Individual Sin Laid on Jesus
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of
us all.”--Isaiah 53:6
I think I addressed you from this text four
years ago, but I feel quite safe in returning to it, for we shall never
exhaust it; it is a verse so wealthy in meaning, that I had during the whole
four years dilated upon in it every Sabbath, it would be my fault if the theme
were stale. On this occasion I desire mainly to draw attention to a part of the
text upon which little was said on the former occasion. The vine is the same,
but we shall gather clusters from a bough ungleaned before. The jewels are the same, but we will place
them in another light and view them from another angle. May God grant that some who derived no
comfort from our former word may be led to find peace and salvation in Christ
this morning. The Lord in His infinite
mercy grant it may be so.
I shall first give a general exposition of
the text, then in the second place, shall dwell upon the special doctrine
which I wish to teach; and then, thirdly, we shall draw from that
special doctrine a special lesson.
I.
First, we will give A GENERAL EXPOSITION OF THE TEXT, “All we like sheep
have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath
laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
The text naturally breaks itself up into these
three heads--is a confession general to all penitents, "All we like
sheep have gone astray"; a personal confession peculiar to each one,
"We have turned one to his own way"; and then, the august doctrine
of substitution, which the very soul and spirit of the entire gospel,
"The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Our exposition, then, begins with the
confession which is universal to all penitents--it is acknowledged here by
the person speaking, who call themselves "all we”--that they all had like
sheep, broken the hedge of God’s law, forsaken good and ever blessed Shepherd,
and wandered into paths perilous and pernicious. A comparison is here used, and
its use shows that the confession was a thoughtful one, and not a matter of
careless form. Man is here compared to a beast, for sin brings out the animal
part of us, and while holiness allies us to angels, sin degrades us to brutes.
We are not likened to one of the more noble and intelligent animals, but to a
silly sheep. All sin is folly, all sinners are fools. Sheep are dishonored by
the comparison here used, for with all their silliness they have never been
known to rush into the fire after having felt the flame. You will observe that
the creature selected for comparison is one that cannot live without care and
attention. There is no such thing as a wild sheep. There could not long be
sheep unless they were tended and cared for by a shepherd. The creature's
happiness, its safety, and very existence, all depend upon its being under a
nurture and care far above its own. Yet for all that, the sheep strays from the
shepherd. Man's happiness lies in being under the direction of the Lord, in
being obedient to God, in being in communion with God, and departure from God
is death to all his highest interests, destruction to all his best prospects;
yet for all that, as the sheep goeth astray, even so doth man.
The sheep is a creature exceedingly quick-witted
upon the one matter of going astray. If there be but one gap in the hedge the
sheep will find it out. If there be but one possibility out of five hundred
that by any means the flock shall wander, one of the flock will be quite
certain to discover that possibility, and all its companions will avail
themselves of it. So is it with man. He is quick of understanding for evil
things. God made man upright, but he bath sought out many inventions, the
inventions being all to destroy his own uprightness, and to do despite to the
law of God. But that very creature which is so quick-witted to wander is the
least likely of all animals to return. The ox knoweth its owner, and the ass
knows its master's crib; even the swine that will wander by day will return to
the trough by night, and the dog will scent out his master over many a league,
but no so the sheep. Sharp as it is to discover opportunities for going astray,
it seems to be bereft of all wit or will to come back to the fold. And such is
man—wise to do evil, but foolish towards that which is good. With a hundred
eyes, like Argus, he searches out opportunities for sinning; but, like
Bartimeus, he is stone blind as to repentance and return to God.
The sheep goes astray, it is said, all the more
frequently when it is most dangerous for it to do so; propensities to stray
seem to be developed in the very proportion in which they ought to be subdued.
Whereas in our own land a sheep might wander with some safety, it wanders less
than it will do in the Oriental plains, where for it to go astray is to run
risks from leopards and wolves. Those very men who ought to be most careful,
and who are placed in positions where it is best for them to be scrupulous, are
those who are most prone to follow after evil, and with heedless carelessness
to leave the way of truth.
The sheep goes astray ungratefully. It owes
everything to the shepherd, and yet forsakes the hand that feeds it and heals
its diseases. The sheep goes astray repeatedly. If restored today it may not
stray today if it cannot, but it will tomorrow if it can. The sheep wanders
further and further, from bad to worse. It is not content with the distance it
has reached, it will go yet greater lengths; there no limit to its wandering
except its weakness. See ye not your own selves; my brethren, as in a mirror?
From Him that has blessed you have gone astray; to Him you owe your all, and
yet, from Him you continually depart. Your sins are not occasional, they are
constant, and your wanderings are not slight, but you wander further and
further, and were it not for restraining grace which has prevented your
footsteps you would have wandered even now to the utmost extremities of guilt,
and utterly destroyed your souls.
"All we like sheep have gone astray."
What, is there not one faithful soul? Alas! No! "There is none that doeth
good, no not one." Search the ranks of the blessed in heaven, and there is
not one saint before the throne who will boast that when on earth he never
sinned. Search the church of God below, and there is not one, however closely
he walks with God, but must confess that he has erred and strayed from God's
ways like a lost sheep. Vain is the man who refuses to confess this, for his
hypocrisy or his pride, whichever may be the cause of such a nonconfession, proves
that he is not one of God's chosen, for the chosen of God unanimously,
mournfully, but heartily take up this cry, "All we like sheep have gone
astray." A general confession, then, is uttered in our text.
This confession by the mass is backed up by a personal
acknowledgment from each one, "We have turned every one to his own
way." Sin is general but yet special; all are sinners, but each one is a
sinner with an emphasis. No man has of
himself turned to God's way, but in every case each one has chosen "his
own way." The very gist of sin lies in our setting up our own way in
opposition to the way and will of God. We have all done so, we have all aspired
to be our own masters, we have all desired to follow our own inclinations, and
have not submitted ourselves to the will of God. The text implies that each man
has his own peculiarity and specialty of sin; all diseased, but not all
precisely with the same form of disease. It is well, my brethren, if each of us
in examining himself has found out what is his own peculiar transgression, for
it is well to know what evil weeds flourish most readily in the soil of our
heart, what wild beast that is most native to the forests of our soul. Many
have felt that their peculiar sin was so remarkably evil and so surpassingly
vile, that it separated them altogether from the common rank of sinners. They
felt that their iniquities were unique, and like lone peaks lifted themselves
defiantly towards the pure heavens of God, provoking the fiercest thunderbolts
of wrath. Such persons have almost been driven to despair under the belief that
they were peculiarly great sinners, as Paul puts it, the very chief of sinners.
I should not wonder if this feeling which each one imagines to be peculiar to
himself may have come over very many of us, for it is no unusual thing for an
awakened conscience to feel its own sinfulness to be above measure and
parallel, the worst that has ever defiled mankind.
As this specialty of sin happens to be the point
to which I desire to call your attention, as I wish to show that the atoning
sacrifice of Christ not only applies to sin in the general, since “all we like
sheep gave gone astray,” but applies to sin in the special, “we have turned
every one to his own way"—I pass it over slightly now, and introduce you
further in the exposition of the text, to what I called the August doctrine
of the substitution of Christ, "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity
of us all,”
We have seen the confession of sin made by the
mass, we lightly touched the peculiar confession made by each awakened
individual, put all these together and you see a mass of sin—did I say you see
it? It is a mass of sin too great to be
beheld by the human understanding, an enormous load of iniquity against God.
What is to be done with the offenders? The only thing that can be done with
them, in the ordinary rule of justice, is to punish them for their offenses;
and that punishment must be such as was threatened, indignation, wrath,
destruction, death. That God should punish sin is not a matter of caprice with
Him; it was not with Him an alternative as to whether He might or might not
punish sin. We speak always with holy awe when we speak of anything concerning
Him, but with reverence we say it was not possible that God should wink at the iniquity
of man; it was not possible that He should treat it with indifference. His
attribute of justice, which is as undoubtedly a part of His glory as His
attribute of love, required that sin should be punished. Moreover, as God had
been pleased to make a moral universe to be governed by laws, there would be an
end of all government if the breaking of law involved no penalty whatever. If,
after the great King of all the earth had promulgated a law, with certain
penalties annexed to the branch of it, He did not cause those penalties to be
exacted, there would be an end to the whole system of His government, the
foundations would be removed; and if the foundations be removed what shall the
righteous do?
It is infinitely benevolent of God, I will
venture to say, to cast evil men into hell.
If that be thought to be a hard and strange statement, I reply that
inasmuch as there is sin in the world, it is no benevolence to tolerate so
great an evil; it is the highest benevolence to do all that can be done to restrain
the horrible pest. It would be far from benevolent for our government to throw
wide the doors of all the jails, to abolish the office of the judge, to suffer
every thief and every offender of every kind to go unpunished; instead of mercy
it would be cruelty; it might be mercy to the offending, but it would be
intolerable injustice towards the upright and inoffensive. God's very
benevolence demands that the detestable rebellion of sin against His supreme
authority should be put down with a firm hand, that men may not flatter
themselves that they can do evil and yet go unpunished. The necessities of
moral government require that sin must be punished. The effeminate and
sentimental talkers of this boastful age represent God as though He had no
attribute but that of gentleness, no virtue but that of indifference to evil;
but the God of the Bible is glorious in holiness, He will by no means spare the
guilty at His bar every transgression is meted out its just recompense of
reward. Even in the New Testament, wherein stands that golden sentence, “God is
love,” His other attributes are by no means cast into the shade. Read the
burning words of Peter, or James, or Jude, and see how the God of Sabbath
abhorreth evil! As the God who must do right, the Lord cannot shut His eyes to
the iniquities of man; He must visit, transgression with its punishment. He had
done it, has done it terribly, and He wills do it; even to all eternity He will
show Himself the God that hateth iniquity and sin.
What then, is to become of man? "All we like sheep have gone
astray"; sin must be punished; what, then, can become of us? Infinite love
has devised the expedient of representation and substitution. I call it an expedient, for we can only use
the language of men. You remember, brethren, that you and I fell originally
from our first estate by no act of our own, we all of us fell in the first
Adam's transgression. Now, had we fallen individually and personally, in the
first place, apart from another, it may be that our fall would have been
hopeless, like the fall of the apostate angels, who having sinned one by one
and nor representatively, are reserved in chains of darkness forever under the
condemnation and wrath of God; but inasmuch as the first fountain of evil came
to us through our parent, Adam, there remained for God a loophole through which
His divine love might enter without violation of justice. The principle of
representation wrecked us, the principle of representation rescues us. Jesus
Christ the Son of God becomes a man and re-heads the race, becomes the second
Adam, obeys the law of God, bears the penalty of sin, and now stands as the
Head of all those who are in Him: and who are these but such as repent of sin
and put their trust in Him? These get out of the old headship of the first Adam
wherein they fell, and through the atoning sacrifice are cleansed from all
personal guilt, brought into union with the second Adam, and stand again in
Him, abiding forever in acceptance and felicity. See, then, how it is that God
has been pleased to deliver His people. It has been through carrying out a
principle with which the very system of the universe commenced, namely, that of
representation. I repeat it, had we been always and altogether separate units,
there might have been no possibility of our salvation; but though every man
sins separately, and the second clause of our text confesses that fact, yet we
all sin in connection with others. For instance, who shall deny that each man
receives propensities to sin from his parents, and that we transmit
peculiarities of sin to our own children?
We stand in connection with race, and there are sins of races peculiar
to races and to nationalities. We are never put on a probation of entire separation;
we always stand in connection with others, and God has availed Himself of this
which I called a loophole to bring in salvation for us, by virtue of our union
with another man, who is also more than man, the Son of God and yet the son of
Mary, the infinite who once became an infant, the Eternal who lived, and bled,
and died as the Representative of all who put their trust in Him.
Now you will say,
perhaps, that still, albeit this might have been at the bottom of the whole
system of moral government, you do not quite see the justice of it. The reply
to that remark is this, if God sees the justice of it you ought to be content
with it. He it was against whom every sin was aimed, and if He pleased to
gather up the whole bundle of the sin of His people, and say to His beloved
Son, "I will visit thee for all these," and if Jesus our
Representative joyously consented to bear our sins as our Representative, who
are you and who am I that we should enter any caveat against what God the
infinitely just One consents to accept? The text does not say that our sins
were laid on Christ Jesus by accident, but “the Lord hath laid on him
the iniquity of us all." We sing
sometimes, "I lay my sins on Jesus"; that is a very sweet act of
faith, but at the bottom of it there is another laying, namely, that act in
which it please the Lord to lay our sins on Jesus, for apart front Lord’s doing
it our sins could never have been transferred to the Redeemer. The Lord is so
just, that we dare not think of examining His verdicts, so infinitely pure and
holy, that what He does we accept as being necessarily right; and inasmuch as
we derive such blessed results from the divine plan of substitution, far be it
from us to raise any question concerning it. Jesus was accepted as the natural
substitute and representative of all those who trust Him, and all the sin of
these was laid on Him, so that they we re freed from guilt. Jesus was regarded
as if all these sins were His sins, and was punished as if these were His sins,
was put to shame, forsaken of God, and delivered to death as if He had been a
sinner; and thus through divine grace those who actually committed the sins are
permitted to go free. They have satisfied justice through the sufferings of
their substitute. Beloved brethren, the most fit person to be a substitute for
us was Christ Jesus; and why? Because He had been pleased to take up His people
into union with Himself. If He was our
Head, and He had made us to be members of His body, who more fit to suffer for
the body than the Head? If He had, and Scripture tells us so, entered into a
mysterious conjugal union with us, who more fit to suffer for the spouse than
her Husband? Christ is man, hence His fitness and adaptation to be a substitute
for man. The creature that sins must be the creature that suffers; man breaks
God’s law, and man must honor it. As by man came death, by man also must come
the resurrection from the dead, and Jesus Christ was undoubtedly man of the
substance of His mother. He was fit to
be our substitute because He was a pure man. He had no offense in Him; neither
Satan, nor the more searching eye of God could find any evil in Him; He was
under no obligation to the law except as He put Himself under the law; He owed
nothing to the great moral Governor until He voluntarily became a subject of
His moral government on our behalf.
Hence, being without obligation Himself, having no debts of His own, He
was fit to take upon Himself our liabilities; and as He was under no
obligations for Himself, He was a fitting One to become under obligations for
us. Moreover, He did all this voluntarily, and His fitness much lies here. If a substitute should be dragged to death
for us unwillingly, if such could be the case, an injustice would be
perpetrated in the very act, but Jesus Christ taking up His cross, and going
forth willingly to suffer for us, proved His fitness to redeem us. Once more,
His being God as well as man, gave Him the strength to suffer; gave Him the
power to stoop. If He had not been so lofty as to be fellow with the eternal
God, He would not have stooped so low as to redeem us, but—
From
the highest throne in Glory,
To
the cross of deepest woe,
was such a descent that there was an
infinite merit in it; when He stooped, even to the grave itself, there was an infinite
merit by which justice was satisfied, the law was vindicated, and those for
whom. He died were effectually saved.
I do not want to proceed
to the other point until every one here has got the thought, and grasped it,
and received it; we have gone astray, but the strayings of many of us as
believe were laid on Christ; we have each chosen our own way of sin, but those
sins are not ours now, they are laid on our great Substitute if we are trusting
in Him; He has paid to the utmost farthing all the debt of those sins, has
borne the fullness of divine wrath, and there is no wrath against us. Just as
the bullock was laid on the altar to be burnt, God's wrath came like consuming
fire and burnt the bullock, and there was no fire left; so when the wrath of God
fell on Christ, it consumed Him, and there was no fire left, no wrath left, it
spent itself. God has no anger against
a soul that believes in Jesus, neither has that soul any sin, for its sin has
been laid on Christ and it cannot be in two places at once: Christ has carried
it, and the sin has ceased lo be—and the believing soul though in itself as
black as hell, is now as bright as Christ Himself when He was transfigured, for
Christ has finished transgression, made an end of sin, and brought in everlasting
righteousness. Thus we conclude our general exposition al the verse.
II. I now desire for a
short time, but with all the earnestness of my soul, to dwell on THE SPECIAL
DOCTRINE taught in the central clause of the text—"We have turned every
one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."
Each man and each woman,
from a natural difference of constitution, from the variations in education,
and the diversities of circumstances, has sinned somewhat differently from
every other. Two brothers educated by the same parents will yet display
diversities of transgression. No man
treads exactly in the same footsteps as another, and some take roads which,
though equally wrong, are diametrically opposite. One turns to the right hand, and another to the left, both
equally renouncing the onward path.
Now, the glory of the text that I want to bring out is this, that if
thou believest in Jesus Christ, this special sin of thine was laid on Him, as
well as all those thine other sins, in which thou standest on an equality with
thy fellow men. There was a publican, he had been a common, gross offender,
rough and harsh to his brother Jews, in demanding an inordinate tax; he was a
man of low habits, indulging in drunkenness, unchastity, and other
defilements, yet when that publican went up to the house of God and said,
"God be merciful to me a sinner," the atonement just met the
publican's iniquity, and exactly took away the publican’s transgression.
But, on the other hand,
there was a Pharisee, the opposite of the publican, proud and self-righteous,
not submitting himself to the righteousness of God, but considering himself to
be in all things better than other men, yet you will remember that when he fell
from off his horse as he was riding to
Damascus, and heard a voice that said, "Why persecutest thou me?"
that very same Pharisee said, "God forbid that I should glory save in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ," for there was in Christ precisely that
which met the Pharisee's sin. In our Lord's day there were Sadducees, too— that
is, men who said there is neither angel nor spirit, infidels, skeptics, free-thinkers,
your Broad Church sinners. Now, these men neither went into coarse
transgression with the publican nor into superstition with the Pharisee, but
they had their direct antagonism to the truth of God, and I doubt not cases
occurred to prove that in the pardoning blood of Christ the Sadducee's case was
met. No matter in what peculiar direction
any one of the Lord’s sheep has gone astray, the Lord has laid that particular
straying upon the Savior. I want to
speak now so as to fetch forth some individuals here this morning. It may be
that one here today is saying, “I sinned against and early Christian training,
no one had a better mother or a tenderer father; I knew the Word of God, like
Timothy, from my youth; but I did despite to all this teaching, and sinned,
with what aggravation of infamy I sinned against the clearest light!"
Brother, thy sin is very great, but the Lord hath laid on Jesus thine
iniquity. Look thou to the cross, and
see it laid there.
"Ay," saith
another, "but I have had the strivings of God's Spirit; in addition to an
early Christian education, I have sat under an earnest gospel ministry; I have
often been impressed; I have been driven to my chamber to pray, but I have
quenched the holy emotions, and have continued in sin.” O guilty one, the Lord has laid on His dear
Son thine iniquity. Canst thou look to Jesus now and trust Christ, "The
Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world?" Then this offense of thine against the Holy
Ghost is put away. "But," saith another, "I am conscious of
having had naturally a remarkable tenderness of spirit; from my early childhood
I knew right from wrong, and when I sinned it cost me much trouble to sin; I
have had to wound my conscience before I could speak an ill word, or commit an
evil action." Ah! my brethren, that is a very condemning thing to sin
against a tender conscience. It is a
great boon, and in this age a very unusual boon, to have much sensitiveness and
delicacy of moral constitution, and if you have violated it, it is certainly a
great transgression, but though "we have turned every one to his own way,
the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." Let no despairing
thought come upon thee as though this sin were unpardonable. "The blood of
Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." Look thou, now, by faith to Jesus, and thou
shalt find that thy sin is blotted out.
There may be one in this
place who says, "Sir, I committed a sin under certain remarkable
circumstances which I would not, could not, mention, but the remembrance of
that one sin rankles in my soul at this hour; if I had not deliberately and
with malice aforethought, not having the fear of God before mine yes, chosen
that sin, there might have been hope, but that sin like a millstone is about my
neck and will sink me forever and ever." Hark thee, soul, canst thou see
Christ on the cross? Wilt thou now confide in Him? If so, though thy sin be as scarlet it shall be as wool, though
it be red like crimson, it shall be as snow. 1 know not what thy sin may have
been, but if it were murder itself, if thou wouldst now trust the Son of God,
thy sin should vanish quite away from thee, and thou shouldst be clean, clean
every whit, before the all-seeing eye of eternal justice. O that thou wouldst
believe, and this should be true to thee. "Nay," cries another,
"but mine has been a life of peculiarly gross sin; I would not have my
character unmasked before this congregation on any account." Consider
then, my friend, what it will be to have it published before a greater
congregation, before the entire universe? "Ah," sayest thou, "I
fear my condemnation is certain, for my transgressions have not been those of
thought merely, but of act; the members of my body have been the instruments of
uncleanness." Listen, I pray thee, "All manner of sin and of iniquity
shall be forgiven unto men." There
is no sin so black, save only one, but it may find forgiveness; ay, and without
exception, there is no sin that is possible to man but what it shall be
forgiven to any man who comes to Christ, and with simple trust doth cast
himself on Him. Thine extreme evil was laid on Christ; though thou hast turned
unto thine own way, yet this too was laid on Him.
Do I not hear here and
there in the congregation hearts sighing out. "He does not strike my case
yet; mine has nor been gross sin, but I have hardened my heart; I used to feel
at one time; I had great drawings towards the Lord Jesus, but I gave Him up; I
have backslidden, I have from time to time rejected gospel invitations, until
now at last the Lord has sworn in His wrath that I shall not enter into His
rest; my transgressions have gone over my head like overflowing waters, I sink
in them as in deep mire where there is no standing." Ay, but soul, I must
bring thee back to the text. Thou has turned to this iniquity also; if thou
will trust Him, thy hardenings of heart shall now be forgiven thee. 'Thou art
not too late, the gate of mercy still stands open wide; if thou trustest in
Jesus this iniquity shall be blotted out. "Alas!" saith another,
"but I have been a hypocrite; I have come to the Lord's table, and yet I
have never had an interest in Christ; I have been baptized, but yet I never had
true faith.' 'Well, now, I will say
this to end all matters—if thou has perpetrated all the sins that ever were
committed by men or devils, if thou hast defiled thyself with all the blackness
that could he raked out of the lowermost kennels of hell, if thou hast spoken
the most damnable blasphemies and followed the most outrageous vices, yet Jesus
Christ is an infinite Savior, and nothing can exceed the merit of His precious
blood. "The blood of Jesus Christ, God's dear Son, cleanseth us from all
sin." Canst thou believe this?
Canst thou do Christ the honor to believe this, and come and crouch at the feet
that once were pierced? Ah! man, thou shalt find mercy now, and thou shalt clap
thine hands and say, "He hath blotted out my sins like a cloud, and like a
thick cloud mine iniquities."
I am afraid I do not
convey to you the pleasure of my own soul in turning over this thought, but it
has charmed me beyond measure. Here were Lot's sins, scandalous sins, I cannot mention
them, they were very different from David's sins. Black sins, scarlet sins,
were those of David, but David’s sins are not at all this those of Manasseh;
the sins of Manasseh were not the same as those of Peter—Peter sinned in quite
a different track; and the woman that was a sinner, you could not liken her to
Peter, neither if you look to her character could you set her side by side
with Lydia; nor if you think of Lydia, can you see her without discovering a
great divergence between her and the Philippian jailer. They are all alike,
they have all gone astray, but they are all different, they have turned every
one to his own way; but here is the blessed gathering up of them all, the Lord
hath made to meet on the Redeemer, as in a common focus, the iniquity of all
these; and tip yonder Magdalena’s song joins sweetly with that of the woman who
was a sinner, and Lydia, chaste, but yet needing pardon, sings side by side
with Bathsheba and Rahab; while David takes up the strain with Samson and
Gideon, and these with Abraham and with Isaac, all differently sinners, but the
atonement meeting every case. We always think that man a quack who advertises a
medicine as healing every disease, but when you come to the great gospel
medicine, the precious blood of Jesus Christ, you have there in very deed what
the old doctors used to call a catholicon, a universal medicine which
meets every case in its distinctness, and puts away sin in all its separateness
of guilt as if it were made for that sin, and for that sin alone.
III. My time has gone,
and therefore I must close with this, A SPECIAL DUTY ARISING OUT OF THE
SPECIAL DOCTRINE.
My dear brother, if in
my discourse I have at all described you, or if not having described you, I
have yet from that very reason indicated you as an indescribable, look thou to
Christ and find mercy, and then ever afterwards make it a rule with thy soul,
that as thou hast been a special sinner thou wilt have special love and special
gratitude, and do thy Lord special service. Oh! if it takes twenty times the
grace to save me that it does another, then I will render to my Savior twenty
times the love and twenty times the service. If I am an out-of-the-way straying
sheep, peculiarly and specially black, defiled and disgraced, then if He loves
me I will go upon this rule, that having had much forgiven I will love much.
Brethren and sisters, I
wish you did feel, more and more the peculiarity of the weight of our personal
sin, for I am sure it is the way to drive us into manliness of Christian
service. If you perform homage to Christ as one of a crowd, you do but little,
and that little badly. For eminent service you need to get away from the crowd,
and serve the Lord personally by yourself, and as an individual. Get alone, I
mean in a sense of obligation, separate yourself; as if you were a marked man,
and must serve Jesus Christ in a marked way. The separation of pride is
detestable, but individuality of service is admirable. Those who stand
steadily in the rank and file do well, but those who step forward to lead the
forlorn do better. O for more Davids to come forth and say, "Who is this
uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living
God?" O that the Christian church had more self-sacrificing men, like old
Curtius, who, when there is a chasm to fill up, leap into it, and feel it an
honor to be swallowed up for Christ’s sake and the truth's sake. O for many a
Christian Scaevola, who, like the Roman hero, will hold his hand in the fire if
need be, and flinch not, feeling that all suffering were little to bear for One
who bled for us. We want more consecrated men. May God raise them up; and He
will if you who feel your special sinnership find special mercy, and then
render to God special returns.
It has struck me that we
want more and more in the pulpit, and in the pew, individuality in our
Christian experience and service. You see we are all individuals in sinning, we
have turned every one to his own way, and yet many Christian people want to
have their experience modeled after the example of someone else. They do not
like to grow like God's trees in the forest, with their gnarled roots and
twisted boughs; they want to be clipped like Dutch trees into one uniform
stiffness. Why, you lose the beauty of Christianity when you lose the
individuality of Christians. In
preaching and Sunday school teaching, and everything else, the tendency is to
go too much in ruts and grooves; one might fancy that men and women were made
by machinery like pens at Birmingham, all of a sort. We would have every man in
grace as individual as he was in sin. We need the originality of saintly life
as well as of sinnership. It were well if a Christian man would step out of the
beaten track and carry out his individuality, and be what God especially meant
him to be. Brethren, there is a part of this world which can never get a
blessing except through you. Christ has power over all flesh, and He has given
His servants power over their little portions of that great mass. All the
ministers that ever lived cannot bring to Christ those souls whom God has
ordained that I shall be the means of turning to Christ; and neither I nor my
brethren, preach as we may, can bring to Christ the man whom God has ordained
to save through yonder obscure village local preacher who is now standing on a
log on the village green, or holding forth in a wooden shed in the backwoods of
America. There is a place for every man, and the way for every man to find that
out is to be himself and nobody else; as he used to be himself when he was a
sinner, so let him be himself now he has become a saint, and follow out, under
God's guidance, the movements of his own individualities, the singularities of
his own nature. Hush, about planing off your angles and getting rid of the
points God has made in you distinct from other men. It will never do. You lose
of Christianity the very beauty and excellence if you do this. Your fine
critics would have Rowland Hill preach like Thomas Chalmers; Rowland Hill must
never utter a witticism in the pulpit, yet he could not be Rowland Hill if he
did not; he must, therefore, be transmogrified into someone else, for these
superfine gentlemen will not allow that Rowland Hill as Rowland Hill can honor
God. Wisdom will be justified of all her children. Whether you speak of the
learning of Apollos, or with the eloquence of a Paul, or with the blunt
homeliness of a Cephas, the Lord will get to Himself honor, if you speak
sincerely; and it is not for Paul to mimic Cephas, nor for Cephas to ape
Apollos. As we have turned every one to his own way, and our peculiar sin has
been laid on Christ, so It t each believer now in his own way, under the direction
of Christ, seek to serve his Lord and Master.
My great practical lesson from it is this.
You are always seeing new inventions in the world, men are evermore bringing
out some new system or scheme; we tunnel the earth, we split the clouds, we
speak by lightning, we ride on the wings of the wind, but in the Christian
church how few inventors we have! Robert Raikes invented the Sunday-school,
John Pounds invented Ragged Schools; have we come to the end of gracious
ingenuity? Oh, if we loved Christ
better, every man would invent something, he would have a mode of action
growing out of his own peculiar capacities; he would feel that God meant to
meet a case by him that would never be met by anybody else. Men are all alive
about this world, and all asleep about the world to come. I would urge you each
to have a mission, to espouse a work, to obtain a calling. Ask God not to put
you into the Sunday-school as a matter of mere providence, but as a matter of
special ordination; and if you are ordained to be a Sunday-school teacher, ask
Him to put you into some particular class, not as by an accident, but as a
special sphere for your special character and taste, and mode of thought, and
manner of action. Follow out as God the
Holy Spirit shall help you, the promptings of the divine life that God has put
within you, and as you served Satan with all your individuality, even so serve
Him upon whom the Lord of old did lay your iniquity. The Lord bless you for
Christ’s sake.
Added to Bible
Bulletin Board's "Spurgeon Collection" by:
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
Box 314
Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022
Websites: www.biblebb.com and www.gospelgems.com
Email: tony@biblebb.com
Online since 1986