Disease & Remedy
by J. C. Philpot
As no heart can sufficiently conceive, so
no tongue can adequately express, the state of wretchedness and ruin into
which sin has cast guilty, miserable man.
In separating him from God, it has severed him from the
only Source and fountain of all happiness and all holiness. It has ruined
him, body and soul. The body it has filled with sickness and
disease. The soul it has defaced, and destroyed the image of God in
which it was created. It has . . .
shattered all his mental faculties;
broken his judgment,
polluted his imagination,
alienated his affections.
It has made him love sin—and hate God. It has filled
him from top to toe with pride, lust, and cruelty, and
has been the prolific parent of all those crimes and abominations under
which earth groans, the bare recital of some of which has filled so many
hearts with disgust and horror. These are the more visible fruits of the
fall.
But nearer home, in our own hearts—in
what we are or have been, we find and feel what wreck and ruin sin has
made! There can be no greater mark of alienation from God than willfully
and deliberately to seek pleasure and delight in things which His holiness
abhors.
But who of the family of God has not been guilty here?
Every movement and inclination of our natural mind, every desire and lust of
our carnal heart, was, in times past, to find pleasure and gratification in
something abhorrent to the will and word of the living Jehovah.
There are few of us who, in the days of our flesh, have
not sought pleasure in some of its varied but deceptive forms. The theater,
the race-course, the dance, the sports, the card-table, the midnight revel,
"the pleasures of sin" were resorted to by some of us.
Our mad, feverish, thirst after excitement—the continued
cry of our wicked flesh, "Give, give!"—our miserable recklessness or
headlong, daring determination to 'enjoy ourselves', as we called it, cost
what it would, plunged us again and again into the sea of sin, where, but
for sovereign grace, we would have sunk to rise no more!
Or, if the 'restraints of morality' put their check upon
gross and sinful pleasures, there still was a seeking after such "allowable
amusements" (as we deemed them), as change of scene and place, foreign
travel, the reading of novels and works of fiction, fine dress, visiting,
building up airy castles of love and romance, studying how to obtain
human applause, devising plans of self-advancement and self-gratification,
occupying the mind with cherished studies, and delighting ourselves in those
pursuits for which we had a natural taste--as music, drawing, poetry, or, it
might be, severer studies and scientific researches.
We have named these middle-class pursuits as less
obvious sins--than such gross crimes as drunkenness and vile debauchery in
the lower walks of life. But, viewed with a spiritual eye, all are equally
stamped with the same fatal brand of death in sin.
The moral and the immoral,
the refined and the unrefined,
the polished few or the crude many,
are alike "without God and without hope in the world."
We are often met with this question, "What harm is
there in this pursuit—or in that amusement?"
The harm is, that the amusement is delighted in for its own sake; that
it occupies the mind, and fills the thoughts, shutting God out; that it
renders spiritual things distasteful; that it sets up an idol in the
heart, and is made a substitute for God.
Now this we never really know nor feel, until divine
light illuminates the mind, and divine life quickens the soul. We then
begin to see and feel into what a miserable state sin has cast us; how all
our life long we have done nothing but what God abhors; that every
imagination of the thoughts of our hearts has been evil, and only evil
continually; that we have brought ourselves under the stroke of God's
justice, under the curse of His righteous law, and now there appears nothing
but death and destruction before our eyes, and unless we poor slaves of sin,
Satan, and death were redeemed, we could not be reconciled to God.
And yet, with all this misery and wretchedness, through
all this remorse for the past—and dread for the future, there are raised up
desires after God—the fruit and work of his grace in the heart. These are
the first breathings after communion with God, the first movement of the
soul quickened from above towards its Father and Friend.
But whence comes this movement of the soul upward and
heavenward? What is the foundation on which a sinner may venture near, yes,
as brought near, may realize what holy John speaks of, "And truly our
fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ?" (1 John 1:3.)
God himself has laid the foundation in the gift of his
dear Son. Had Jesus not taken our nature into union with his own divine
Person, there never could have been any communion of man with God. This is
beautifully unfolded by the Apostle. (Heb. 2.) "Forasmuch, then, as the
children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took
part of the same, that, through death, he might destroy him that had the
power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who, through fear of
death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage." "The children whom God
had given him" were partakers of flesh and blood. But this flesh and blood
had sinned, was become alienated from God, was tyrannized over by the devil,
was subject to death, and the judgment that comes after death, and the fear
of death held them in continual bondage. Unless these poor slaves of sin,
Satan, and death were redeemed, they could not be reconciled to God, or
brought near so as to have any fellowship or communion with him. But the Son
of God "took on him the seed of Abraham," that is, he assumed human nature
as derived from Abraham; for the Virgin Mary, of whose flesh he took, was
lineally descended from Abraham; and thus was "made of a woman, made under
the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the
adoption of sons." And so "in all things being made like unto his brethren,"
(sin only excepted, of which he had no taint or stain,) "he became a
merciful and faithful high priest to make reconciliation for the sins of the
people."
Without this redemption, without this reconciliation,
there could be no communion. Communion means fellowship; fellowship implies
mutual participation and mutual interest. It is not single, but twofold—a
community of nature, or interest, or affection, in which each party gives
and takes. Thus the foundation of all communion with God is laid in this
blessed truth, that the Son of God has taken our flesh; this gives him
communion with man. He is himself God; this gives him communion with God. In
the ladder that Jacob saw in vision, the lowest part rested on earth, the
highest was lost in heaven. Thus the human nature of Christ touches earth
with its sorrows, but his divine rises up to heaven with its glory; and man,
poor, wretched man, may, by having communion with Christ in his sufferings,
have communion with God in his love. John blessedly opens up this in his
first epistle—"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which
we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have
handled of the Word of life." (1 John 1:1.)
What had John heard from the beginning? What had he seen
with his eyes? What had he looked upon, and his hands had handled of the
Word of life? What but the Son of God in the flesh? His ears had heard the
voice; his eyes had seen the form; his hands had handled the feet and hands
of the Word of life; and not merely bodily, for that would no more have
given him life than it did the Jewish officers who bound his hands, or the
Roman soldiers who nailed him to the cross. It was the spiritual
manifestation of the Word of Life to his soul, (as he himself declares—"For
the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show
unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested
unto us,") which enabled him to say, "That which we have seen and heard,
declare we unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly
our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." (1 John
1:3.)
Now, as this divine way is opened up to our hearts, we
begin to find access to God through Jesus Christ, as "the way, the truth,
and the life." Until he is in some measure revealed and made known to the
soul, there is no ground of access to God. Sin, guilt, and condemnation
block up the path; the law curses, conscience condemns, Satan accuses, and
in self there is neither help nor hope. But as Christ is revealed and made
known, and the virtue and efficacy of his blood is seen and felt, faith
becomes strengthened to approach the Father through him, until after many a
struggle between hope and despair, the love of God is shed abroad in the
heart, and this gives fellowship with God.
"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the
forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace." Ephesians
1:7