On the second occasion to which our texts refer we have the Apostle
far more deeply conscious of his sin than he was on the first. He
remembered his denial, and no doubt he remembered also the secret
interview that Jesus Christ had with him on the day of the
Resurrection, when, no doubt, He communicated to him His frank and
full assurance of forgiveness, He knows far more of Christ's dignity
and character and nature after the Resurrection than he had done on
that day, long ago, by the banks of the lake. The deeper sense of
his own sin, and the clearer and loftier view of who and what Jesus
Christ was, send him struggling to his Master, and make him blessed
only at His feet.
Ah yes, brother! the superficial knowledge of my evil may drive me
away from Jesus Christ; the deepest conviction of it will send me
right into His arms. A partial knowledge of the divine nature as
revealed in Him as judge, and punitive and necessarily antagonistic
to the blackness of my sin, in the lustrous whiteness of His purity,
may drive me away from Him, but the deeper knowledge of God
manifested in Jesus Christ, the long-suffering, the gentle, loving,
pardoning, will send me to Him in all the depth of my self-abasement
and in the confidence in His love as covering over my sin and
accepting me. Where does the child go when it has transgressed
against its mother's word? Into its mother's arms to hide its face
upon her bosom near her heart. 'Against Thee, Thee only have I
sinned'; and therefore to Thee, Thee only will I go. Only in
nearness to Jesus Christ can we get the anodyne that quiets the
conscience--the blessed assurance of forgiveness that lightens us of
our burden and dread, and the power for holiness that will change
our impurity into the likeness of His own purity. He, and He only,
can forgive. He, and He only, brings the loving God into the midst
of unloving men. He, and He only, hath offered the sacrifice in
which all sin is done away. He, and He only, by the communication of
His Spirit and life to me, will make me pure and deliver me from the
burden of my sin.
And so the man who knows his own need and Christ's grace will not
say, 'Depart from me for I am a sinful man,' but he will say, 'Leave
me never, nor forsake me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord; but in Thee
I have forgiveness and righteousness.'
Dear friends! that consciousness of demerit once evoked in a man's
heart, however imperfectly, as I believe it is in some of your
hearts now, must issue in one of two things. Either it will send you
further into darkness to get away from the light, as the bats in a
cave will flit to the deepest recesses of it in order to escape the
torch, or it will bring you nearer to Him, and at His feet you will
find cleansing.
Oh, dear friends!--strangers many of you, but all friends--let me
beseech you that, if the merciful Spirit of God is in any measure
using my poor words to touch your consciences and hearts, you would
not venture to seek escape from the convictions which are stirring
in you by any other way than by betaking yourselves to the Cross.
Let it not be, I pray you, that because you know yourselves to be in
need of forgiveness, and to stand in peril of judgment, you say to
God,' Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways.'
But rather do you cast yourselves into Christ's arms and keep near
Him; saying as this same Peter did, on another occasion, 'Lord! to
whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.'