The Lost Sought and Saved

Next Part The Lost Sought and Saved 2

"For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." Luke 19:10

Man is a strange compound. A sinner, and the worst of sinners, and yet a pharisee! A wretch, and the vilest of wretches, and yet pluming himself on his good works! Did not experience convince us to the contrary, we would scarcely credit that a monster like man, a creature, as some one has justly said, 'half-beast and half-devil,' should dream of pleasing God by his obedience, or of climbing up to heaven by a ladder of his own righteousness.

Pharisaism is firmly fixed in the human heart. Deep is the root, broad the stem, wide the branches, but poisonous the fruit of this gigantic tree, planted by pride and unbelief in the Adamic soil. And what can "hew this tree down, yet leave the stump of the roots in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass in the tender grass of the field?" Da 4:23 The axe of the Spirit only. Self-righteousness is not peculiar to this or that individual. It is interwoven with our very being. It is the only religion that nature understands, relishes, or admires. In spite of all my Calvinistic profession, a pharisee I believe I would have been to this day, and the chief of the pharisees, if I had not had some deep and painful discoveries of what I am in the Adam fall.

And these discoveries we need perpetually. Again and again must we be put into Satan's sieve. Again and again must the heart be ploughed up, and its corruptions laid bare, to keep down the growth of this pharisaic spirit. It is a creature of many lives; it is not one blow, nor ten, nor a hundred that can kill it. Stunned it may be for a while, but it revives again and again. Pharisaism can live and thrive under any profession. Calvinism or Arminianism is the same to it. It is not the garb he wears, nor the mask he carries, that constitutes the man. An Antinomian may be as great a pharisee as an Arminian; a Particular Baptist as a Roman Catholic.

Pharisaism we see carried out to its fullest extent in the New Testament; and by some of the vilest wretches that ever lived, fiends in enmity against the beloved Son of God. This hatred often broke out during the Lord's life before it quenched itself in his blood. And what specially drew out this enmity? It was to see grace and mercy manifested in the salvation of a sinner. When the gracious and blessed Lord called down Zaccheus, the chief among the publicans, from the tree in which he fancied himself securely perched, and invited himself to become his guest, how this stirred up and drew forth the enmity of the pharisaic heart! 'O,' they cried, in all the pride of their painted holiness, 'he is gone to be guest--did ever any see the like? To what a strange pass are things come now! Here is one who declares himself a teacher sent from God; and yet what a horrible thing is this Teacher, who calls himself the Son of God, now doing; he is gone to be guest, to sit down to table, and to partake of food, "with a man that is a sinner!" Why did he not rather come to us holy men! Our hands are clean; we are the special favorites of heaven and the only fit companions for one sent from God! But that he should go to be guest with a tax-collector and a sinner-Oh, this is indeed an affront to us, and most unbecoming in him.'

And yet, with all their murmurings, Zaccheus manifested what the power of God could do, and that grace after all can in one moment do in a sinner's heart, a thousand times more than all their pharisaism had done in theirs for years. Take all these pharisees together; was there one who had ever done or ever meant to do half of what Zaccheus was enabled to do by the grace of God? "Behold," he says, "Lord, the half of my goods pharisaism never gave the tenth or hundredth part I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation," and no doubt he had amassed much of his property thereby, " I restore him fourfold." Penetrated and overwhelmed by the super-abounding grace of God, he would have stripped himself to the bone. The gracious answer of the blessed Redeemer was, "This day is salvation come to this house, for so much as he also"--this despised tax-collector, this abhorred sinner--"is a son of Abraham," a child of God, savingly interested in the everlasting covenant. Then He that has the key of David brought forth the key that opens the wards of this intricate yet heavenly lock--"For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost."

In opening these words, I shall attempt, with God's blessing,
I. First, to trace out the meaning of the expression, "that which was lost."
II. Secondly, the "coming of the Son of Man."
III. Thirdly, the execution of his blessed office in "seeking and saving that which was lost."

I. "That which was lost." God created Adam in his own image, after his own likeness; and for a short time he stood upright in his native created purity. But, according to the secret purposes of God, our first parent and federal head fell from that high estate; and we being in his loins, fell in him and with him. And Oh what a fall was there! The fall of man was complete. A responsible, intelligent being, capable of serving and obeying his Creator, if he falls, must fall to the very bottom of his created nature. There is no medium between thorough standing and thorough falling. Satan, created an angel of light, when he sinned through pride, fell to the bottom of his angelic nature. He was not suspended, like the fabled coffin of Mahomet, between heaven and hell; but he fell as low as he could fall--down, down, down to the very depth of angelic nature. The highest angel became the lowest devil. But man could not fall so low as Satan, because he was not in his nature by original creation so high as Satan. The greater the height, the deeper the fall. But man fell to the bottom of human nature, as Satan fell to the bottom of angelic nature. In a word, he fell as far as he could fall. He fell out of the image of God; he fell from the high estate in which he was created into entire alienation from his Creator, and sank, utterly sank into the lowest depths of wickedness, so that nothing good, pure, or innocent was left remaining in him.

But how hard, how difficult it is to believe this! When we see so much amiability in human nature, so much that wears the appearance of goodness; when there really is such kindness and benevolence, and so much tender unselfish affection shown by thousands in whom the grace and fear of God are not--how hard to believe, how cruel to declare, that man is essentially and innately a being steeped in wickedness! But this arises from two things:
1. from not seeing, or bearing in mind, that natural and spiritual things are eternally distinct. Nature at its best is nature still--flesh at its highest attainment is flesh still.
2. And that society could not subsist unless there were tender affections in the human heart. I see the goodness of God in the fact that human nature is thus kind and amiable. In the wise providence of God, also, our passions are in civilized communities under necessary restraint. Our mutual interest makes us outwardly, if not inwardly, kind and affectionate, and restrains the breaking forth of our innate selfishness. We could not live in the world were it otherwise. If there were no check upon human nature, we would be like wild beasts, and tear each other to pieces. For the sustenance of life and society, it is necessary that there should be real or pretended affection, and amiability. But because this individual is kind, another amiable, and a third interesting, to deny and soften the reality and depth of the fall, is to err indeed.

All true sight and knowledge of the fall flow from the teachings of the Spirit. As, therefore, we obtain light from on high, and feel spiritual life in our breast, there is a deeper discovery of the Adam fall, and of our own miserable state as involved in it, until we are brought to see and feel, that in us, that is, in our flesh, dwells no good thing. Now this will ever be in a proportionate degree to the manifestation of the purity and holiness of the character of God, and the application of God's holy law in its breadth and spirituality to the soul. This will effectually dispel all dreams of human purity and creature perfection. Let one ray of divine light shine into the soul out of the holiness of God, how it discovers and lays bare the hypocrisy and wickedness of the human heart! How it seems to take the lid off the boiling pot, and shows us human nature heaving, bubbling, boiling up with pride, unbelief, infidelity, enmity against God, peevishness, discontent, and every hateful, foul, unclean lust, every base propensity and filthy desire. You may hear now and then in others the bubbling and boiling through the vessel. But to know yourself, you must look below the lid to see how it steams, and hisses, and throws up its thick and filthy scum from the bottom of the cauldron. A calm may be on the face, but a boiling sea within.

It is this laying bare of our deep-seated malady that makes a soul under the first teachings of the Spirit feel itself lost. And Oh, what a word! Lost utterly lost! The purity of the divine image lost; and with it, utter loss of power to return to God, no more, loss also of inclination. What a condition to be in! Without power, without will; an enemy and a rebel; by nature hating God and godliness; when we would do good to find evil, horrid evil, present with us; to feel sin thrusting its hateful head into every thought, word, and action, so that when we would settle down and find rest in SELF "all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean" Isaiah 28:8. Where this is opened up in a man's soul, and a corresponding sense of the purity and holiness of God is manifested, he will see and feel himself too the vilest of the vile--and he will be glad to put his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope.

Now in this melancholy state, what can such a poor lost wretch do? Condemned by the law; hunted by Satan; pursued by conscience--alarmed by fear of death--and troubled with a dread of eternal perdition--what can he do to save himself? When he feels himself "lost," what help, strength, or wisdom is there then to be found in him? But if he has not some of this experience traced out in his heart by the finger of God, the gospel is to him an empty sound. He has never, no never, felt the power of the gospel in his soul; he is in heart a pharisee. Free grace may be his creed, but freewill in some shape or other is the idol within. But when, in the depth of his soul, he knows himself "lost, lost, lost," and feels the inability of the creature to save--this is the man, this is the spot, unto whom and into which the Savior and salvation comes; and he, and he alone, will welcome and drink in with greedy ears the joyful sound of salvation by grace.

II. "The Son of Man has come." What a blessed coming! The Lord Jesus seems to have taken to himself, with the tenderest condescension to our needs, that gracious title, "the Son of Man." He was the Son of God, and that from all eternity; but he delights to call himself the Son of Man. We need one like ourselves, wearing the same nature; carrying in his bosom the same human heart; one who has been "in all points, tempted like as we are, yet without sin;" and therefore able to sympathize with and to support those who are tempted. A sinner like man, when made sensible of his pollution and guilt, cannot draw near unto God in his intrinsic, essential majesty and holiness. Viewed as the great and glorious Being that fills eternity, Jehovah is too great, too transcendently holy, too tremendously perfect for him to approach. He must therefore have a Mediator; and that Mediator one who is a Mediator indeed, a God-man, "Immanuel, God with us." The depth of this mystery eternity itself will not fathom.

But the tender mercy of God in appointing such a Mediator, and the wondrous condescension of the Son of God in becoming "the Son of Man" are matters of faith, not of reason; are to be believed, not understood. When thus received, the humanity of the Son of God becomes a way of access unto the Father. We can talk to, we can approach, we can pour out our hearts before "the Son of Man." His tender bosom, his sympathizing heart, seems to draw forth the feelings and desire of our own.

God, in his wrathful majesty, we dare not approach; he is a "consuming fire;" and the soul trembles before him. But when Jesus appears in the gospel as "the Mediator between God and man," and "an Arbitrator," as Job speaks, "to lay his hand upon us both" Job 9:33, how this seems to penetrate into the depths of the human heart! How this opens a way for the poor guilty, filthy, condemned, and ruined sinner to draw near to that great God with whom he has to do! How this, when experimentally realized, draws forth faith to look unto him, hope to anchor in him, and love tenderly and affectionately to embrace him.

"The Son of Man has come!" We never asked it. Dare we have asked it? Who dare propound this in the counsels of heaven? Here is man sunk in the ruins of the fall, an enemy, and an alien. Who dare propose his reconciliation and recovery? The elect angels saw their fellow angels cast out of heaven without pity and without mercy; why should not man suffer the same fate? Man shared with them in sin; why should not man share with them in sorrow? But Oh, the tender mercy, heavenly grace, sympathizing compassion of the Triune Jehovah! When man was sunk in the lowest depths of the fall--ruined and alienated from the life of God, the secret counsels of eternity were brought to light, that the Son of God should become the Son of Man, to suffer, bleed, and die for such wretches; and thus be a Mediator able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him! "The Son of Man has come," has come! The Mediator has appeared in flesh, that "whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."

III. But we pass on to consider WHAT THE SON OF MAN CAME TO DO. Here we were lost, utterly lost--without power, without will to help or save ourselves. Now in this extremity, utter extremity, when, as the apostle says, we were "without strength," "the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."

There is something expressive in the word, "that which was lost." It does not say, 'those who were lost,' but "that which was lost." The election of grace, the chosen remnant, was viewed as a lost thing; and the Son of Man came to seek and save this lost remnant. The church of God is thus spoken of as a whole; and yet, to show its insignificance and nothingness in itself, it is but a thing, an empty nothing, compared with the majesty of God.

But a sense of being thus "lost," must be wrought into the heart as an experimental feeling. A Savior, like Jesus, is not inwardly needed until the soul feels itself really lost. We cannot until then understand his character, enter into his heavenly mission, nor see the beauty and blessedness of super-abounding grace. The gospel to us is no gospel to all; but a dry, dead, unmeaning sound. We may daily read and continually hear it preached. But the gospel as a revelation of the grace of God, in its blessedness, suitability, sublimity, and glory, with all the fruits connected with it--why, we are deaf to its divine melody, blind to its heavenly charms, until a conviction, and that a piercing one, lays hold of the soul, that we are lost, lost, lost, eternally lost, without this remedy.

Now the Lord works this sense of our lost condition in various ways. In some perhaps suddenly; in others, in a more gradual manner; but all he brings eventually to the same point--to feel themselves utterly lost. A man must lose his life to find it; must lose his religion to gain it; must lose his power and strength, no, his all, before he receives new power and new will through the gospel of the grace of God.

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