Christian life; Free Church of England -- Sermons; Sermons, English; Young men
Here is a man--and he is not an imaginary case--who is married, and has
young people growing up in the home. He is wealthy, with a reputable
position in society. But there is a sinister something in the
background of his life, and he sets himself to do what he knows full
well is an irreparable wrong to an inexperienced and defenceless
creature. He makes no fight against the wicked prompting, and does the
hurt which if another man were to do to one of his own family he would
willingly shoot him dead. And say when the hurt is done, a
searchlight--he knows not whence it comes--is flashed across his soul
and he sees himself as he is, a base scoundrel before God and man, will
it help him to think of his sin as good in the making? For whatever he
may become, he has done his part to damn another. And let his
conscience become, as it can become, and woe to him if it do not
become, as real as the wicked thing he has done, and his first and
devastating question will be, not can God forgive him, but can he ever
forgive himself? Let his one hope come to be in some means of
expiation, which can give him a degree of rest from the sin by paying
what he can of its wages, and he will begin to realize what is meant,
not by the remission of the consequences of sin, but by the remission
of sin. He will know the need, where the need is agony, which God in
Christ has met for us, and which, had He not met, would have left the
need something greater than God Himself. It is when a man must have
peace with himself or die to all that is immortal in him--it is then I
will trust him never again to pass by with unconcern the anguish of Him
who bore our sin in His own body on the tree.
Sometimes we look at the Lamb of God without feeling that we are
sinners, and then we have a thousand difficult questions to ask. At
other times the burden of sin is so heavy upon us, we see the
sinfulness of sin so vividly, that we get away from the mere accident
of place and time as far as it relates to sin, we see sin as God saw
it, and must ever see it--then it is we look to the Crucified One.
"When I feel myself in my heart of hearts a sinner," I once heard Dr.
Parker say, "a trespasser against God's law and God's love; when I feel
that a thought may overwhelm me in destruction, that a secret,
unexpressed desire may shut me out of heaven and make me glad to go to
hell to be away from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne--then
when I am told that Jesus Christ was wounded for my transgressions,
that upon Him was laid the chastisement of my peace, I press my way
through all the difficulties and say: If I perish I will pray and
perish at the Cross; for if this be not sufficient, it hath not entered
into the heart of man to solve the problem of human depravity, and the
human consciousness of sin."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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