Vital Godliness: A Treatise on
Experimental and Practical Piety
CHAPTER 5
A Sense of Wretchedness
A writer who flourished more than a thousand years ago
reckons up two hundred and eighty-eight opinions of the ancients respecting the
way of happiness. The fact is that man’s lack of happiness results from the most
powerful causes—causes not capable of being removed but by an almighty Friend.
So long as man and society remain in themselves what they are, more or less
misery is inevitable. For wise purposes God denies us any cup of pure, unmixed
pleasure in this life. Every generation endures a vast amount of misery.
Poverty, disease, bereavements, commotions, make many sigh. Many, like Job, are
weary of life. Yet mere suffering, without the grace of God, is unprofitable.
One of the most painful thoughts connected with a sight of the woes of many is,
that present sorrows are but preludes to those which shall be eternal. Most men
mourn their lack of health, wealth, honor, or success. How few deplore their
unconverted state and their multiplied offences against God.
But here and there one seeks deliverance from sin, which
ought to be felt as the most grievous of all burdens. Indeed, how few have any
deep, settled conviction of their own vileness. While this is so, they will not
cry for mercy. But now and then we find an exception. At first, indeed, the
oppressiveness of the heart may not be great; but he who has just views of the
nature of sin, will hardly stop short of great concern in seeking salvation. A
slight view of ill-desert, united with a conviction of personal depravity, may
awaken the first uneasiness. But divine grace has a tendency to develop clear
views of spiritual things; and he who begins with very indistinct views, will
find out by degrees, great wonders in himself.
At such a time a man easily discovers also that this world is
a very unsubstantial good. It is not a saving lesson, but to one rightly
affected it is a profitable lesson—that all in this world is vanity of vanities.
Men may indeed see the emptiness of earthly things, and sink into despair. But
men wholly satisfied with this world will hardly seek a better country. Right
views of one’s real character and standing in God’s sight as a sinner must be
more or less painful and mortifying! So God says of Ephraim, “I have surely
heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus: You have chastised me, and I was chastised
as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke—turn me, and I shall be turned,” (Jer.
31:18). This bemoaning one’s self is the same state of mind elsewhere described
in God’s word as a weariness, an oppression of the soul. God often subjects
those whom he would save to a training and discipline none the less beneficial,
because very grievous. They are made to smart for their follies. They are
sensible that they are out of the right way. They are disconsolate, and have no
comforter. Things which lately attracted them are stripped of their bewitching
splendor, and the heart is emptied of all that once charmed it. Such will soon
be found writing bitter things against themselves. Everyone thus exercised will
say, “I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man. I
neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy,” (Prov. 30:2, 3).
A sense of his own weakness and blindness takes possession of
him. He is not hard to be persuaded, that others know more than himself. He has
learned that so many of his views are erroneous, that he has lost confidence in
his judgments of religious matters. Such a discovery is to him of the highest
importance. Had he remained in his former self-ignorance—he would have utterly
perished in his own corruptions. Such things are attended with a perception of
his vileness and unworthiness, and like some of old, he arises in his heaviness
and falls on his knees, and spreads out his hands unto the Lord, and says, “O my
God, I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face to you; for my iniquities are
increased over my head, and my trespass is grown up unto the heavens,” (Ezra
9:5, 6). Or he feels as David once did: “Innumerable evils have compassed me
about: my iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up;
they are more than the hairs of my head: therefore my heart fails me,” (Ps.
40:12). The number of his sins is so great, that he sees it is quite beyond his
power either to subdue them or wash them away. Nor is he mistaken. Unless God
undertakes for him, his undoing is everlasting. Like the publican, he stands
afar off, and does not so much as lift his eyes to heaven, but smites on his
bosom, and says, God be merciful to me a sinner!
Nor is it only the number of his sins, but also the evil
nature of sin itself—which deeply affects him. He now sees that sin is a
horrible evil, a deadly poison, a desperate malignity, an incurable wound, a
foul leprosy! In this state he will be sensible of his lack of proper feelings
towards God. His efforts to work himself up to a proper regard for his Maker are
entire failures. His heart refuses to do anything which his conscience declares
obligatory. He finds his affections all disordered. He can love his friends, his
family, his country—but he is amazed to find that he cannot love God. His heart
is an iceberg for coldness, an adamant stone for hardness, a cage of unclean
birds for vileness! Sometimes his affections seem somewhat enkindled, but they
do not go forth to his satisfaction. When he weeps, it is soon over. His tears
seem not to flow from a penitent spirit. Frequently his external circumstances
perplex him. Everything goes wrong. His attention is distracted by various
calls. Everything seems to conspire against him. To release himself is
impossible.
To obtain help from God is his wish, but he knows not how to
find him. In reading the Scriptures he finds difficulties. Some things are hard
to be understood. Others, though plain, are in his view stern and severe.
Against some his heart stoutly rebels. Although this alarms him, yet his efforts
at repressing such wicked thoughts are quite unsuccessful. Things forbidden in
God’s law he lusts after. For many things sinful—he finds in himself intensely
longing for—which seems to himself both strange and unnatural. Divine
prohibitions seem only to inflame his unholy desires. Things commanded he has no
heart for. The more he tries to control his desires, the more they torment him.
The law commands; but his nature, in spite of him, leads him into disobedience.
Temptations are strong, and he is weak. He is a helpless captive! All his
efforts are in vain. His prayers seem to him a mockery. His strength is utter
weakness. Now his soul is “like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose
waters cast up mire and dirt.” He has no might to do good. He cannot still the
agitations of his own bosom. To peace he is a stranger. He remembers God, and is
troubled. He has no access to the Father of spirits. He says, “Oh that I knew
where I might find him; I would come near to his seat; I would order my cause
before him; I would fill my mouth with arguments.” He pleads for mercy and pity.
His moisture is turned into the drought of summer. His bones wax old through his
roaring all the day long. Day and night God’s hand is heavy upon him. He forgets
to take bread. His appetite fails him. His sleep is short and disturbed. God
holds his eyes awake. At midnight he is sometimes heard sighing, or found
weeping. Or “dry sorrow is drinking up his blood.” His spirits and energies
begin to fail. He mourns sore like the dove, and chatters like the swallow.
He greatly fears that he is about to perish in his sins. In
real distress he says, “What shall I do? What shall I do to be saved? I die with
hunger here—I starve in foreign lands.” It seems to him that none pities his
case, and that God has forgotten to be gracious. Yet he chides himself for such
unbelief. His impression is that his own heart defers the relief he needs. Oh,
who can tell what days—what nights he spends of tideless, waveless, sailless,
shoreless woe! To one in this sad state, the cheerfulness of God’s people but
brings increase of wretchedness—while the thoughtlessness of the wicked but
reminds him of the heathenish or brutish character of his former life. To exhort
him to embrace the offered grace of God, but dejects him. He says, “The promise
meets my eye—but does not reach my case.” Sometimes it seems to him that he must
give up all as lost forever; but something holds him back from utter despair. He
is led and upheld by an invisible hand! One, of whom he has yet no saving
knowledge, is dealing with his soul, and will not let him go!
Yet he sees no use in all his pains and efforts, for every
struggle seems to sink him the deeper in sin and misery. He wishes his load of
sin were gone, but it presses harder and harder. He is weary of his way, weary
of heartless efforts, weary of his own lack of stability, weary of his burdens,
and sometimes almost weary of existence!
Now if any one is in such a case as this, let him turn his
longing eyes to the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Let him
look to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, the author of eternal
redemption—the only physician who can do a sinner good. Let sinners come to him.
Come and welcome, you perishing. Hospitals are designed for the sick, the lame,
the mangled, the homeless. Water is for the thirsty, bread for the hungry, and a
couch for the weary. Jesus Christ is the very Savior man needs, and he is
exactly suited to our needs. He is chosen of God, and precious. He was set forth
to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. He is the one Mediator between God and
man. To him all the condemned and dying should resort. His mission into this
world was that he might seek and save those who are lost. To that end he lived;
to that end he died; to that end he rose again; to that end he intercedes above;
to that end he sends the Spirit of all grace to convince the world of sin, of
righteousness, and of judgment. Should the Lord Jesus fail to save sinners, he
would lose his reward; his sufferings would be without fruit; nothing would be
left him but—the shame, the spitting, the cross, the spear, the crown of thorns,
and the total failure of the hope that was set before him, when he endured the
cross, despising the shame.
What
is it to come to Christ? What is faith in him? How
does one feel when he lays hold of the Savior? “Justifying faith is a saving
grace wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit and word of God, whereby
he, being convinced of his sin and misery, and of the inability in himself and
all other creatures to recover him out of his lost condition, not only assents
to the truth of the promise of the gospel, but receives and rests upon Christ
and his righteousness—for pardon of sin and for the accepting and accounting of
his person righteous in the sight of God for salvation.” As a definition, this
is full and clear.
True saving faith receives Christ, and rests on him to the
exclusion of all other ground of confidence in the matter of salvation. It may
aid some minds to have this truth illustrated by several figures drawn from
Scripture. A soul under a sense of its lost condition may be compared to the
dove which Noah sent out of the ark. It feels itself unhoused, unsheltered,
unsupported. It wanders up and down, sometimes thinking it sees before it a spot
where it may rest, but on trial its expectations are disappointed. At length,
wearied almost beyond endurance—its false hopes all disappointed, its energies
enfeebled, its spirit humbled—it resolves on seeking the ark. It seeks and finds
it; and to its great joy the spiritual Noah puts forth his hand and takes it in.
Then instead of weariness—it finds rest; instead of a waste of troubled waters—a
sure abode; and instead of howling tempests—settled quiet.
Or suppose one out in a vast desert. He sees a little cloud
rising. At first it gives him no apprehensions. But it continues to spread and
to blacken. It mutters heavy thunders; it shoots out its forked lightnings; it
seems exceedingly dark and angry, and wraps up everything in gloom. Every minute
makes it more and more manifest that exposure to its peltings will be
distressing and dangerous. The weary traveler looks around for shelter.
Sometimes he thinks he spies a place of protection. He tries it, but finds it
will answer no good purpose. He tries another and another; but they are all
insufficient. Meanwhile his apprehensions of danger increase. The storm seems
ready to rend everything in its fury. Now his eye is directed to a shelter that
is near him. It seems inviting. It is capacious. In it is room for all that will
come. It is not hedged about nor barred. Jesus says, “Behold, I have set before
you an open door.” It is just such a refuge as he needs. Just as he supposes the
storm is about to pour its fury upon him, he runs into this shelter and is safe.
This newly discovered refuge is Christ. Thus “a man”—the divine man Christ
Jesus— “shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest,
as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary
land,” (Isa. 32:2).
The man sees this place, and wonders
that he saw it no sooner. It is so near, and so accessible. “Say not in your
heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down from above;
or who shall descend into the deep? that is, to bring up Christ again from the
dead. But what does it say? The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your
heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach: that if you shall confess
with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God raised
him from the dead, you shall be saved,” (
“I am very ignorant; who shall instruct me?” ‘Search the
Scriptures,’ (John 5:39). ‘The holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise
unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus,’ (2 Tim. 3:15). “But I
have so many evil habits to combat; what shall I do?” ‘Gird up the loins of your
mind,’ (1 Pet. 1:13). ‘Fight the good fight of faith,’ (1 Tim. 5:12). ‘For he
has said, I will never leave you, nor forsake you,’ (Heb. 13:5). “But there are
trials and temptations in my way which others have not.” ‘There has no
temptation taken you but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will
not allow you to be tempted above that you are able; but will with the
temptation also make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it,’ (1 Cor.
10:13). “I wish I had some friend who could understand all the trials of my
spirit.” ‘ We have not a High priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of
our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,’
(Heb. 4:15). “It is my desire to walk uprightly, but I feel I have no strength.”
‘He gives power to the faint, and to those who have no might he increases
strength,’ (Isa. 40:29). “May I go and ask him, then?” ‘If any of you lacks
wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally and upbraids not, and
it shall be given him,’ (Jas. 1:5). “How will God give me wisdom?” ‘I will put
my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep
my statutes and do them,’ (Ezek. 36:27). “When trouble comes, what shall I do?”
‘Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver you, and you shall glorify
me,’ (Ps. 51:15). “Need I not fear the hour of death?” ‘When you pass through
the waters I will be with you,’ (Isa. 40: 2). “Nor the day of judgment?” ‘Who
shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is
he that condemns? It is Christ who died,’ (Rom. 8:33, 34). “Oh, I will cast in
my lot with God’s people, for they only are happy.” ‘We are journeying unto the
place of which the Lord said, I will give it to you; come you with us, and we
will do you good,’ (Num. 10:29). ‘The Lord bless you, and keep you; the Lord
make his face shine upon you, and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up his
countenance upon you, and give you peace,’ (Num. 6:24-26).
Truly it is kind to invite men to Christ. Let them come
boldly, in the confidence of faith, at once, without delay. Well and wisely did
Paul desire that he might “be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the
righteousness which is of God by faith,” (Phil. 3: 9). Only thus can the soul be
set at liberty.
If you will come to Christ you shall
have rest—rest to your souls, however weary, however burdened—a holy rest from
the servitude of sin and Satan—a rest from tormenting fears, from corroding
cares, from an accusing conscience. The unholy quietness of unrenewed nature is
but the precursor of wrath, as an unusual stillness precedes the earthquake. But
the rest of the soul in Christ is like that of the Israelites when, after their
long journeyings and wars and troubles, they were settled in
Vespasian the Roman emperor gave a great reward to a person
who came and professed a great love for him. Come to Christ, thus proving that
you love him, and he will give you blessings whose value can never be adequately
estimated by a finite mind. He will receive you. “Him who comes unto me I will
never cast out.” He will give you an indisputable title to imperishable glory.
Let no one hesitate what choice to make. No man can afford to sustain the loss
of his soul, the loss of the divine favor, the loss of the smiles of Christ. Men
must be saved in him, or they will be ruined forever. You can but die if you
come to Christ—and you must die if you do not come. Every man is naturally like
the four leprous men spoken of in 2 Kings 7:3-11. Let him but arise and go
trustfully to Christ, and all will be well.
