Addressing Sinners

[JM]

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by G Hazelrigg

Sometimes the Lord’s people contend about things, on which they are really agreed, through not taking the trouble to understand one another; or perhaps we should rather say, from not looking honestly and earnestly to the Lord that they might understand one another. Sometimes they contend fiercely upon matters of comparatively small account, indeed, the less the account, the greater the fierceness; through not observing a due proportion in things. Sometimes they contend from a contentious spirit, and more for their own reputations than for the maintenance of the truth of God. All this is very poor work. For one man, who believes in the sovereignty of divine grace, to call another who believes as he does, hard names, to style him fatalist, or Arminian, shows little of the spirit of wisdom. It is well, I think, for each of us to state, as clearly as we can, what our own views are (2 Cor. 3:12,13). If others agree with us, it is well; if not, then it is well to see what the difference is, and whether it is of any vital importance. In these papers I am trying to set forth, as clearly as possible, what I believe in the matters handled; but would be open to correction.

(1) I believe, then, that saving spiritual faith and repentance, are graces of the new covenant, parts of the new creation, and fruits of the Holy Spirit in Christ, entirely proceeding from the sovereign will of God.

(2) I therefore believe, as a direct consequence of such a persuasion, that it cannot be the duty of every man to thus savingly believe and repent.

(3) Therefore, again, that it is no part of a minister’s ordinary duty, or prescribed work to call upon his hearers generally to do these things, and to act the part of creators.

To thus exhort to my mind certainly implies that there is only a moral, not a physical, or essential, inability to comply with the exhortation, which I believe is contrary the truth. These views do not militate against what a sent servant of God may be led to do on some particular occasion. They do not restrain him from obeying freely the leading’s of the Holy Spirit. They loose him rather than bind. They free him from the duty task, and the necessity of obeying as a fixed rule, that which, if done at all, requires some special leading. I confess, therefore, that to my mind such universal exhortations, addressed indiscriminately to dead sinners, and perhaps to the persons of a mixed congregation, endanger the truth concerning the sovereign grace of God in Christ Jesus, and the doctrine of the new birth, and a new creation, ignoring to some extent the absolutely needed work of the Holy Spirit. This I think very serious. It is worth contending about in a right spirit. We are not called upon to slavishly bow down to the opinions of gracious and spiritually wise men, who have gone before us. A certain respect to their sentiments is not improper, and a degree of caution in going against them. I do not think the writings of such men as the late J C Philpot, or William Gadsby and others, are to be lightly disregarded. If the view of such men were opposed to the Word of God, or their proceedings in the ministerial work, unscriptural, let us not uphold them. But if they were in harmony with the truth as it is in Jesus, let us not quietly see overthrown what men of God have assiduously, and wisely budded. In Psalm 74, the Psalmist complains that, before the day he writes about, a man was famous who did good work in felling trees, and preparing wood for the carver; “but now they break down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers.” It is as though a woodman should go to Chatsworth, and instead of felling trees for some master carver to fashion into forms of beauty, should set about hacking and destroying the master pieces of Gibbon already there.

How to address unconverted persons, is a matter which has exercised the Lord’s ministers more or less, I suppose, in all ages. I should be sorry to lay down rigid rules; to his own Master a true minister stands or falls. I would not attempt to bind the unicorns to my crib. What particular leadings a minister may have, nay, what inspirations on various occasions, it is not, for me to decide. As a sort of general rule I should say, or suggest, that the right thing is, to tell men of their utterly lost condition, their hopeless and helpless states by nature, particularising any forms of sin to which we may know them to have been addicted. Then to set before them the divine remedy in all its fulness. So that if they fall under the testimony of God which is against them, they may not despair; but be raised up to a hope through what God has provided in Christ Jesus for those sinners who turn and look to him. Thus the gospel is preached, as in 1 Peter 4 to those who are dead, that they may be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit. This answers to what we read of the Holy Spirit’s work in John 16:8-11. Also to what is written in Mark 1. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ is “All flesh is grass.” It goes upon that foundation. There is no room for the gospel, if man is anything in himself but grass which withereth. This answers too to Proverbs 1:23 where the Lord says, “Turn you at my reproof.” The Pharisees we know rejected the counsel of God against themselves. They could say of others, “This people, which knoweth not the law, is cursed.” “Thou wert altogether born in sins.” Of themselves “Are we blind also?” Therefore they despised and rejected Christ and his gospel. The publicans and sinners in many cases fell under the reproofs of wisdom, and found a remedy in the gospel of the grace of God. Surely this way of addressing sinners, is more scriptural, than that of telling them that it is their duty to savingly and spiritually believe. Exhorting them to the performance of a duty impossible to any who are not born again, created anew in Christ Jesus. To savingly believe, being, as we have said, not only a morally, but a physically and essentially impossible thing, to man as first created in Adam.

A man can only break or transgress the law he is under. An Englishman does not transgress the laws of France or Germany, he offends against the laws of England. These, and not the laws of another country, he is under, and must stand or fall by. So man, as he comes into the world, as sprung from Adam and not born again, is under the law of works. This do and thou shalt live. He is under the law of the old creation in Adam, not the law of the new creation in Christ. Here are, as it were, two different countries distinct one from the other. Each having their own laws. Each having their own inhabitants subject to those laws. The one country inhabited by men as born in Adam; the other inhabited by those born again. The law of works in its substance is the law which the one set of inhabitants is under. The perfect law of liberty is the law of the true people of God who are born again.

 

[brinny]

Thank you.