PT4
n these days of Laodicean complacency and pride, there is considerable talk and much boasting about communion with Christ, but how little manifestation of it do we behold! Where there is no sense of utter unworthiness, where there is no mourning over the total depravity of our nature, where there is no sorrowing over our lack of conformity to Christ, where there is no groaning over being brought into captivity to sin; in short, where there is no crying, “0 wretched man that I am,” it is greatly to be feared that there is no fellowship with Christ at all.
When Abraham walked with the Lord, he exclaimed, “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes. (Gen. 18:27) When Job came face to face with God, he said, “Behold I am vile” (40:4), and again, “I abhor myself.” (42:6) When Isaiah entered the divine Presence, he cried, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.” (Isa. 6:5) When Daniel had that wondrous vision of Christ (Dan. 10:5-6), he declared, “There remained no strength in me: for comeliness was turned in me into corruption.” (v.8) And in one of the last epistles by the beloved apostle to the Gentiles, we read, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief’ (1 Tim. 1:15). These utterances proceeded not from unregenerate men, but came from the lips of God’s saints. Nor were they the confessions of back- slidden believers: rather were they voiced by the most eminent of the Lord’s people. Where, today, shall we find any who are fit to be placed along side of Abraham, Job, Isaiah, Daniel and Paul? Where indeed! And yet, these were the men who were so conscious of their vileness and unworthiness! saying, “The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (vv. 16-17); the apostle adds, “But ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.” (v. 23) Similar is the teaching of the apostle Peter, “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations” (1 Pet. 1:6). Sorrow and groaning, then, are not absent from the highest spirituality.
In these days of Laodicean complacency and pride, there is considerable talk and much boasting about communion with Christ, but how little manifestation of it do we behold! Where there is no sense of utter unworthiness, where there is no mourning over the total depravity of our nature, where there is no sorrowing over our lack of conformity to Christ, where there is no groaning over being brought into captivity to sin; in short, where there is no crying, “O wretched man that I am,” it is greatly to be feared that there is no fellowship with Christ at all.
When Abraham walked with the Lord, he exclaimed, “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes. (Gen. 18:27) When Job came face to face with God, he said, “Behold I am vile” (40:4), and again, “I abhor myself.” (42:6) When Isaiah entered the divine Presence, he cried, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.” (Isa. 6:5) When Daniel had that wondrous vision of Christ (Dan. 10:5-6), he declared, “There remained no strength in me: for comeliness was turned in me into corruption.” (v.8) And in one of the last epistles by the beloved apostle to the Gentiles, we read, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief’ (1 Tim. 1:15). These utterances proceeded not from unregenerate men, but came from the lips of God’s saints. Nor were they the confessions of back-slidden believers: rather were they voiced by the most eminent of the Lord’s people. Where, today, shall we find any who are fit to be placed along side of Abraham, Job, Isaiah, Daniel and Paul? Where indeed! And yet, these were the men who were so conscious of their vileness and unworthiness!
“O wretched man that I am.” This then is the language of a regenerate soul. It is the confession of the normal (undeceived and undeluded) Christian. The substance of it may be found not only in the recorded utterances of Old and New Testament saints, but as well, in the writings of the most eminent Christians who have lived during the last five hundred years. Different indeed were the confessions and witnessings borne by eminent saints of the past from the ignorant and arrogant boastings of modern Laodiceans! It is refreshing to turn from the present-day biographies to those written long ago. Ponder the following excerpts:
Mr. Bradford, of holy memory, who was martyred in the reign of bloody queen Mary, in a letter to a fellow-prisoner in another penitentialy, subscribed himself thus: “The sinful John Bradford: a very painted hypocrite: the most miserable, hard-hearted, and unthankful sinner, John Bradford.” (1555 A.D.)
Godly Rutherford wrote, “This body of sin and corruption embitters and poisons our enjoyment. Oh that I were where I shall sin no more.” (1650 A.D.)
Bishop Berkeley wrote, “I cannot pray, but I sin; I cannot preach, but I sin; I cannot administer, nor receive the holy sacrament, but I sin. My very repentance needs to be repented of: and the tears I shed need washing in the blood of Christ.” (1670 A.D.)
Jonathan Edwards, in whose home died that remarkable man Mr. David Brainerd (the first missionary to the Indians, and whose devotion to Christ was witnessed to by all who knew him), and with whom he was intimately acquainted, says in his “Memoirs of Mr. Brainerd,” “His religious illuminations, affections, and comfort, seemed to a great degree to be attended with evangelical humiliation; consisting in a sense of his own utter insufficiency, despicableness, and odiousness; with an answering disposition and frame of heart. How deeply affected was he almost continually with his great defects in religion; with his vast distance from that spirituality and holy frame of mind that become a child of God; with his ignorance, pride, deadness, barrenness! He was not only affected with the remembrance of his former sinfulness, before his conversion, but with the sense of his present vileness and pollution. He was not only disposed to think other saints better than he; yea to look on himself as the worst and least of saints; but, very often, as the vilest and worst of mankind.”
Jonathan Edwards himself, than whom few men have been more honored of God, either in their spiritual attainments or in the extent to which God has used them in blessing to others, near the end of his life wrote thus: “When I look into my heart and take a view of its wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. And it appears to me, that, were it not for free grace, exalted and raised up to the infinite height of all the fulness and glory of the great Jehovah, I should appear sunk down in my sins below hell itself; far below the sight of everything, but the eye of sovereign grace, that alone can pierce down to such a depth. And it is affecting to think how ignorant I was, when a young Christian [alas, that so many older Christians are still ignorant of it.—A.W.P.], of the bottomless depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy and deceit left in my heart” (1743 A.D.).
Augustus Toplady, author of “Rock of Ages,” wrote thus in his private diary under December 31, 1767—”Upon a review of the past year, I desire to confess that my unfaithfulness has been exceeding great; my sins still greater; God’s mercies greater than both.” And again, “My short-comings and my mis-doings, my unbelief and want of love, would sink me into the lowest hell, was not Jesus my righteousness and my Redeemer.”
Listen to the words of that godly woman, the wife of that eminent missionary Adoniram Judson: “Oh how I rejoice that I am out of the whirlpool! Too gay, too trifling, for a missionary’s wife! That may be, but after all, gaiety is my lightest sin. It is my coldness of heart, my listlessness, my want of faith, my spiritual inefficiency and inertness, by love of self, the inherent and every-day pampered sinfulness of my nature, that makes me such a mere infant in the cause of Christ—not the attractions of the world.”
John Newton, writer of that blessed hymn, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see;” when referring to the expectations which he cherished at the outset of his Christian life, wrote thus: “But alas! these my golden expectations have been like South Sea dreams. I have lived hitherto a poor sinner, and I believe I shall die one. Have I, then, gained nothing? Yes, I have gained that which I once would rather have been without! Such accumulated proof of the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of my heart, as I hope by the Lord’s blessing has, in some measure, taught me to know what I mean when I say, Behold, I am vile.. .1 was ashamed of myself, when I began to seek it, I am more ashamed now
James Ingliss (Editor of Wayrnarks in the Wilderness) at the close of his life, wrote Mr. J.H. Brookes, “As I am brought to take a new view of the end, my life seems so made up of squandered opportunities, and so barren of results, that it is sometimes very painful; but grace comes in to meet it all, and He will be glorified in my humiliation also” (1872). On which Mr. Brookes remarked, “How like him, and how unlike the boastings of those who are glorying in their fancied attainments!”