God has revealed Himself to us as the "God of all grace" (1 Peter 5:10), and He has set us in the position of "having tasted that the Lord is gracious" (1 Peter 2:3). How hard it is for us to believe that the Lord is gracious! The natural feeling of our hearts is, "I know that thou art an austere man" (see Luke 19:21). There is in all of us naturally a lack of understanding of the grace of God.
There is sometimes the thought that grace implies God’s passing over sin. To the contrary! The thought of grace supposes sin to be such a horribly bad thing that God cannot tolerate it. If it were in the power of unrighteous, evil man to patch up his ways and mend himself so that he could stand before God, there would be no need of grace. The very fact that the Lord is gracious shows man’s state as a sinner so utterly ruined and hopeless that nothing but free grace can meet his need. The moment I understand that I am a sinful man, and that the Lord came to me because He knew the full extent and hatefulness of my sin, I understand what grace is. Faith makes me see that God is greater than my sin, and not that my sin is greater than God.
Now it is good to realize that the Lord who laid down His life for me is the same Lord with whom I have to do every day of my life. All His dealings with me are on the same principles of grace. The great secret of growth is the looking up to the Lord as gracious. How precious, how strengthening it is to know that Jesus is at this moment feeling and exercising the same love toward me as when He died on the cross for me.
This is a truth that should be applied by us in the most common everyday circumstances of life. Suppose, for instance, I have a bad temper which I find difficult to overcome. If I bring it to Jesus as my Friend, virtue goes out of Him for my need. My faith should thus be ever in exercise against temptations, and not simply my own effort. My own effort will never be sufficient. The source of real strength is in the sense of the Lord’s being gracious.
The natural man in us always disbelieves Christ as the only source of strength and of every blessing. Suppose my soul is out of communion and the natural heart says, "I must correct the cause of this before I can come to Christ." But He is gracious! And knowing this, we should return to Him at once, just as we are, and then humble ourselves deeply before Him. It is only in Him and from Him that we shall find that which will restore our souls. Humbleness in His presence is the only real humbleness. If we own ourselves in His presence to be just what we are, we shall find that He will show us nothing but grace.
It is Jesus who gives abiding rest to our souls, and not what our thoughts about ourselves may be. Faith never thinks about that which is in ourselves as its ground of rest. Rather, it receives and loves what God has revealed, and what are God’s thoughts about Jesus, in whom is His rest. In knowing Jesus to be precious to our souls, and having our eyes and our hearts occupied with Hun, we will be effectually prevented from being taken up with the vanity and sin around. And this, too, will be our strength against the sin and corruption of our own hearts.
WHATEVER I SEE IN MYSELF THAT IS NOT IN HIM, IS SIN. But it is not thinking of my own sins and my own vileness that will humble me, but thinking of the Lord Jesus_dwelling upon the excellency in Him. It is well to be done with ourselves, and to be taken up with Jesus. We are entitled to forget ourselves; we are entitled to forget our sins; we are entitled to forget all but Jesus.
There is nothing so difficult for our hearts as to abide in the sense of grace, to continue practically conscious that we are not under law, but under grace. There is nothing more difficult for us to comprehend than the fulness of that "grace of God wherein [we] stand," and to walk in the power and consciousness of it. It is only in the presence of God that we can know it. The moment we get away from the presence of God there will always be certain workings of our own thoughts within us, and our own thoughts can never reach up to the thoughts of God about us, to the "grace of God."
The having very simple thoughts of grace is the source of our strength as Christians. The abiding in the sense of grace, in the presence of God, is the secret of all holiness, peace, and quietness of spirit.
In Romans 7 we find a description of a person born again, but whose whole set of reasonings centers in himself. He stops short of grace. He stops short of the simple fact that, however bad he may be, God is love, and only love towards him. Instead of looking at God, it is all I, I, I. Faith looks at God as He has revealed Himself in grace.
Grace has reference to what God is, and not to what we are, except indeed that the very greatness of our sins magnifies the extent of the "grace of God." At the same time we must remember that the object of grace is to bring our souls into communion with God_to sanctify us by bringing our souls to know God and to love Hun. Therefore the knowledge of grace is the true source of sanctification.
It is better to be thinking of what God is than of what we are. The looking at ourselves is really pride, a want of the thorough consciousness that we are good for nothing. Until we see this we never quite look away from self to God. In looking to Christ, it is our privilege to forget ourselves. True humility does not so much consist in thinking badly of ourselves, as in not thinking of ourselves at all. I am too bad to be worth thinking about. What I want is to forget myself and look to God, who is indeed worth all my thoughts.
Beloved, if we can say as in Romans 7, "In me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing," we have thought quite long enough about ourselves. Let us then think about Him who thought about us with thoughts of good and not of evil, long before we had thought of ourselves at all. Let us see what His thoughts of grace about us are, and take up the words of faith, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" (Rom. 8:31).
FRAGMENT
Grace is the sweetest sound that ever reached our ears;
When conscience charged and justice frowned, ’twas grace
removed our fears.
Grace is a mine of wealth laid open to the poor;
Grace is the sov’reign spring of health; ’tis life
for evermore.