Sovereign Grace Church

For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.

(Hebrews 10:14)

Is some poor soul led to say; “Well…what gives a proof that Christ is formed in my soul, the hope of glory?” [To believe on] Christ is life. “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” And Christ is light. “I am the light of the world,” that lighteth every (spiritual) man that cometh into the (spiritual) world. Life and light go together; and when God the Spirit communicates this blessed Christ to the conscience, He communicates life, and the sinner begins to feel; and He communicates light, and the sinner begins to see. And what does he feel and see? His own emptiness, darkness, blindness, weakness; his own lost condition; and he is brought in real experience before God to be sick of himself, sick of his prayers and his tears and his repentance and his faith, if he professed to have any; he sickens at his vice, and sickens at his piety. A stranger is come into the temple; and He has overturned “the tables of money changers” in the heart, to make room for Himself. This is God’s Christ, that is “come in the flesh.” All these principles, whether of open profaneness or professed piety, go to ruin. There must be room to realize God’s Christ as a perfect salvation; and that will never be till we are brought to self-loathing and self-detesting before a heart-searching God. There will be a hard struggle for it too; especially if we have got a little piety. If you are openly profane, when God the Spirit is pleased to reveal the communicable nature of Christ to you, it will not be such a hard struggle to part with open profaneness; but to part with piety and religious duties and church-going and chapel-going and [ordinance]-going and reading the “Whole Duty of Man,” and all those pious things—O bless me, it is just like driving a man mad. He imagines he had been a little remiss in some of these things; but then he will not be so again; he will be more diligent and more cautious. But no; God’s Christ cuts the man up, root and branch, and leaves him no more help in himself than the damned in hell; and he feels himself as truly cut down as a wretch can be, before a heart-searching God [Romans 7:24-25].

[Reader] have you come to this? If not, you do not know God’s Christ, which is “come in the flesh.” You my talk a great deal about it, but you have not got into the mystery of it. And all your knowledge, till it begins here, is like the fine oil of antichrist; it is only deceiving you, and wrapping you up in a false odour. You have only got a Christ of your own; and it is antichrist. God’s Christ roots up, and brings the poor sinner, not in judgment merely, but in feeling, to say before God, “There is no help in me;” to feel that he can neither will nor do, and to justify that declaration: “It is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.” He is brought in his very feelings before a heart-searching God to justify God in condemning him; and he gives God leave (as far as a creature can do) to enter into judgment with [God against himself]; for he says, “Lord, I deserve it, and there is no help in me.” [And His people, all those sinners He came into the world to save, we say, “Truth Lord, nevertheless, please be merciful to me a sinner” [Luke 18:9] AMEN].