Grace and Reward

“Oq Lord, what a wonderful spirit was that which made St. Paul, in setting forth of himself against the vanity of Satan’s false apostles, hand in his claim here that he in Christ’s cause did excel and surpass them all? What wonderful spirit was that, I say, that made him to reckon up all his troubles and labors, his beatings, his whippings, his scourgings, his shipwrecks, his dangers and perils by water and by land, famine, hunger, nakedness and cold, with many more, and the daily care of all the congregations of Christ, among whom every man’s pain did pierce his heart, and every man’s grief was grievous unto him? O Lord, is this Pauls primacy, whereof he thought so much good that he did excel all others? Is not this Paul’s saying unto Timothy, his own scholar, and doth it not pertain to whosoever will be Christ’s true soldiers? Bear thou, saith he, affliction like a true soldier of Jesus Christ. This is true; if we die with Christ, we shall live with him; if we suffer with him, we shall reign with him; if we deny him, he shall deny us; if we be faithless, he remaineth faithful: he cannot deny himself. This Paul would have known to everybody; for there is no other way to heaven but Christ and his way.’ — BisHop RIDLEY’s Farewell Letter to his Fellow-Prisoners, and those who were exiled for the Gospel of Christ.

O subject seems to be so little understood N as that of divine rewards. If the Romanist has exalted merit to the utter exclusion of grace, the Protestant may be in danger of exalting grace to the utter exclusion of merit. Not that the latter has anything to do with our pardon and acceptance. As sinners standing before the mercy-seat “there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God;” and therefore all must be saved on the same terms, “detng justzfied freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”* As saints standing before the judgment-seat. there will be a difference, since believers are to “be judged every man according to their works.’ + Christ’s work for us is the sole ground of our forgiveness; Christ’s

work in us will be the ground of our reward: the

* Rom. 3: 28, 29. t Rev. 20: 13. ag one is a finished work to which we can add nothing by our merit or obedience; the other is a progressive work, depending on our fidelity and consecration, whether it shall at last be crowned with the Master’s “well done.” It is evident, therefore, that rewards have a very important place in the scheme of redemption, and it is not necessary, in order to magnify the grace of God, that, having reduced all men to the same level of unworthiness, we should fix them there forever. What is our Lord’s promise to his faithful ones about being “recompensed at the resurrection of the just?” What means the prophet’s declaration, concerning such as turn many to righteousness, that they “shall shine as the stars forever and ever?” But it is written, “for as one star differeth from another star in glory, so also is the resurrection of the dead.” As certainly as there is no difference between men before the cross, so certainly there will be a difference between them in the resurrection. Observe how clearly these two facts are contrasted in the gospel; grace depending solely on the outward work of Christ on the cross, and reward on the inward work of obedience through the Spirit in our hearts. Hence these two looks enjoined in Scripture:

“Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth,”

“Look to yourselves,. that ye receive a full reward,” *

Now we have often noticed that just as the legalist resents the doctrine that good works can have no part in effecting our forgiveness, so the evangelical recoils from the idea that they can constitute any ground for our recompense. On the contrary, we have the feeling that such requital of faithful service and obedience is absolutely necessary to satisfy our instinctive sense of justice. We cannot think of a final divine reckoning which shall assign the same rank in glory, and the same degree of joy, to the lazy and indolent and unfruitful Christian, which are accorded to the ardent and devoted and self-denying Christian. As we cannot doubt that God, who can show himself just and yet justify the ungodly through his faith, will at last show himself equally just in rewarding the godly for his works. Else why lighten our possessions here except to add to our eternal weight of glory yonder? Why accept of poverty now, except to acquire “the riches of the glory of his

* Isaiah 46. 22. II John, 8. (R. V.) inheritance” hereafter? Asa matter of fact, when we open the scriptures we find the discrimination between grace and reward to be clear and unvarying. Without money and without price we are

saved; with a great price must we obtain our

heavenly recompense.

Search the scriptures diligently and see how clearly this is revealed: —

“Kor. 6y .evace “are “ye
saved through faith, vot of
works lest any man should
boast.” — Eph. 2: 8, 9.

“But to him that worketh “not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.’ — Rom. OO ne

“Therefore we conclude
that a man is justified by
faith without the deeds of

the law.’ — Rom. 3: 28.

“Behold I come quickly and my reward is with me, to give to every man according as his work shall

b¢,’ — Rey.222” 42.

“For the Son of man
shall come in the glory of
his Father with his angels,
and then he shall reward
every man according to his
Matt..16 0729s

works.’

“Who will render to
every man according to his

deeds. — Rom. 2: 6.

Butter at be borne in mind, that while the supreme and final reward of the Christian is at the coming of Christ, the Lord has promised much

—iF even in the life that now is. The record runs, “manifold more in this present time, and in the

8 The age to-come

age to come life everlasting. is the millenial age, to be ushered in by the second advent of Christ; at which time the full reward will be meted out for losses and trials and hardships endured for Him in this age. All the crowns of the faithful are reserved unto that period ; — the

crown of life, the crown of joy, the crown of righteousness, the crown of glory, — all are assigned by the promise to the time of Christ’s return. Let us settle this in our minds. The present is the age of cross-bearing, wherein we are to fill up that which is behind in the sufferings of Christ; the next is the age of crown-wearing, wherein we shall fill up that which is behind in the rejoicing of Christ. For as his sufferings can never be complete while he is still afflicted in his members, neither can his joy be full until his Bride the Church is with him, beholding the glory which he had with the Father before the world was.

Now no human biography can give us any light concerning the rewards of that age of glory. But

the recompense of the just in this world, the

* Luke 18: 30. + 1 Thess. 2:19. 2 Tim. 4:8. 1 Pet.5: 4. Rev. 2: 10, “hundred fold now in this time, zwzth persecutions,” is wonderfully illustrated in the history of Christ’s faithful servants. And to enforce this promise we shall turn to the story of several saintly lives, and let them tell us how much of blessed requital, even now, the Lord bestows on those who choose to suffer with him.

It has often seemed as though God takes care to reward his faithful servants most richly at the very points where they have suffered and sacrificed most for him. As the clay is fashioned to the mould, so his bounty is shaped to our privations, his fullness to our self-emptying, his gift of himself to our surrender of self for his sake. Indeed is not this the substance of what he promises in that saying of his, “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it?”? He shall find the very thing, in other words, which he has foregone, only in Christ and not in himself; divine joy for the loss of human happiness, spiritual riches for the spoiling of earthly goods, favor with the Lord’s people for the enmity and rejection of the world. Surely we may comfort ourselves unspeakably in this fact, in the face of any trial or hardship which we may be moved to undergo for the Master’s sake. He never leaves himself without this witness to his tender love and gracious care of his own. His reward will always take its measure from our privation; and if we can say truly. ‘Behold we have left all and followed thee,” we shall certainly have the promise fulfilled to us, ‘ All things are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” As much of self-sacrifice, so much of the divine indwelling is the law of the Spirit of life, even as every indenture of the coast means a corresponding fullness of the incoming tide. Therefore we need not think it strange that the same apostle who had “suffered the loss of all things” for Christ, could yet speak of himself as “possessing all things.” This is the lesson most deeply impressed upon us from the life of that rare Christian of the last century, Gerhard Tersteegen of Mulheim in Germany. Born in 1697; begotten again at sixteen years of age; soon after so wrought upon by the Spirit that he often spent whole nights in prayer and supplication; then his renunciation of wealth and comfort, that with all his substance he might minister to the poor; then his noble dedication of himself to God in written covenant; and then the years of obloquy and desertion by formal Christians. — This, in brief, is the story of his life. But in the midst of it all what immeasurable

compensations! No thought of making himself attractive or widely influential seems to have entered his mind. But just when he was most shunned and deserted by the worldly, then the sin-burdened and sorrowing began to crowd upon him from every direction, to crave his spiritual ministrations. Mark it well, oh popular preacher, compassing all art and originality in order to draw the people! Here was one who had no thought of drawing anybody, his heart being set only on the one end of becoming holy unto the Lord, and perfectly doing his will. Indeed, while pursuing his humble calling as a ribbon maker, how little he anticipated being a preacher at all. But like his Master, for whom he lived supremely, “he could not be hid.” The people thronged upon him. He tried to withdraw from them, but so much the more they pressed about him. Before he had risen in the morning, fifty or sixty would gather at his lodgings to hear the word of life from his lips; while state-church clergymen were jealous of his - irregular ministry, and complaining of him to the magistrates, he was yielding to the importunity of hungry souls, and consenting to preach; and such crowds gathered that they not only filled every part of the house, but climbed on ladders about the windows, in their eagerness to catch his words. One totally unknown to him comes two hundred miles on foot and in bad weather, that he may hear the words of this blessed man. But Tersteegen meantime is strangely amazed at it all, since his discourse is so plain and unstudied. “I cannot think what the people seek from such a poor creature,’ he: exclaims:~ Yet the secrets clear to us who read his life to-day. Give thyself wholly to Christ, and Christ will give himself wholly to thee; all the infinite wealth of his temporal and spiritual favor freely bestowed. ‘Jesus alone ts sufficient,” he wrote, “yet insufficient when he is not wholly and solely embraced.” ‘True without question is the saying, and equally true that those who wholly embrace him shall have “all-sufficiency in all things, and abound unto every good work.” Think of this man, once shunned and derided as a fanatic, now pressed upon by such eager crowds of anxious souls, that he can hardly find time to eat or sleep; once lying alone in an attic, burning up with fever, and so poor and neglected that from ‘morning till night no one brought him even a cup of water, now made the recipient of such sumptuous legacies from friends whom he had never seen, and from spiritual kinsmen in foreign lands, that he feels obliged to decline them. How was he enriched unto all bountifulness, temporal and spiritual, even as he heartily and without reserve embraced what he calls “the mystery of the inward and the outward cross.” Can we wonder that he should have given this as

his estimate of life?

‘“‘ Methinks it would be an inexpressible consolation to me, if in my dying hour, and when I shall have to appear in the presence of God, I could proclaim to all the world that God alone is the fountain of life; and that there is no other way to find and enjoy him, than the narrow way of inward prayer, self-denial, and a life hid with Christ in God, opened out to us and consecrated by the death of the Saviour.”

An unconscious, far-reaching spiritual attractiveness was the special reward of self-denial which he reaped. It is an honorable ambition to crave the power of drawing men, if we are intent only on bringing them to Christ. But let us remember that the true centre of gravitation is the cross. “I if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me.” Whether by word or by example, whether by the preaching in which Jesus Christ is “evidently set forth crucified,” or by the life in which his cross

—

and obedience unto death shine out conspicuously,

this is the strongest attraction. Oh to learn this lesson well, that through our self-renunciation, God’s drawing power is most effectively brought to bear on human souls. Gerhard Tersteegen carried his renunciation so far as to be willing to forego the joy of divine communion if it must be. In seasons of spiritual abandonment and barrenness, he advised that we neither turn to the world for comfort nor persist in begging of God that comfort which he, for the time, is pleased to withhold. He says : —

“Before the day of Pentecost arrived, the disciples could not hold out long in solitude, without the bodily and visible presence of Jesus. ‘I go a fishing,’ said Peter. Time appeared long to them in solitude; and such is the case with us. We go, as it were, a fishing, in a book, in company with others, etc.; and it is a favor if, having caught nothing during the night, the Saviour meets us and shows us as he did the disciples, the fruitlessness of all such attempts. I testify with fear, shame, and deep acknowledgement of the divine long-suffering and goodness, what my own experience has taught me in this respect; that the exercise of prayer is of so much importance, and that in seasons

of inward darkness and barrenness, we fall into the temptation so easily. But, on the other hand, when we cannot proceed with the exercise of prayer in the customary manner, we ought not to hold fast with firm efforts and self-will, what the Lord pleases to take from us; but humble ourselves, quietly consent to our nakedness and poverty, sacrifice our relish, light, and pleasure, to his good pleasure, and make the latter our prayer and our food; we should thus find, in time, the advantage of letting go of ourselves, of privation, and the loss of self, so to speak, and be made capable of a more profound, or rather of a purer retirement, made of prayer, and union with God, which is the very object the Lord has in view.” *

What a depth of self-abnegation is here reached! To accept the cross of withheld communion, the self denial of the divine favor, for the sake of the deeper humiliation and chastening — this is to go far beyond the common bounds of obedience. And we cannot wonder that the recompense attending it so far transcended the ordinary limits; so that from sharing his Master’s trial of being despised and rejected of men, he shared also his Master’s glory, and unto him was the gathering of

the people. We are speaking thus far of the present return

* Life and Letters, pp. 169, 17a.

which the Lord makes for faithful service. Sometimes this comes after the death of the servant of God; it is in the time that now is, but after the departure of him who has earned it. This seems to be the promise in the beatitude of the faithful dead given in the Apocalypse; “for they rest from their labors and their works do follow them.” * Their hands have ceased from toil and their tongue is silent; but because their labor was so truly in the Lord it continues in perpetual increase and blessing on the earth. They did not live to behold the fruit of their service; but the generations following see it and praise their memory.

Let us stand for a moment at the grave of one of these blessed ones who died in the Lord. It is in St. Mary’s chancel in Taunton, England. We stoop down and read the inscription: — “Here lies Master Joseph Alleine of Taunton — a sacrifice to God and to you”; — and our thoughts run back to that November day in 1668 when this grave was closed. There stands the widowed Theodosia, the partner of his sorrows, and the mourner for his early death. Beside her is the aged George Newton, his beloved brother and companion in

* Rev. 14% 33.

tribulation; and close by John Howe with a weeping train who have come over from a neighboring parish to look for the last time upon the face of this endeared servant of Christ.* What thoughts must fill their minds as they try to justify the ways of God to men? This faithful minister, so gifted by nature, so unreservedly devoted to God, brought to his grave at the age of thirty-five, utterly broken by long imprisonment and heartless persecution, his candle put out when darkness is covering the land, and gross darkness the people, and he such a burning and shining light, — how could the Lord permit it? If such thoughts arise in the heart of the widowed one, let her turn back to that beautiful letter written to her in the early days of their espousal. Did Joseph Alleine have a presentiment of the sorrowful future that lay before them? Did the shadows of Ilchester prison already stretch across his path? It would almost seem so. But let us read from the letter: —

None ever was, or ever shall be, a loser by Jesus Christ. Many have lost much for Him, but never did, never shall any lose dy Him. ‘Take this for a certainty,

* Joseph Alleine: His Companions and Times; by Chas. Stanford. London Hodder & Stoughton.

whatsoever probabilities of outward comforts we leave, whatsoever outward advantages we balk, that we may glorify Him in our services, and enjoy Him in His ordinances more than others where we could, we shall receive an hundredfold in this life. ’Tis a sad thing to see how little Christ is trusted or believed in the world; men will trust Him no farther than they can see Him, and will leave no work for faith. Hath He not a thousand ways, both outward and inward, to make up a little outward disadvantage to us? What doth our faith serve for? Have any ventured themselves upon Him in His way, but He made good every word of the promise to them? Let us therefore exercise our faith, and stay ourselves upon the promise, and see if ever

we are ashamed of our hope.

“What is wanting in the means, God will make up in the blessing. This I take for a certain truth, while a man commits himself and his affairs to God, and is in a way that God put him into: now if a man have but a little income, if he have a great blessing, that’s enough to make it up. We must not account mercies by the bulk. What if another have a pound to my ounce? If mine be gold for his silver, I will never change with him. As ’tis not bread that keeps men alive, but the word of blessing that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; so ’tis not the largeness of the

means, but the blessing of the Lord that maketh rich,

Oh! if men did but believe this, they would not grasp as much of the world as they do. Well, let others take their course, and we will take ours, to wait upon God by faith and prayer, and rest in His promise; and I am

confident that is the way to be provided for.”

All this was truly prophetic: ‘“Hath he not a thousand ways, both outward and inward, to make up a little outward disadvantage to us?” We shall see what some of these ways were in his case. But let us first glance for a moment at the man. Such a life of prayer he lived, that he carried the very atmosphere of heaven about with him. Neither prison damps nor the corrupt manners of his age could vitiate this atmosphere. “All his garments smelled of myrrh and aloes and cassia,’ as one who daily walked with God in Paradise. ‘At the time of his health,” writes his beloved wife, “he did rise constantly at or before four of the clock; and would be much troubled if he heard smiths or other craftsmen at work at their trades, before he was at communion with God; saying to me often, ‘How this noise shames me! Doth not my Master deserve more than theirs?’ From four till eight he spent in prayer, holy contemplation and singing of psalms, in which he much delighted and did daily practice alone or with his family.” Here are laid bare the sources of that cheerful heavenly mindedness which so powerfully impressed those with whom he came in contact. And his preaching was perfectly mated to his praying. ‘He was infinitely and insatiably greedy for the conversion of souls, wherein he had no small success in the time of his ministry; and to this end he poured out his very heart in prayer and in preaching: he imparted not the gospel only, but his own soul. His supplications, and his exhortations, many times were so affectionate, so full of holy zeal, life and vigor, that they quite overcame his hearers; he melted over them so that he thawed and mollified, and sometimes dissolved the hardest hearts.”

All the story of his imprisonment for conscience sake, his trial of cruel mockings and revilings, all the ungodly deeds which the ungodly committed against him, and all the hard speeches which ungodly sinners spoke against him — these things we must pass over. Only let us know of his patient endurance, of his unretaliating silence under misrepresentation, and yet of his stern refusal to be silent anywhere, and at any time, when he could

preach the gospel to perishing souls; only let us hear what was his joy and hope and unfailing consolation amid all his trials. Here is a brief passage from one of his letters: —

“Verily, sir, it is but a little while that prisons shall hold us. Surely He is gone to prepare a place for us; and He will come again to receive us to Himself, that where He is we may be also. And what have we to do but to believe, and wait and love, and long, and look out for His coming, in which is all our hope. ’Twill be time enough for us to be preferred then. We know

beforehand who shall then be uppermost.’’*

But Alleine’s recompense was not altogether deferred to the time of Christ’s coming. Have we noticed that significant promise concerning the suffering Messiah — “He shall prolong his days.” + He was “cut off out of the land of the living;” his days on the earth prematurely ended; but they were prolonged in the ministry of the Spirit and in the lives of his followers. And what was true

* It is good to hear such a true note struck concerning the Christian’s hope and reward. No talk of that sentimental heaven fitted up with modern improvements, which is so popular in our times! In another place, speaking of the death of his father, he says: ‘‘ But I bless the Lord, I do believe and expect the return of the Redeemer with all his saints, and the most glorious resurrection of my own dead body with all believers; and this makes me rest in hope, and fills me with unspeakably more joy than the death of myself or any other saint can with grief.”

Tes. “53x09.

of him, is true in a measure of his faithful servants in all ages. Joseph Alleine was cut off at thirty-five years of age, only one half of man’s allotted time upon the earth being given him. But he left behind him, among other writings, one brief treatise called “The Alarm to the Unconverted.” It is a plain book, endowed with none of those elements of a literary immortality which belong to the famous works of his brother Puritans — having nothing of the glowing imagery of Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” or of the sparkling brilliance of Gurnall’s “Christian Armor.” But thirty-five years after the author’s death Dr. Calamy wrote: ‘No book in the English tongue, the Bible only excepted, can equal it for the number that hath been dispersed.” Men would call its career a literary marvel, thirty thousand copies being once struck off at a single edition, so great was the demand, We call it a divine and visible seal affixed by the Lord to the fidelity of one of his anointed ones, It would seem as though God breathed into it a special inspiration of his Spirit, saying, “Since wicked men have cut off my well beloved servant by their persecutions, so that he lived out but half his days on the earth, I decree him to live on after his death, to prolong his days and see his seed, in the influence of this little book.” It is altogether unprecedented, so far as our knowledge goes — this post mortem ministry of the best of Puritans. We hear of an indolent Scotch minister reading parts of this book to his congregation, and a revival resulting therefrom, which swept over a whole region with its transforming power. Oh, wise and trusting servant of God, serenely suffering in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, and enduring “as seeing him that is invisible,” how true thy words, “Hath he not a thousand ways, both outward and inward, to make up a little outward dtsadvantage to us?” He who loved the preaching of the gospel and the saving of souls better than his own life, wrought, by this work, even more mightily after his death than by his oral teaching in his life.

God is not limited to present times and circumstances in giving his servants the reward of their labor. The shutting of one pulpit may be but the opening of a wide and effectual door into another. Edwards in New England, Spener in Germany, Monod in France, were each thrust out of their churches, and their places of testimony closed against them, because they moved for a purer faith and a higher style of Christian living than that prevailing about them. But no smallest loss of influence or usefulness was thereby incurred.

And then there is the inner joy, the testimony of a good conscience in the breast of those who have been faithful unto death in their witness for Christ. Here is a spiritual revenue, over and above all others. “God pays, but not always at the end of the week,” says an oft-quoted proverb; and we may add, nor always in the same currency. By a divine exchange he often settles temporal losses with spiritual coin, a coin which bears only

“the image and superscription of Christ, and therefore has no value in the world’s markets, but which is of inestimable worth to such as have spiritual discernment. How endless the illustrations of this inward spiritual requital, if we had space to consider them. MHere is the patience and faith of the saints — the balm of the Spirit healing the wounds of the sword, the reality of heavenly citizenship assuaging all the pains and privations of earthly exile.

We need not wonder if Zinzendorf, who exclaims from a glowing heart, ‘“‘I have one passion; it is He, He alone,” should soon find himself the object of bitterest contempt in a world whose one passion is self and self alone. But what matters it? ‘By faith Noah... prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by which he condemned the world.” A holy choice of God and life eternal as

our supreme good, will cast an inevitable reflection upon such as mind earthly things. But the portion of such is with the Lord, and in the communion that lifts us into his presence. Slander and detraction followed Zinzendorf as dark shadows follow a brilliant light. He who had renounced earthly citizenship, owning that “that place is our proper home where we have the greatest opportunity of laboring for our Saviour,” found his residence for years in exile. But in the midst of it all he could say, ‘I would rather be despised and hated for the sake of Jesus, than be beloved for my own sake.” Weighed down with labor, and often bearing the heavy cross of obloquy, he could yet exclaim concerning a journey, “All the way I swam in peace and joy in the Lord.”

Thrice blessed are they who have such a portion. And your joy no man taketh from you,” says the Saviour. Let God’s servants be incited, by these brief glimpses of suffering and victorious lives, to choose this divine inheritance. “It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us; if we believe not, yet He abideth

faithful, He cannot deny himself.”