming that his only help is in God. All those passages become misleading and worse, that stop mens mouths and declare them alike guilty and helpless. But is it so? Is man sufficient for his own deliverance? Nay, let God be true, but every man a liar. Talk of doing your best — who is there that does his best? What kind of conscience can the man have who affirms that he does his best? ‘If we say that we are without sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.-* And are we not responsible, too, in a large degree, for our inability, even when we try earnestly to do what we are called by Gods law to do? When a school-boy has trifled away nine-tenths of the time allotted for preparing a lesson, when he has wasted his strength and dissipated his mental energies in some exciting sport, and then, hurrying at the last moment to his task, strives without effect to overtake it, is it excuse enough that he is then doing his best? Was he not to blame for wasting the rest of the time? Was he not to blame for letting his attention be diverted and his energies scattered, so that he could not concentrate them on his task when at length he tried? And is there no blame to be attached to man in like manner for his inability to obey Gods law, even when he makes the effort? Is not this in great part the fruit of the inattention, and the trifling, and the self-indulgence, and the worldliness of his past life? Sufficiently so, at least, to justify his condemnation? It may often be hard to admit this. It is always hard to give up the idea of saving ourselves. It is hard for a merchant to admit that he is a bankrupt, and to lie down at the feet of his creditors. It is hard for a sinner to admit that he is a bankrupt before God, and cast himself, without one plea of his own, on the Divine mercy. But, if we would ever taste the sweets of salvation, we must submit to this act of humiliation. Adam must give up his miserable apron of fig-leaves, if his shame is ever to be covered. All of us must abandon our filthy rags, if we are to wear the white robe of salvation. We must give up the notion that we are rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and admit that we are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.

3. Our next remark is already obvious: the contrasts of which we are speaking are designed to bring out very clearly that man’s salvation proceeds wholly from the mercy and love of God.

It is an act of pure grace, not only not deserved, but the very opposite of what is deserved. It is a blessed present to one who deserved a signal punishment: the wages of sin is death, but eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ No words could be more fitly chosen to convey the truth, that so far as man is concerned, his case is hopeless; and that his salvation is due solely to the generosity and grace of God. So, also in another of the passages already quoted, where out of the chaos and confusion of his self-caused ruin a hand from heaven is stretched out to save. ‘God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Geographers tell us that many of our greatest rivers, such as the Euphrates and the Tigris, have a twofold source. The same is true of the river of the water of life. It originates in these two fountains, the ’ mercy and the Move of God. And these fountains are not meagre and precarious streamlets, for He is rich in mercy,^ and it is a ‘great love wherewith he loved us.’ For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but should have everlasting life, The boundless compassion of God pitied the children of men, as He saw them led by Satan, ridden by sin, exiles from home, slaves to corruption, blindfolded by the world, cut off from heaven, and bound for hell. And the boundless love of God has devised a method of salvation at a cost and sacrifice to Himself that no words can tell, or figures calculate, adapted to remedy every evil that sin has introduced, offered as a free gift to all men, without money and without price, if only they will take it as a gift, and acknowledge the infinite mercy that has thus changed them from children of wrath and heirs of hell to children of Goa and heirs of glory.

There are many misconceptions of God’s attitude towards sinners, which this view of the origin of salvation is fitted to remove. Let us just glance at two. In the first place it sweeps away the conception that God is an easy-minded Being, who looks with considerable indifference on the delinquencies of sinners, and now that Christ has suffered for them, is more than ever disposed to treat them with indulgence and leniency. If there be any feeling more remote than another from that which the Scriptures ascribe to God in connection with mans sin, it is that of easy-minded indifference. The infinite depths of

Gods nature are stirred by man’s sin. No wonder! ‘Man, the crown and glory of creation, is stained from head to foot with the abominable thing which He hates; he who alone of earthly creatures was made in His image, is impregnated through and through with the quality which is too disgusting for Him to look on. Never was such intense compassion known as that which surges in the Divine bosom when the fatal blow behoves to be struck. ‘How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall T deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.^ Never was there such pains taken with any Divine plan, or such a sacrifice made to fulfil it, as in the arrangements for the salvation of men. If it were possible for God to be easy-minded, to make large allowance for sinners, to adopt a policy of indulgence, to wink at the iniquity of his children, why make such a work about their guilt, and about their redemption? If the whole subject of mans sin could be easily left to the mere mercy of God, why should God Himself manifest such intense emotion in connection with it, and why should such a price be paid for his ransom as the blood of the only-begotten Son?

The other misconception of Gods attitude towards sinners, is that which represents Him as full of wrath and fury against them, pursuing them, so to speak, like the avenger of blood, like Saul enraged at David, and never abating His rage, till His own Son rushed between them, and received in His own person the blows and the bolts that were meant for them. It is hard to say if this view was ever deliberately given, except as an enemys caricature of the doctrine of the atonement. But if the leaven of it should lurk in any one’s mind, let it be for ever expelled by the consideration that salvation is God’s gift to sinners; that the stream of the water of life has its origin in the rich mercy and great love of the Father; that, so far from thirsting for the sinner’s punishment, God’s very soul shrunk from inflicting it; that all the three Persons of the Godhead are one in their feelings toward the human family; and that ‘there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, And if anything more should be needed to expel the idea of Gods eagerness to hurl His thunderbolts at the sinner, let it be considered that the feeling thus ascribed to God is one of the most wretched weaknesses of fallen humanity. There are two grounds, utterly different from each other, on which displeasure may be felt at an offence. On the one hand, you may be grieved and horrified at the sin itself, and if you be a judge, whose duty it is to punish the guilty, you will be much distressed at the necessity of inflicting retribution for a deed so wicked. On the other hand, you may care little or nothing about the criminality of the act, or the guilt of the offender, but may be greatly exasperated and provoked at the annoyance or injury done to yourself. Alas, the wrath of many at the sins of others has no higher source than this! You mav have as manv sins and vices as you please, without rousing their emotion in any shape, so long as you do not come across their path; but the moment you annoy or injure them, there is no bound to their indignation, or to their eagerness to punish and restrain you. But how selfish and unholy is the indignation that is inspired solely by such a cause as this! To ascribe any such feeling to God is not merely to make Him a partner of our infirmities, but a partaker of our meanest sins. How different the quality of that wrath which burns in His holy bosom! The passage which we have quoted so often shows clearly how such wrath exists alongside of injiriite mercy and infinite love. The description of the state of the Ephesians has reached its climax when they are called children of wrath, even as others.’ God’s wrath ’ was their very heritage, the element in which they lived, the mother, it might almost appear, of whom they were born. Yet at the same moment, as we read in the very next clause, they were the objects of God’s rich mercy and wonderful love.

What marvellous combinations of feeling the Divine heart can cherish! Constant and burning wrath side by side with infinite compassion and love! For my ways are not your ways neither are your thoughts my thoughts, saith the Lord. For as the heaven is higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts/

One other purpose of these contrasts we mention — to set forth the completeness and glory of Gods salvation.

There are contrasts of colour, familiar to every artist, which are always made use of when it is designed to give great force and prominence to some figure or object in a picture. The deeper the gloom of the heavens behind, the brighter seems the flash of lightning that throws a moment of midday into the darkness of the night. So also the glory of Gods salvation is made to appear greater when it is placed side by side with the picture of mans ruin. It is a favourite practice of some of the sacred writers to place the”two together. In the prophets we sometimes find awful pictures of guilt, and when we might expect these to be followed by tremendous denunciations of punishment, we find them actually followed by magnificent manifestations of mercy. The first chapter of Isaiah is one of the darkest in all the Bible; its first words are an impassioned appeal to earth and heaven against those whom God had nourished and brought up as children, but who had rebelled against Him. As it proceeds it advances fresh charges, and detects in their most sacred services the abominations of hypocrisy in place of the beauties of holiness; and then, at the very climax, when you might have expected a burst of thunder, you have a burst of mercy — ‘Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool, So also, to take but one more instance, in the twenty-eighth chapter of the Sa,me prophet; the scornful men’ that rule Jerusalem are arraigned for their matchless wickedness and after many a remonstrance with them for particular forms of sin, the head and front of their offending is set forth in these startling words — Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.’ What then? What follows such outrageous wickedness? Does the earth open her mouth, or hell her jaws, to ingulf them? The very reverse! Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone; a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste, But to guard against the abuse of this matchless grace it is added — Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding-place/

Thus does God impressively show us the completeness and the glory of His salvation. He places it side by side with the evil which it is desio-ned to remedy and however terrible may be the aspect of the one it is dissipated like vapour by the glory of the other. The remedy has not been devnsed on a superficial and cursory view of the evil that has to be provided for; that evil has been surveyed in every aspect and gauged in every dimension; and still the result is, that ’ where sin abounded, grace does much more abound.’ The gift of God is not a mere palliation that will but modify some of the features of the disease, it is a glorious remedy that will search it to its depths till not a trace of it remains. No doubt it is a strong man in whose arms the sinner lies bound and helpless; but He who has come to bind him is infinitely stronger! Delightful and blessed assurance! If it be terrible to think how we are children of disobedience and children of wrath — how we are environed by sin and death and hell — how these hold us in a vice, like the grim serpents that held Laocoon and his sons in their inextricable folds, it is glorious to think of One beside us, at whose word all the powers of darkness let go their hold, and who, if we will but grasp His hand, will bring us out into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. But ever let us remember, that as is the privilege, so also is the responsibility; and that just because the salvation is so complete and so glorious, so also is the doom of those who reject it hopeless and irremediable. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?’