The True Grace of God
wherein we stand
1 Peter 5: 12.
{Similar to, perhaps
extracted from, 'Why do I groan?' C.W. 12 Evangelical vol. 1, page 186.}
God is made known to us as
the "God of all Grace," and the position in which we are set
is that of "tasting that He is gracious." How hard it is for
us to believe this, that the Lord is gracious. The natural feeling of
our hearts is, "I know that thou art an austere man"; there is the
want in all of us naturally of the understanding of the Grace of God.
There is sometimes the
thought that grace implies God's passing over sin, but no, grace
supposes sin to be so horribly bad a thing that God cannot tolerate it: were it
in the power of man, after being unrighteous and evil, to patch up his ways,
and mend himself so as to stand before God, there would be no need of grace.
The very fact of the Lord's being gracious shows sin to be so evil a thing
that, man being a sinner, his state is utterly ruined and hopeless, and nothing
but free grace will do for him - can meet his need.
We must learn what God is to
us, not by our own thoughts, but by what He has revealed Himself to be, and
that is, "The God of all Grace." The moment I understand that
I am a sinful man, and yet that it was because the Lord knew the full extent of
my sin, and what its hatefulness was, that He came to me, I understand what
grace is. Faith makes me see that God is greater than my sin, and not that my
sin is greater than God. . . . The Lord that I have known as laying down His
life for me, is the same Lord I have to do with every day of my life, and all
His dealings with me are on the same principles of grace. The great
secret of growth is, the looking up to the Lord as gracious. How precious,
how strengthening it is to know that Jesus is at this moment feeling and
exercising the same love towards me as when He died on the cross for me.
This is a truth that should
be used by us in the most common everyday circumstances of life. Suppose, for
instance, I find an evil temper in myself, which I feel it difficult to
overcome; let me bring it to Jesus as my Friend, virtue goes out of Him for my
need. Faith should be ever thus in exercise against temptations, and not
simply my own effort; my own effort against it will never be sufficient. The
source of real strength is in the sense of the Lord's being gracious. The
natural man in us always disbelieves Christ as the only source of strength and
of every blessing. Suppose my soul is out of communion, the natural heart says,
"I must correct the cause of this before I can come to Christ," but
He is gracious; and knowing this, the way is to return to Him at once,
just as we are, and then humble ourselves deeply before Him. It is only in Him
and from Him that we shall find that which will restore our souls.
Humbleness in His presence is the only real humbleness. If we own ourselves in
His presence to be just what we are, we shall find that He will show us
nothing but grace. . . .
It is Jesus who gives abiding
rest to our souls, and not what our thoughts about ourselves may be. Faith
never thinks about that which is in ourselves as its ground of rest; it
receives, loves and apprehends what God has revealed, and what are God's
thoughts about Jesus, in whom is His rest. As knowing Jesus to be
precious to our souls, our eyes and our hearts being occupied with Him, they
will be effectually prevented from being taken up with the vanity and sin
around; and this too will be our strength against the sin and corruption of our
own hearts. Whatever I see in myself that is not in Him is sin, but then it is
not thinking of my own sins, and my own vileness, and being occupied with them,
that will humble me, but thinking of the Lord Jesus, dwelling upon the
excellency in Him. It is well to be done with ourselves, and to be taken up
with Jesus. We are entitled to forget ourselves, we are entitled to forget our
sins, we are entitled to forget all but Jesus.
There is nothing so hard for
our hearts as to abide in the sense of grace, to continue practically
conscious that we are not under law but under grace; it is by grace that
the heart is "established," but then there is nothing more difficult
for us really to comprehend than the fulness of grace, that "Grace
of God wherein we stand," and to walk in the power and consciousness
of it. . . . It is only in the presence of God that we can know it, and there
it is our privilege to be. The moment we get away from the presence of God,
there will always be certain workings of our own thoughts within us, and
our own thoughts can never reach up to the thoughts of God about us, to
the "Grace of God."
Anything that I had the
smallest possible right to expect could not be pure, free grace - could
not be the "Grace of God." . . It is alone when in communion
with Him that we are able to measure everything according to His
grace. . . . It is impossible, when we are abiding in the sense of God's
presence, for anything, be what it may - even the state of the Church - to
shake us, for we count on God, and then all things become a sphere and scene
for the operation of His grace.
The having very simple
thoughts of grace is the true source of our strength as Christians; and
the abiding in the sense of grace, in the presence of God, is the secret
of all holiness, peace, and quietness of spirit.
The "Grace of
God" is so unlimited, so full, so perfect, that if we get for a moment
out of the presence of God, we cannot have the true consciousness of it, we
have no strength to apprehend it; and if we attempt to know it out of His
presence, we shall only turn it to licentiousness. If we look at the simple
fact of what grace is, it has no limits, no bounds. Be we what we may (and we
cannot be worse than we are), in spite of all that, what God is towards us is
LOVE. Neither our joy nor our peace is dependent on what we are to God, but on
what He is to us, and this is grace.
Grace supposes all the sin
and evil that is in us, and is the blessed revelation that, through Jesus, all this
sin and evil has been put away. A single sin is more horrible to God than a
thousand sins - nay, than all the sins in the world are to us; and yet, with
the fullest consciousness of what we are, all that God is pleased to be
towards us is LOVE.
In Rom. 7 the state
described is that of a person quickened, but whose whole set of reasonings
centre in himself . . . he stops short of grace, of the simple
fact that, whatever be his state, let him be as bad as he may, GOD IS LOVE, and
only love towards him. Instead of looking at God, it is all "I,"
"I," "I." Faith looks at God, as He has revealed Himself in
Grace. . . . Let me ask you, "Am I - or is my state the object of
faith?" No. faith never makes what is in my heart its object, but God's
revelation of Himself in grace.
Grace has reference to what
GOD is, and not to what we are, except indeed that the very greatness of our
sins does but magnify the extent of the "Grace of God." At the
same time, we must remember that the object and necessary effect of grace is to
bring our souls into communion with God - to sanctify us, by bringing the soul
to know God, and to love Him; therefore the knowledge of grace is the true
source of sanctification.
The triumph of grace is seen
in this, that when man's enmity had cast out Jesus from the earth, God's love
had brought in salvation by that very act - came in to atone for the sin of
those who had rejected Him. In the view of the fullest development of man's
sin, faith sees the fullest development of God's grace. . . . I have got away
from grace if I have the slightest doubt or hesitation about God's love. I
shall then be saying, "I am unhappy because I am not what I should like to
be": that is not the question. The real question is, whether God is what
we should like Him to be, whether Jesus is all we could wish. If the
consciousness of what we are - of what we find in ourselves, has any other
effect than, while it humbles us, to increase our adoration of what God is, we
are off the ground of pure grace. . . . Is there distress and distrust in your
minds? See if it be not because you are still saying "I,"
"I," and losing sight of God's grace.
It is better to be thinking
of what God is than of what we are. This looking at ourselves, at the bottom is
really pride, a want of the thorough consciousness that we are good for
nothing. Till we see this we never look quite away from self to God. . . . In
looking to Christ, it is our privilege to forget ourselves. True humility does
not so much consist in thinking badly of ourselves, as in not thinking of
ourselves at all. I am too bad to be worth thinking about. What
I want is, to forget myself
and to look to God, who is indeed worth all my thoughts. Is there need of being
humbled about ourselves? We may be quite sure that will do it.
Beloved, if we can say as in
Rom. 7, "In me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing,"
we have thought quite long enough about ourselves; let us then think about Him
who thought about us with thoughts of good and not of evil, long before we had
thought of ourselves at all. Let us see what His thoughts of grace about us
are, and take up the words of faith, "If God be for us, who can be against
us?"
JND