Naaman's servants were quite right: 'My father! If the prophet had bid
thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it?' Yes! Of
course he would, and the greater the better. Men will stand, as Indian
fakirs do, with their arms above their heads until they stiffen there.
They will perch themselves upon pillars, like Simeon Stylites, for
years, till the birds build their nests in their hair: they will
measure all the distance from Cape Comorin to Juggernaut's temple with
their bodies along the dusty road. They will give the fruit of their
body for the sin of their soul. They will wear hair shirts and scourge
themselves. They will fast and deny themselves. They will build
cathedrals and endow churches. They will do as many of you do, labour
by fits and starts all through your lives at the endless task of making
yourselves ready for heaven, and winning it by obedience and by
righteousness. They will do all these things and do them gladly, rather
than listen to the humbling message that says, 'You do not need to do
anything--wash!' Is it your washing, or the water, that will clean you?
Wash and be clean! Ah, my brother! Naaman's cleansing was only a test
of his obedience, and a token that it was God who cleansed him. There
was no power in Jordan's waters to take away the taint of leprosy. Our
cleansing is in that blood of Jesus Christ that has the power to take
away all sin, and to make the foulest amongst us pure and clean.
But the two commandments--that of the symbol in my text, that of the
reality in the Christian gospel--are alike in this respect, that both
the one and the other are a confession that the man himself has no part
in his own cleansing. And so Naamans, in all generations, who were
eager to do some great thing, have stumbled, and turned away from that
gospel which says, 'It is finished!' 'Not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us.' Dear brother, you
can do nothing. You do not need to do anything. It is a hard pill for
my pride to swallow, to be indebted to absolute mercy, which I have
done nothing to bring, for all my hope, but it is a position that we
have to take. Hard to take for all of us, very hard for you who have
never looked in the face the solemn fact of your own sinfulness, and
pondered upon the consequences of that; but most blessed if only you
will open your eyes to see that the stern refusal to accept anything
from us as working out our salvation is but the other side of the great
truth that Christ's death is all-sufficient, and that in Him the
foulest may be clean.
'Nothing in my hand I bring.'
If you bring anything you cannot grasp the Cross. Do not try to eke out
Christ's work with yours; do not build upon penitence, or feelings, or
faith, or anything, but build only upon this: 'When I had nothing to
pay He frankly forgave me all.' And build upon this: 'Christ alone has
died for me'; and Christ alone is all-sufficient. 'Wash and be clean';
accept and possess; believe and live!