"Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." Titus 2:14

How can any one who knows anything of the blessedness of atoning blood and redeeming love and the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit continue in sin that grace may abound? Doctrinal professors may do these things, for a mere letter knowledge of the truth brings with it no deliverance from the power of sin; but the living soul, in whom the God of all grace is carrying on his gracious work, can it trample under foot the cross of the suffering Son of God?

It is impossible that a man who knows for himself the redeeming efficacy of Christ's atoning blood, and whose conscience is made tender in the fear of God, can, under the sweet influence of his love, deliberately crucify him again. Not but what there is a falling under the power of sin and temptation, as David and Peter fell; but there will not be a wilful sinning against him, when the blessed Spirit is bringing near his blood and grace and love.

May we never forget that the suffering Son of God gave himself to purify unto himself a peculiar people—a people whose thoughts are peculiar, for their thoughts are the thoughts of God, as having the mind of Christ; a people whose affections are peculiar, for they are fixed on things above; whose prayers are peculiar, for they are wrought in their heart by the Spirit of grace and supplication; whose sorrows are peculiar, because they spring from a spiritual source; whose joys are peculiar, for they are, joys which the stranger intermeddleth not with; whose hopes are peculiar, as anchoring within the veil; and whose expectations are peculiar, as not expecting to reap a crop of happiness in this marred world, but looking for happiness in the kingdom of rest and peace in the bosom of God. And if they are peculiar inwardly, they should be peculiar outwardly. They should make it manifest that they are a peculiar people by walking in the footsteps of the Lord the Lamb, taking up the cross, denying themselves, and living to the honour, praise, and glory of God.

"I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love." Hosea 11:4

When God draws his people near unto himself, it is not done in a mechanical way. They are drawn, not with cords of iron, but with the cords of a man; the idea being of something feeling, human, tender, touching; not as if God laid an iron arm upon his people to drag them to his breast, whether they wished to come or not. This would not be grace nor the work of the Spirit upon the heart. God does not so act in a way of mechanical force. We therefore read, "Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power" (Psalm 110:3). He touches their heart with his gracious finger, like the band of men whom he thus inclined to follow Saul (1 Sam. 10:26); he communicates to their soul both faith and feeling; he melts, softens, and humbles their heart by a sense of his goodness and mercy; for it is his goodness, as experimentally felt and realised, which leads to repentance.

If you have ever felt any secret and sacred drawing of your soul upward to heaven, it was not compulsion, not violence, not a mechanical constraint, but an arm of pity and compassion let down into your very heart, which, touching your inmost spirit, drew it up into the bosom of God. It was some such gracious touch as that spoken of in the Song of Solomon, "My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him." It was some view of his goodness, mercy, and love in the face of a Mediator, with some dropping into your spirit of his pity and compassion towards you, which softened, broke, and melted your heart.

You were not driven onward by being flogged and scourged, but blessedly drawn with the cords of a man, which seemed to touch every tender feeling and enter into the very depths of your spirit. And why is this? Because it is as man that our blessed Lord is the Mediator; it is the man Christ Jesus, the man who groaned and sighed in the garden, the man that hung upon the cross, the man who lay in the sepulchre, who is now the man at the right hand of the Father, and yet God-man; for it is through his humanity that we draw near unto God.

As his blood, which was the blood of humanity; and as his sufferings, which were the sufferings of humanity; and as his sacrifice, which was the sacrifice of the humanity; and as his death, which was the death of the humanity; as these are opened up with divine power, they form, so to speak, a medium whereby we may draw near unto God, without terror, without alarm, because God in Christ manifests himself as altogether love.

"Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:12

The Apostle Paul, perhaps the greatest saint that ever lived upon earth, had to confess that even he had not attained. There was that in Christ more than he had ever seen, ever known, ever felt, ever tasted, ever handled, ever realised. There were heights in his glory, depths in his love, in his sufferings, in his bitter agonies in the garden and on the cross, which passed all apprehension and comprehension.

Therefore he says, "Not as though I had already attained." I am a child still, a learner still, as weak as ever, as helpless as ever to obtain what I want. Though I follow on; though I forget the things which are behind and reach forward to the things before; though I know what I am aiming at, what I am seeking; though my eye is single, my heart earnest, yet it is not with me as if I had already attained.

Now just put yourself in that scale; and to measure yourself aright, look at these things. Are you following after? Do you see that there is something which is to be tasted, handled, felt, and realised of the precious things of God? Have you ever had any sips, tastes, drops, foretastes? Has your heart ever been melted, softened, warmed by the goodness and mercy of God, by the love of Christ? Did you ever feel that there was a sweetness, blessedness, and happiness in the things of God to which nothing else could be compared? Has your heart ever been opened and enlarged by the love of God, so that you felt that spirituality of mind which is life and peace; and could you have continued in that spot it would have been to you all that you wanted to make you look death calmly in the face?

Now it is these sips, tastes, and drops, these sweet discoveries of what the Lord is to believing souls, which draw forth the desires of the heart and enable it to follow after. But darkness supervenes; the Lord withdraws himself, sin works, Satan tempts, trials perplex your mind, unbelief rises up and begins to question everything. Then there is no following on. Everything looks so dark, so gloomy; divine things are so out of sight; doubts and fears so possess the mind; and it seems as if we came so short, so very short, that the question arises whether we may not come short at last; whether we may not have deceived ourselves; whether all we have felt may not have been an awful delusion.

And yet see how this works. How it stirs the mind up; how it makes us seek again and again to possess realities; how it seems to open the eyes afresh to see what true religion is, and that it consists in the teachings and operations of the Holy Ghost upon the heart.

Thus our very short-comings, deficiencies, and complaints are blessedly overruled and made to work graciously to stir us up to run again the race set before us. But depend upon it, the most highly-favoured saint upon earth will have reason to say with Paul, "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect," that is, matured and ripe. Not perfect in understanding, nor perfect in heart, nor perfect in lip, nor perfect in life. Every saint of God will have to confess imperfection, imperfection stamped upon all that he has and is; imperfection, imperfection upon everything but the work of the Son of God upon the cross and the work of God the Holy Ghost in the soul.

"For the word of God is quick and powerful." Hebrews 4:12

What is meant by the word of God being "quick?" That it moves with swiftness and velocity? It is certainly said of God's word (Psalm 147:15) that "it runneth very swiftly;" but that is not the meaning of the word "quick" in the text. It there means "living," and corresponds with the expression (Acts 7:38) "lively (or living) oracles." It is an old English word signifying "living;" as in the expression, "who shall judge the quick and the dead" (2 Timothy 4:1), that is, the living and the dead. So we read of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram "going down quick (that is, alive) into the pit" (Numbers 16:30). So the Lord is said to have "quickened (that is, made spiritually alive) those who were previously dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1).

The word "quick," then, means not moving with velocity, but living, or rather communicating life, and thus distinguished from the dead letter. Truth, as it stands in the naked word of God, is lifeless and dead; and as such, has no power to communicate what it has not in itself, that is, life and power to the hearts of God's people. It stands there in so many letters and syllables, as lifeless as the types by which they were printed.

But when the incarnate Word takes of the written word, and speaks it home into the heart and conscience of a vessel of mercy, whether in letter or substance, then he endues it with divine life, and it enters into the soul, communicating to it a life that can never die. As James speaks, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth." And also Peter, "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever" (1 Peter 1:23). Eternal realities are brought into the soul, fixed and fastened by an Almighty hand. The conscience is made alive in the fear of God; and the soul is raised up from a death in sin, or a death in profession, to a life heavenly, new, and supernatural.

NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL RELIGION

(A Philpot Special from 1836)

By J.C. Philpot

I see and feel that there is abroad in the world and among the professing churches so much false and delusive religion, that it seems as though I were continually compelled to be bearing witness against it. If indeed this natural and creature religion were confined to the unregenerate, I might well leave it alone, and let the dead bury their dead; but it infects the children of God too, it creeps in and insinuates itself even amongst those who are partakers of a new and spiritual nature, and is closely mixed up, though it can never really unite, with all our acts of spiritual worship. I find so much of this natural and creature religion in my heart, that I think I have nothing else; and when I look round upon the professing churches, even the purest and most experimental, I see a religion received by tradition from their fathers, standing too much in the place of and almost eating up that vital, heavenly, and almost supernatural godliness which comes from and rises up to the Father of Light. Ordinances, prayer-meetings, preachings, reading the Word, family prayers seem prized for their own sake more than the simple, pure, heavenly, and divine communications of God to the soul. These things I do not despise, yea, rather practise and attend unto, but to me they are barren husks in themselves; I value them only as the shell that contains the kernel, and if the nut be wanting, or if there be a worm within it, I can trample upon the shell.


It is not prayer, but the answer to prayer that delivers the soul; it is not the ordinance, but He whom the ordinance sets forth that is meat and drink; it is not the preaching, but the Spirit ministered through the preaching (Gal. 3:5) that profits and edifies. Mr.Hart’s words, “But O my soul wants more than a sign!” convey my meaning, and I believe express the feelings of every child of God. I wish to steer the middle path; not to despise the ordinances of God, and yet not to overvalue them; not to make idols of them, and yet not to call them Nehushtan, which means a piece of brass, and a piece of brass only. And my firm conviction is, that God, who is a jealous God, will teach all His people the difference between worshipping an idol and worshipping Him in spirit and in truth. I want God’s religion, the Creator’s and not the creature’s. I want that pure and heavenly and yet simple and most blessed religion, which is the gift of God and the work of God. I want that religion which the world hates, the professors cry down, the Ishmaels mock, the Pharisees revile, the bastards ridicule, and the zealots despise. I want that religion which the clean-hearted call licentious, and the workers pronounce idle; yea, I want that divine and heavenly religion to stream down into my soul out of the fulness of the Godman, which is like rivers of water in a dry and thirsty land; not a religion that will puff up, but abase; not fill the creature full of himself, but empty him into nothingness, and at the same time fill, melt, soften, renew, and warm the soul with the sweet earnests of eternity.


Such a religion as this, my dear friends, will not lead to sin, but from sin; yea, will shew sin in its true colours, as that unclean thing which Jehovah hateth. This is the universal medicine, the balm of Gilead, which heals the ulcers, cleanses the wounds, and mollifies with ointment the putrefying sores. But O my soul, how much of this religion dost thou possess? Thou hast sometimes the desire after it; thou seest this land at times a great way off; thou now and then breakest into a cry after it in the lonely watches of the night; and thou canst not be satisfied without it. But what if, instead of enjoying and realising this heavenly gift, thou seemest to possess nothing but the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness? What if, instead of the Good Shepherd pitching fold there, they heart is rather a habitation for dragons and a court for owls? What if the wild beasts of the desert meet there, with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr cries to his fellow? What if little else but deadness, darkness, vileness, earthliness, filthiness, and uncleanness gush up in thy heart? What if blasphemy and infidelity, with all imaginable and unimaginable lustings, taint every thought? Why, put all this together, and add to it the thousand nameless workings and boilings up of thy own filthy heart, dear reader, and then thou hast the picture of the writer. But do not shew this dark picture to the holy and the pious; tell it not in the streets of self-righteous Gath and evangelical Askelon, lest the daughters of the clean-handed triumph; and if thou feelest and findest thy heart like mine, keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. But is this religion? Is not religion to be holy and good, to be free from all sin, and have a heart so pure, that a sinful thought never lodges there? Yes, my friends, this is religion, but whose? Man’s or God’s? This is a religion which nature, reason, and the world approve, but not the way that leads to Zion. I have found that the experience I have of my sinfulness makes me long for and value Christ’s atoning blood; that the sense I have of my helplessness leads me to cry to God to help me; that the knowledge which I have of my condemnation teaches me to prize a free grace salvation. But I find that I am always expecting to have grace in me, instead of looking for it out of me. I read of the God of all grace and I receive as a most solemn and certain truth that all grace comes from Him, but when I come to experience I want to find that grace in me which is stored up in the Redeemer; in other words, I want to find some stock of faith, prayer, hope, spirituality, and love stored up in my heart, to which I can go as to the money in my purse, but this I cannot find, and because I cannot find it, I feel guilty and condemned; I want a spirit of prayer to dwell in me, and not to be lodged in the hands of the Redeemer; I want to believe when I like, and be spiritual when I like, and mortify sin when I like. But where would grace be then? Would Jesus be its author and its finisher? Should I pray and cry to Him for it if I could find it in myself? No; I should act as the rich man does, who when he wants a supply goes to his own coffers; and not as the beggar, who must go and beg for it. I saw this very clearly today, as I was taking my solitary walk, and it seemed to encourage me. When I acknowledge Jehovah as the God of all grace, I own that it is in Him and not in me, and that all I at any time have is His direct and sovereign gift.


You know me I trust too well to think I am one of those dry and dead Calvinists who abuse this truth to their own destruction, and who because a man has not a stock of grace are satisfied without any; no, I only know what grace is by feeling its operations and having it within. He who has it not in his heart will die in his sins.


May the Lord communicate to us out of His own fulness abundance of grace. May He work in us cries, sighs, breathings, groanings and wrestlings. May He give us a tender conscience, a contrite spirit, and a filial fear, and fill our souls with real humility, meekness, and godly sorrow, that we may be weaned children before Him. May we find and feel God stronger than we; and may His rich and abounding grace triumph over all our guilt, sin, and unbelief; yea, above all our continual lustings after those evil and soul-destroying things which God hateth.

"Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth for I am God, and there is none else." Isaiah 45:22

How often we seem not to have any real religion, or enjoy any solid comfort! How often are our evidences obscured and beclouded, and our minds covered with deep darkness! How often does the Lord hide himself, so that we cannot behold him, nor get near to him; and how often the ground on which we thought we stood is cut from under our feet, and we have no firm standing! What a painful path is this to walk in, but how profitable!

When we are reduced to poverty and beggary, we learn to value Christ's glorious riches; the worse opinion we have of our own heart, and the more deceitful and desperately wicked that we find it, the more we put our trust in his faithfulness; and the more black we are in our own esteem, the more beautiful and comely does he appear in our eyes. As we sink, Jesus rises; as we become feeble, he puts forth his strength; as we come into danger, he brings deliverance; as we get into temptation, he breaks the snare; and as we are shut up in darkness and obscurity, he causes the light of his countenance to shine.

Now it is by being led in this way, and walking in these paths, that we come rightly to know who Jesus is, and to see and feel how suitable and precious such a Saviour is to our undone souls. We are needy, he has in himself all riches; we are hungry, he is the bread of life; we are thirsty, he says, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink;" we are naked, and he has clothing to bestow; we are fools, and he has wisdom to grant; we are lost, and he speaks, "Look into me, and be ye saved."

Thus, so far from our misery shutting us out from God's mercy, it is the only requisite for it; so far from our guilt excluding his pardon, it is the only thing needful for it; so far from our helplessness ruining our souls, it is the needful preparation for the manifestation of his power in our weakness; we cannot heal our own wounds and sores; that is the very reason why he should stretch forth his arm. It is because there is no salvation in ourselves, or in any other creature, that he says, "Look unto me, for I am God, and there is none else."

"And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." John 17:19

Christ is made to his people sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30). What am I? What are you? Filthy, polluted, defiled; are we not? Do not some of us, more or less, daily feel altogether as an unclean thing? Is not every thought of our heart altogether vile? Does any holiness, any spirituality, any heavenly-mindedness, any purity, any resemblance to the divine image dwell in our hearts by nature? Not a grain, not an atom.

How then can I, a polluted sinner, ever see the face of a holy God? How can I, a worm of earth, corrupted within and without by indwelling and committed sin, ever hope to see a holy God without shrinking into destruction? I cannot see him, except so far as the Lord of life and glory is made sanctification to me.

Why should men start so at "imputed sanctification?" Why should not Christ's holiness be imputed to his people as well as Christ's righteousness? Why should they not stand sanctified in him, as well as justified? Why not?

Is there anything in Jesus, as God-man Mediator, which he has not for his people? Has he any perfection, any attribute, any gift, any blessing, which is not for their use? Did he not sanctify himself that they might be sanctified by the truth? Is he not the holy Lamb of God, that they might be "holy, and without blame before him in love?"

What is my holiness, even such as God may be pleased to impart to me? Is it not, to say the least, scanty? Is it not, to say the least, but little in measure? But when we view the pure and spotless holiness of Jesus imputed to his people, and view them holy in him, pure in him, without spot in him, how it does away with all the wrinkles of the creature, and makes them stand holy and spotless before God.