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TOPIC: Pink, Arthur - Articles and Sermons (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Assurance contd 2
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Editor: “Then do you realize what must be the outcome if God were to leave you unto yourself?” Humble Heart: “Yes, indeed. Without the assistance of His Holy Spirit, I should certainly make shipwreck of the faith. My daily prayer is ‘Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe’ (Psa_119:117). My earnest desire is that I may watch and pray against every temptation. There is nothing I dread more than apostatising, relaxing in my duty, returning to wallow in the mire.” Editor: “These are all plain evidences of the saving grace of God at work within you, which I beseech Him to continue, so that you may be preserved with a tender conscience, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, and obtain a full assurance of His love for you.”
Humble Heart: “I thank you kindly, Sir, for your patience and help. What you have said makes me feel lighter in heart, but I wish to go home and prayerfully ponder the same, for I dare not take no man’s word for it. I want God Himself ‘to say unto my soul, I am thy salvation’ (Psa_35:3). Will you not pray that it may please Him so to do?” Editor: “You shall certainly have a place in my feeble petitions. The Lord be very gracious unto you.”
“Good evening, friend Humble Heart.” “Good evening, Mr. Editor. This is a pleasant surprise, for I was not expecting to be favoured with a visit from one of God’s servants: I do not feel worthy of their notice.” Editor: “According to my promise, I have been seeking to remember you before the Throne of Grace, and while in prayer this morning there was impressed on my mind those words, ‘Lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees’ (Heb_12:12). I have been impressed of late by that lovely prophetic picture of Christ found in Isaiah 40:11, ‘He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.’ The Savior devotes special care and tenderness upon the weak of the flock, and in this He has left an example which the under-shepherds need to follow.”
Brother Humble Heart: “It is indeed kind of you, Sir, to bestow any trouble upon such a poor, worthless creature as I am: I should have thought your time had been more profitably employed in ministering to those who can take in the Truth quickly, and who grow in it by leaps and bounds; as for me, I am so dull and stupid, so full of doubtings and fears, that your labours on me are wasted.” Editor: “Ah, my friend, all is not gold that glitters. The great majority of those who ‘take in the Truth quickly’ only do so intellectually—it has no power over the heart; and those who ‘grow by leaps and bounds,’ grow too swiftly for it to be real, or worth anything spiritually. Truth has to be ‘bought’ (Pro_23:23): ‘bought’ by frequent meditation thereon, by taking it home unto ourselves, by deep exercises of conscience, by wrestling with God in prayer, that He would apply it in power to the soul.”
Brother H.H.: “Yes, I realize that, and it makes me feel so bad because God’s Word has not been written on my heart. I have gone over in my mind, again and again, all that you said at our last interview, and I am sure that I am unregenerate.” Editor: “What leads you to such a conclusion?” Brother H.H.: “This, if I had been regenerated the Holy Spirit would be dwelling within me, and in that case He would be producing His blessed fruit in my heart and life. It is written, ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance’ (self-control)—Gal_5:22-23; and as I have endeavored to examine and search myself, I discover in me the very opposite of these heavenly graces.”
Editor: “God’s workings in grace and His ways in the material creation have much in common, and if we observe closely the latter, we may learn much about the former. Now in the natural realm the production of fruit is often a slow process. Glance out now at the trees, and how do they look? They are leafless, and seem to be dead. Yet they are not; the vital sap is still in their roots, even though no signs of it be apparent to us. But in a little while, under the genial warmth of the sun, those trees will be covered with blossoms. Then, after a few days, those pretty blossoms will all have disappeared—blown off by the winds. Nevertheless, if those trees be examined closely it will be found that where those blossoms were, are now little green buds. Many weeks have to pass before the owner of those trees is gladdened by seeing the buds develop into fruit.
“A further lesson may be learned from our gardens. The orchard teaches us the need for patience: the garden instructs us to expect and overcome disappointments. Here is a bed, which has been carefully prepared, and sown with seed. Later, the seed springs up and the plants appear from which the flowers are to grow. But side by side there spring up many weeds too. The uninstructed gardener was not expecting this, and is apt to be discouraged. Before he sowed the flower seed, he thought he had carefully rooted up every nettle, thistle, and obnoxious plant; but now the bed has in it more weeds than flowers. So it is my Brother with the heart of the Christian. Though the incorruptible seed of God’s Word is planted there (1Pe_1:23), yet the heart-neglected all through the years of unregeneracy—is overgrown with weeds (the lusts of the flesh), and to the anointed eye the heart looks more like the Devil’s weed plot than ‘the King’s garden’ (2Ki_25:4).”
Brother Humble Heart: “What you have just referred to in the natural realm is quite obvious, but I am not so clear about the spiritual application. Does not your last illustration belittle the work and power of the Holy Spirit? You have often quoted in your articles that Christ saves His people ‘from their sins’ (Mat_1:21), how, then, can any person rightfully regard himself as saved, while he is conscious that many sins have dominion over him?” Editor: “I am glad you raised this point, for many dear souls are often troubled over it. Concerning the work and power of the Holy Spirit: light is thrown on this by various expressions which God has used in His Word. For example, in 2Co_1:22 (cf. Eph_1:13-14) we read that God has ‘given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.’ Now an ‘earnest’ means a part, and not the whole—an installment, as it were; the fullness of the Spirit’s power and blessing is communicated to no Christian in this life. So again in Rom_8:23, ‘ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit’—a pledge, a sample only, of future greater abundance.
“Let me call your attention to the words which immediately follow those just quoted from Rom_8:23, namely, ‘even we ourselves groan within ourselves’ which is the more striking because this same thing is seen again in 2Co_5:4-5. So those who are indwelt by the Spirit of God are a ‘groaning’ people! It is true that the unregenerate ‘groan’ at times: when suffering great bodily pain, or over some heavy loss; but the ‘groaning’ of the Christian is occasioned by something very different: he groans over the remains of depravity still left within him, over the flesh so often successfully resisting the Spirit, over seeing around him so much that is dishonouring to Christ. This is clear from Rom_7:24 and its context, Php_3:18, etc.”
Brother Humble Heart: “But only a few days ago I mentioned some of these very Scriptures to one whom I regard as an eminent saint, and he told me that he had ‘got out of Romans 7 into Romans 8’ long ago.” Editor: “But as we have seen, the Christian in Romans 8 ‘groans’ (Rom_8:23)!” Brother H.H.: “The one I had reference to laughed at me, for my doubts and fears, told me I was dishonouring God by listening to the Devil.” Editor: “It is much to be feared that he is a complete stranger to those exercises of heart which are experienced by every regenerate soul, and knows nothing of that heart-anguish and soul-travail which ever precedes spiritual assurance. The Lord Jesus did not laugh at fearing souls, but said, ‘Blessed are they that mourn.’ It is clear that your acquaintance does not understand your case.”
Brother H.H.: “But do you mean to say that all of God’s children are as wretched in soul as I am?” Editor: “No, I would not say that. The Holy Spirit does not give the same degree of light on the exceeding sinfulness of sin to all alike, nor does He reveal so fully unto all, their own inward depravity. Moreover, just as God has appointed different seasons to the year, so no true Christian is always the same in his soul: there are cheerful days of spring and gloomy days of autumn, both in the natural and in the spiritual. ‘But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day’ (Pro_4:18), nevertheless ‘We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God’ (Act_14:22). Both are true, though we are not always conscious of them both.”
Brother H.H.: “I do not believe that any real Christian is ever plagued as I am: plagued so often with a spirit of rebellion, with unbelief, with pride, with such vile thoughts and desires that I would blush to mention them.” Editor: “Ah, my Brother, few unregenerate souls would be honest enough to acknowledge as much! The very fact that these inward workings of sin plague you is clear proof that you are regenerate, that there is within you a nature or principle of holiness which loathes all that is unholy. It is this which causes the Christian to ‘groan,’ nevertheless this brings him into fellowship with the sufferings of Christ. While here the Lord Jesus was ‘the Man of Sorrows,’ and that which occasioned all His grief was sin—not His own, for He had none; but the sins of others. This then is one reason why God leaves the sinful nature in His people even after regeneration: that mourning over it they may be conformed to their suffering Head.”
Brother H.H.: “But how does this tally with Christ’s saving His people from their sins?” Editor: “Mat_1:21 in nowise clashes with what I have been saying. Christ saves His people from the guilt and punishment of their sins, because that was transferred to and vicariously suffered by Him. He saves us, too, from the pollution of sin: His Spirit moves us to see, grieve over, confess our sins, and plead the precious blood; and as this is done in faith, the conscience is cleansed. He also saves us from the reigning power of sin, so that the Christian is no longer the absolute and abject slave of sin and Satan. Moreover, the ultimate fulfillment of this blessed promise (like that of many others) is yet future: the time is coming when the Lord Jesus shall rid His people of the very presence of sin, so that they shall be done with it forever.”
Brother H.H.: “While on that point I wish you would explain to me those words ‘sin shall not have dominion over you’ (Rom_6:14).” Editor: “Observe first what that verse does not say: it is not ‘sin shall not haunt and harass you’ or ‘sin shall not trip you and occasion many a fall’; had it said that, every Christian might well despair. To ‘have dominion over’ signifies the legal right to command another, such as a parent has over his child, or as one nation has over another which has been completely conquered in war. Such legal ‘dominion’ sin has not over any Christian: Christ alone is his rightful Lord. But sin oftentimes usurps authority over us—yet even experimentally it has not complete ‘dominion’: it can lead no Christian to apostatize, that is, utterly and finally renounce Christ. It can never so dominate the believer that he is thoroughly in love with sin and repents not when he sins.”
Brother H.H.: “Thank you; but may I ask another question: Why is it that some of God’s children are not plagued by sin as I am?” Editor: “How can you be sure that they are not? ‘The heart knoweth his own bitterness’ (Pro_14:10.)” Brother H.H.: “But I can tell from their peaceful countenances, their conversation, their joy in the Lord, that it cannot so be the case with them.” Editor: “Some are blest with a more cheerful natural disposition than others. Some keep shorter accounts with God, making it a point of conscience to confess every known sin to Him. Some are more diligent in using the means of grace: they who neglect the reading of God’s Word, meditation thereon, and approach the Throne of Grace only occasionally and formally, cannot expect to have healthy souls.”
Brother H.H.: “I admit I cannot meet your arguments. What you say is doubtless true of God’s people, but my case is far worse than you realize: I have such a sink of iniquity within, and so often find myself listless toward all that is spiritual, that I greatly fear there can be no assurance for me.” Editor: “It is the Devil who tells you that.” Brother H.H.: “How can one distinguish between the harassing doubts which the Devil injects, and the convictions of sin and piercing of the conscience which the Holy Spirit produces?” Editor: “By the effects produced. Satan will tell you that it is no use to resist indwelling sin any longer, that it is useless to pray any more. He seeks to produce despair, and tells many harassed souls they might as well commit suicide and put an end to their misery. But when the Holy Spirit convicts a Christian, He also works in his heart a godly sorrow, and moves him to acknowledge his transgressions to God: He leads to the Throne of Grace and gives again a sight of the cleansing blood of Christ; and this not once or twice, but to the end of our earthly lives. ‘For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again’ (Pro_24:16). If then this agrees with your own experience, you must be a Christian.”
Brother H.H.: “I cannot but be struck with the fact that your counsel and instruction are the very opposite of what was given to me by the last person I spoke to about my sorrows. He is a man very wise in the Scriptures, having scores of passages at his finger’s end. He told me that the only way to get rid of my doubting was to believe the Word, and that every time I felt miserable to lay hold of one of the promises.” Editor: “I think I know the company to which that man belongs. All they believe in is a natural faith, which lies in the power of the creature; a faith which is merely the product of our own will-power. But that is not the ‘faith of God’s elect.’ Spiritual faith is the gift of God, and only the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit can call it forth into action in any of us. Shun such people, my Brother. Avoid all who give no real place to the Holy Spirit, but would make you believe that the remedy lies in your own ‘free will.’ Seek more the company and communion of God Himself, and beg Him for Christ’s sake to increase your faith and stay your mind upon Himself.”
“A poor woman, known among the Lord’s people as Sister Fearing, was left a widow some months ago, and having buried all her children, I knew she had no one to spade her garden; so this spring I called on her, and asked if she would allow me to do it.” Editor: “I am glad to hear that: if godliness be not intensely practical, then it is only a name without the reality. It is written ‘Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world’ (Jas_1:17). And did this poor Sister avail herself of your kind offer?” Bro. H.H.: “Yes, with tears running down her face, she told me she was quite unable to express her gratitude. Later she said it was not so much my offer to help which moved her so deeply, but that it gave her a little hope she was not completely abandoned by God.
“I asked her why she ever entertained the thought that God had cast her off? She told me that most of the time she felt herself to be such a vile and polluted creature that a holy God could not look with any complacency upon her. She said she was so constantly tormented by doubts and fears that God must have given her over to an evil heart of unbelief. She added that, in spite of all her reading of the Word and crying unto the Lord for strength, her case seemed to grow worse and worse, so that it appeared Heaven must be closed against her.” Editor: “And what reply did you make to her sorrowful complaint?” Bro. H.H.: “Why, there flowed into my mind a verse which I had not thought of for a long time: I felt it was from the Lord, and looking to Him for wisdom and tenderness, I addressed the dear soul as follows:
“Sister Fearing, I think you are too hasty in your conclusion. I have been just where you now are. I read in God’s Word, ‘the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power’ (1Co_4:20), and I reasoned that if God had set up His kingdom in my heart, then the power of sin would be broken; and alas, I found sin in me stronger than ever. I read ‘he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him’ (1Jn_4:16), but I could not believe He dwelt in me while I was in such bondage to slavish fear. I read ‘Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father’ (Rom_8:15), but I could not cry ‘Abba, Father’; so I was afraid God had nothing to do with me. I read, ‘Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin’ (1Jn_3:9), and though I was preserved from bringing public reproach upon the name of Christ, yet I found myself continually overcome by sin within. My guilty conscience daily condemned me, and unto peace I was a stranger.”
Sister Fearing: “You have accurately described my sad lot; but go on please.” Bro. H.H.: “Suffer me, then, to ask you a few honest questions. Have you been chastised, rebuked, made tender and sore for sin? And after feeling God’s reproofs, was your spirit revived and refreshed under the Word, so that you hoped for better days”? Sister Fearing: “Yes, I have been conscious of God’s rod upon me, and have owned with David, ‘Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me’ (Psa_119:75). And there have been times, all too brief, when it seemed I was softened and revived, and had a little hope; but the sun was soon again hidden behind dark clouds.” Bro. H.H.: “Well, that proves God does dwell within you, for He declares, ‘Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones’ (Isa_57:15)!”
Sister Fearing: “Yes, I am familiar with that verse, but it makes against me, for had God truly ‘revived’ me, the effects of it would remain; instead, I am dry and parched, lifeless and barren.”
Bro. H.H.: “Again you are too hasty in ‘writing bitter things against’ yourself (Job_13:26). Such ‘revivings’ of faith, hope, and love in the soul are evidences of the Spirit’s indwelling. But let me now give you the verse which flowed into my mind at the beginning of our conversation: it exactly fits your case, ‘And now for a little space grace hath been showed from the LORD our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a nail in His holy place, that our God may lighten our eyes, and give us a little reviving in our bondage’ (Ezr_9:8). Ah, dear Sister, do you not see that this ‘little reviving,’ even though it be for ‘a little space’ is a manifestation of God’s dwelling in a broken and contrite heart?”
Editor: “That was indeed a word in season, and evidently given you by the Spirit. There are many hindered from enjoying assurance through unnecessary fears: because sin is in them as an active and restless principle they imagine they have no contrary principle of holiness; and because in part they are carnal, judge that they are not spiritual. Because grace is but feebly active, they conclude they are void of it; and because for a long season they enjoy not strong consolation, suppose they have no title to it. They fail to distinguish between the motions of the flesh and the motions of the Spirit: as surely as sin manifests the flesh to be in us, so does grieving over it, striving against it, repenting for it, and the confessing of it to God show the Spirit or new nature indwells us. The Christian’s sighs and groans are among his best evidences that he is regenerate.”
Bro. H.H.: “May I ask, exactly what you meant when you said, Many are hindered from enjoying assurance through unnecessary fears? My reason for asking is because in Php_2:12 God bids His people work out their salvation with fear and trembling.”
Editor: “Your question is well taken. We must distinguish sharply between the fears of godly jealousy and the fears of unbelief: the one is a distrusting of self, the other is a doubting of God; the former is opposed to pride and carnal confidence, the latter is the enemy of true peace. The eleven Apostles manifested the fear of godly jealousy when the Saviour announced that one would betray Him, and each of them enquired, ‘Lord, is it I?’ David gave way to the fear of unbelief when he said, ‘I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul’ (1Sa_27:1). But I have interrupted your narrative; tell me how Sister Fearing responded to your giving her Ezr_9:8.”
Bro. H.H.: “Really, it seemed to make little impression. She sighed deeply, and for a while said nothing. Then she continued, ‘I fear it would be presumption for me to say that I have ever been revived, for a dead soul cannot be—he must first be quickened; probably the raising of my spirits under the reading or hearing of the Word is nothing more than the joy of the stony-ground hearer’ (Matt. 13:20, 21). To which I replied, ‘But one who has never been quickened has no pantings after God, never seeks Him at all, but seeks to banish Him entirely from his thoughts. True, he may go to church, and keep up a form of godliness before others, but there is no diligent seeking after Him in private, no yearnings for communion with Him.’
“Perhaps, dear Sister, it may be a day of ‘small things’ (Zec_4:10) with you. Often there is life, where there is not strength. A child may breathe and cry, yet cannot talk or walk. If God be the object of your affection, if sin be the cause of your grief, if conformity to Christ be the longing of your heart, then a good work has begun in you (Php_1:6). If it is indwelling sin which makes you so wretched from day to day, if it be deliverance from its polluting affects you yearn and pray for, if it be the lustings of the flesh you are struggling against, then it must be because a principle of holiness has been implanted in your heart. Such godly exercises are not in us by nature; they are the products of indwelling grace. Despair not, for it is written of Christ, ‘a bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench’ (Mat_12:20).”
Sister Fearing: “Yes, it is one thing to understand these things intellectually, but it is quite another for God to apply them in power to the heart: that is what I long for, and that is what I lack. My wound is far too deadly for any man to heal. O that I could be sure as to whether my disrelish of sin arises from mere natural convictions of conscience that every ungodly person feels more or less, whether they are suggestions from Satan for the purpose of deceiving me, or whether they actually are the strivings of the new nature against the old. Nothing short of the personal, mighty, and saving power of the Holy Spirit realized in my heart, will or can give me genuine relief.”
Bro. H.H.: “I am thankful to hear you say this. Human comforts may satisfy an empty professor, but such a plaster will not heal one of the elect when stricken by God. It is His purpose to cut off every arm of flesh from them, to strip them and bring them, in their helplessness, as empty-handed beggars before the throne of His grace. As to whether or not the life of God be actually planted in the soul, therein lies the grand mystery: that is the pivot on which eternal destiny must turn. And no verdict from man can satisfy on that point. Only the Lord Himself can give such a testimony or witness as will satisfy one of His children. But when He does shine into the soul, when He applies His Word in power, when He says ‘thy sins are forgiven thee, go in peace,’ then no word from a preacher is needed. The Lord keep you at His feet till He grants this.
“Until very recently I too was much exercised over the great danger of Satan instilling a false peace, and making me believe that all was well, when it was not so; as I was also much perplexed to know how to distinguish between the convictions of natural conscience and the exercises of a renewed conscience. But the Lord has shown me that as a tree is known by its fruits, so the nature of a cause may be determined by the character of the effects it produces. They who are deluded by the false peace which Satan bestows are filled with conceit, presumption, and carnal confidence: they do not beg God to search them, being so sure of Heaven they consider it quite unnecessary. The convictions of natural conscience harden, stop the mouth of prayer, and lead to despair. The convictions of a renewed conscience produce penitent confession, lead to Christ, and issue in honesty and uprightness before God.
“In conclusion, let me earnestly counsel you, dear Sister, to have nothing to do with those who profess their experience to be all peace and joy; and who, if you ask them whether they are tormented by the plague of their own heart, or whether they have felt the blood of Christ applied to their own conscience, laugh, and say they have nothing to do with feelings, but live above them. Such deluded creatures can be of no more help to a groaning saint than one suffering anguish from bodily ills would receive any relief from the so-called Christian Scientists, who tell him his pains are mental delusions, and to think only of health and happiness: one and another are equally physicians of no value. Instead, pour out your woes into the ears of the Great Physician, and in His own perfect time He will pour oil and wine into your wounds, and put a new song into your mouth.”
Bro. H.H.: “Since then I have said nothing more to her on the subject, believing it best to leave her alone with God.” Editor: “I am glad to hear that: none but blind Arminians will attempt to do the Holy Spirit’s work for Him. Much damage is often done to souls by trying to force things: when God begins a work, we may safely leave it in His hands to continue and complete the same. And how happy I am, dear Brother, to perceive the dew of the Spirit upon your own soul. It appears that ‘the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear,’ and ‘the time of the singing of birds is come’ (Son_2:11-12) with you.”
Bro. H.H.: “Thanks be unto God for taking pity upon such a wretch: it is much better with me now. The strange thing is, though I had little or no real assurance myself when I commenced speaking to Sister Fearing, but as she mentioned the different things which so sorely troubled her, God seemed to put into my mouth the very words most needed, and as I spake them to her, He sealed them into my own heart.” Editor: “Yes, it is as we read in Pro_11:25, ‘The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself’: in communicating the Word of God to His children, our own hearts are refreshed and our own faith is established. To him that useth what he hath shall more be given.
“I have long perceived the truth of what the Apostle says in 2Co_1:4, ‘Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.’ It is God’s way to take His people, and especially His servants, through trying and painful experiences, in order that they may use to His glory the consolation wherewith He has comforted them. It is those who know most of the plague of their own heart, who are best fitted to speak a word in season to weary souls. It is out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, and it is he who has passed through the furnace who can best deal with those now in the fire. Let us pray that it may please God to be equally gracious unto Sister Fearing.”
Originally edited by Emmett O'Donnell for Mt. Zion Publications, a ministry of Mt. Zion Bible Church, 2603 West Wright St., Pensacola, FL 32505. hyperlink