The first effect of any real contact with Christ and His Gospel is to
reveal a man to himself, to shatter his delusive estimates of what he
is, and to pull down about his ears the lofty fortress in which he has
ensconced himself. It seems strange work for what calls itself a Gospel
to begin by forcing a man to cry out with sobs and tears, Oh, wretched
man that I am! But no man will ever reach the heights to which Christ
can lift him, who does not begin his upward course by descending to the
depths into which Christ's Gospel begins its work by plunging him.
Unconsciousness of sin is sure to lead to indifference to a Saviour, and
unless we know ourselves to be miserable and poor and blind and naked,
the offer of gold refined by fire and white garments that we may clothe
ourselves will make no appeal to us. The fact of sin makes the need for
a Saviour; our individual sense of sin makes us sensible of our need of
a Saviour.
Paul believed that the weapons of his warfare were mighty enough to cast
down the strongest of all strongholds in which men shut themselves up
against the humbling Gospel of salvation by the mercy of God. The
weapons to which he thus trusted were the same to which Jesus pointed
His disciples when, about to leave them, He said, 'When the Comforter is
come He will convict the world of sin because they believe not in Me.'
Jesus brought to the world the perfect revelation of the holiness of
God, and set before us all a divine pattern of manhood to rebuke and
condemn our stained and rebellious lives, and He turned us away from the
superficial estimate of actions to the careful scrutiny of motives. By
all these and many other ways He presented Himself to the world a
perfect man, the incarnation of a holy God and the revelation and
condemnation of sinful humanity. Yet, all that miracle of loveliness,
gentleness, and dignity is beheld by men without a thrill, and they see
in Him no 'beauty that they should desire Him,' and no healing to which
they will trust. Paul's way of kindling penitence in impenitent spirits
was not to brandish over them the whips of law or to seek to shake souls
with terror of any hell, still less was it to discourse with philosophic
calm on the obligations of duty and the wisdom of virtuous living; his
appeal to conscience was primarily the pressing on the heart of the love
of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. When the heart is melted, the
conscience will not long continue indurated. We cannot look lovingly and
believingly at Jesus and then turn to look complacently on ourselves.
Not to believe on Him is the sin of sins, and to be taught that it is so
is the first step in the work of Him who never merits the name of the
Comforter more truly than when He convicts the world of sin.
For a Christianity that does not begin with the deep consciousness of
sin has neither depth nor warmth and has scarcely vitality. The Gospel
is no Gospel, and we had almost said, 'The Christ is no Christ' to one
who does not feel himself, if parted from Christ, 'dead in trespasses
and sins.' Our religion depends for all its force, our gratitude and
love for all their devotion, upon our sense that 'the chastisement of
our peace was laid upon Him, and that by His stripes we are healed.'
Since He gave Himself for us, it is meet that we give ourselves to Him,
but there will be little fervour of devotion or self-surrender, unless
there has been first the consciousness of the death of sin and then the
joyous consciousness of newness of life in Christ Jesus.