The Grace of Christ, or,
Sinners Saved by Unmerited Kindness
William S. Plumer, 1853
"We believe it is through the grace of our
Lord Jesus that we are saved." Acts 15:11
The Doctrine of Free Grace Is Safe and Reforms Sinners
If any doctrine can turn a serpent into a dove, or a lion
into a lamb—it is the glorious doctrine of salvation by the grace of Christ.
The reason why Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel, was not because it was
full of eloquence, or tragical scenes, or a pleasing philosophy—but because
it was "the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes." That
system of truth, which reforms the wicked, puts the profane to praying,
makes God-fearing men out of drunkards, subdues the passionate, establishes
the law of kindness, binds together the discordant elements of society by
the golden chain of love, and brings to those, who receive it, all the
blessings of salvation—must have its original from heaven! So Paul thought.
Hence his zeal for the precious truth. "God forbid that I should
boast—except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is
crucified unto me, and I unto the world." "Whatever things were gain to me,
those I counted loss for Christ. Yes doubtless, and I count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." "We
preach Christ crucified." "Other foundation can no man lay than what is
laid, which is Jesus Christ." "We are fools for Christ! We are dishonored!
To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally
treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are
cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are
slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of
the earth, the refuse of the world." 1 Corinthians 4:10-13
Men, who would joyfully bear such things, prove the power
of the truth in their daily triumphs. Long before Paul's day, David
celebrated the power of the truth: "'The law of the Lord is perfect,
converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the
simple." One entire New Testament church consisted of those who had once
been "darkness." Eph. 5:8. Another consisted in part of those, who had been
sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes,
homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, revilers, and swindlers. But
when the Gospel reached them in power, soon they were washed, sanctified,
and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. 1
Cor. 6:9-11.
The transforming power of the Gospel has always been
celebrated by its friends. Lactantius says: "Give me a man of a passionate,
abusive, headstrong disposition—and with a few only of the words of the
Gospel, I will make him gentle as a lamb. Give me a greedy, avaricious,
stubborn wretch, and I will teach him to distribute his riches with a
liberal and unsparing hand. Give me a cruel and blood-thirsty monster; and
all his rage shall be changed into true benignity. Give me a man addicted to
injustice, full of ignorance, and immersed in wickedness; he shall soon
become just, prudent and innocent." Many writers, both ancient and modern,
bear a similar testimony.
When the missionaries first went to Greenland, for a long
time, the savages mocked them, mimicked their reading, singing and praying,
attempted to drown all devotion by hideous howlings, and the beating of
drums, ridiculed them with the keenest sarcasms, upbraided them with their
ignorance because they had to learn the language of their country, pelted
them with stones, climbed on their shoulders, seized many of their goods and
shattered them to pieces, and even attempted to destroy the little boat,
which was essential to the procuring of their subsistence. In short they
even attempted to murder them. They said: "Show us the God you describe,
then will we believe in him and serve him." "We have prayed to him when we
were sick, or had nothing to eat, but he heard us not." "We need nothing but
a sound body and enough to eat." "Your heaven and your spiritual pleasures
may be good enough for you, but they would be tiresome to us." Having for
five years endured all traducement, peril, suffering and derision—these
humble missionaries were at length able to preach to the people and
translate portions of Scripture for their use. At length one of them spoke
of the redemption of sinners by Jesus Christ. "He was enabled to describe
the sufferings and death of the Redeemer with more than ordinary force and
energy; and he, at the same time, read to them from the New Testament the
history of his agony and of his bloody sweat in the garden. Upon this one of
their number, named Kaiarnak, stepped up to the table, and in an earnest
affecting manner exclaimed. 'How was that? Tell me it once more; for I also
would gladly be saved."' These words aroused the missionary to new life and
energy and thus began that wonderful change, which has made Greenland so
famous in the annals of Christianity. The history of Kaiarnak in subsequent
life was not unlike that of the fierce, bloody Africaner after his
conversion.
David Brainerd also tells us that the doctrines of grace
were above all others blessed to the reformation of his poor Indians. "It is
worthy of remark that numbers of these people are brought to a strict
compliance with the rules of morality and sobriety, and to a conscientious
performance of the external duties of Christianity by the internal power and
influence of divine truths—the peculiar doctrines of grace—upon their minds;
without their having these moral duties frequently repeated and inculcated
upon them, and the contrary vices particularly exposed and spoken against."
And he states quite at length how the truth operated upon them, curing their
strongest evil propensities, and completely reforming their lives. The
strong man armed may long keep his goods in peace, but when a stronger than
he comes, he takes away his goods. It must be so. It is God's eternal plan
and unchangeable purpose that Christ should destroy the works of the devil.
How could it be otherwise?
Davenant well says that "by the death of Christ we are
greatly stirred up, both to a caution against, and a detestation of sin: for
that must needs be deadly, which could be healed in no other way than by the
death of Christ." And Glascock says that "the sufferings and obedience of
Christ afford the highest motives to dissuade from sin and press to
holiness, and lay a man under an infinite obligation in point of gratitude
to live unto God. That very grace, which enables him to believe in Christ,
equally inclines him to love God." It always must be so. "If God's people at
any time fall into sin," says Miller, "it is not while they are eyeing the
perfection of Christ's righteousness, but when they lose sight of it." A
heart moved by the love of Christ, will love to make sacrifices of all it
has for his glory. Augustine beautifully says: "How sweet it is to deny
all sinful sweets! how pleasant it is to forego these sinful pleasures for
the sake of Christ!" Berridge says: "Morality can never thrive unless
grounded wholly upon grace. The heathen, for lack of this foundation could
do nothing; they spoke some noble truths, but spoke to men with withered
limbs and loathing appetites; they were like way-posts, which show a road,
but cannot help a cripple forwards." "God has shown us in his word how
little human wit and strength can do, to accomplish reformation. Reason has
explored the moral path, planted it with roses, and fenced it round with
motives, but all in vain. Nature still recoils; no motives drawn from
Plato's works will of themselves suffice; no cords will bind the heart to
God and duty, but the cords of grace."
The prophet Zechariah well describes the process of
turning to God through Jesus Christ: "And I will pour out on the house of
David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication.
They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him
as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves
for a firstborn son." "On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of
David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and
impurity. On that day, I will banish the names of the idols from the land,
and they will be remembered no more, declares the Lord Almighty. I will
remove both the [false] prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land."
Zechariah 12:10-11, 13:1-2. Here we are informed:
1. That God's Spirit is necessary to bring men to true
repentance.
2. That the Holy Spirit takes of the things of Christ and
shows them to men for their salvation.
3. That Gospel truth when rightly understood affects all
classes alike.
4. That true repentance inclines people to go alone and
weep.
5. That such weeping will lead the soul to the blood of
Christ.
6. That idolatry and error, sin and heresy will be driven
from among the people.
Such weeping for sin will weep away all love of iniquity.
One believing view of Christ does more to mortify sin, than all the
terrors of the Lord.
Matthews of New Albany said: "In my opinion the sun is
not more evidently intended, nor better calculated to warm, and enlighten
the earth; the eye is not more evidently fitted for the purposes of vision,
than are these doctrines to enlighten and purify the mind, to make us, and
keep us sincere, humble, devout, intelligent and useful Christians." Such
testimonies ought to have weight.
The powerlessness of mere principles of
morality—contrasted with the mighty energy of Gospel truths—are strikingly
illustrated in the ministry of Chalmers at Kilmany. When about to leave that
parish in 1815, he delivered an address to the inhabitants, in which he
said: "I cannot but record the effect of an actual, though undesigned
experiment, which I prosecuted for upward of twelve years among you. For the
greater part of that time I could expatiate on the baseness of dishonesty,
on the villainy of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny; in a word
upon all those deformities of character, which awaken the natural
indignation of the human heart against the pests and disturbers of human
society. Now, could I, upon the strength of these warm expostulations, have
got the thief to give up his stealing, and the evil speaker his
censoriousness, and the liar his deviations from truth—I should have felt
all the repose of one who had gotten his ultimate object. It never occurred
to me that all this might have been done, and yet the soul of every hearer
have remained in full alienation from God: and that even could I have
established in the bosom of one, who stole, such a principle of abhorrence
at the baseness of dishonesty, that he was prevailed upon to steal no more,
he might still have retained a heart as completely unturned to God, as
totally unpossessed of a principle of love to him as before. In a word,
though I might have made him a more upright and honorable man, I might have
left him as destitute of pious principle as ever. But the interesting fact
is that during the whole of that period, I never once heard of any such
reformation having been effected among them! I am not sensible that all the
vehemence with which I urged the virtues and the proprieties of social life,
had the weight of a feather on the moral habits of my parishioners. And it
was not until I got impressed by the utter alienation of the heart in all
its desires and affections from God; it was not until gospel reconciliation
to him became the distinct and prominent object of my ministerial exertions;
it was not until I took the scriptural way of laying the method of
reconciliation before them; it was not until the free offer of forgiveness
through the blood of Christ was urged upon their acceptance, was set before
them as the unceasing object of their dependence and their prayers; that I
ever heard of any of those subordinate reformations, which I aforetime made
the earnest and the zealous, the ultimate object of my earlier
ministrations. You servants, whose scrupulous fidelity has now attracted the
notice, and drawn forth in my hearing a delightful testimony from your
masters, what mischief you would have done, had your zeal for doctrines and
sacraments been accompanied by the sloth and remissness, and what, in the
prevailing tone of relaxation, is accounted the allowable purloining of your
earlier days! But a sense of your Heavenly Master's eye has brought another
influence to bear upon you; and while you are thus striving to adorn the
doctrine of God your Savior in all things, you may, poor as you are, reclaim
the great ones of the land to the acknowledgment of the faith. You have at
least taught me—that to preach Christ is the only effective way of preaching
morality in all its branches."