Sacred Harp 230 Converting Grace

As pants the hart for cooling streams,
When heated in the chase;
So longs my soul, Oh God, for Thee,
And Thy refreshing grace.
Oh, for converting grace, and oh,
For sanctifying pow’r;
Lord, we ask in Jesus’ name,
A sweet, refreshing show’r.

For Thee, my God, the living God,
My thirsty soul doth repine;
Oh, when shall I behold Thy face,
Thy majesty divine?
Why restless, why cast down, my soul?
Hope still; and thou shalt sing
Praise of Him who is thy God,
Thy health’s eternal spring.

BLESSINGS OF GRACE

Dagg, “The gift of Christ, to die for us, and to become to us the author of eternal salvation, is entirely of grace: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” “God commendeth his love toward us.” “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” Without the death of Christ, our salvation was impossible: and we had no claim on God to draw forth from him the gift of his well-beloved. He was freely given, of God’s great love, wherewith he loved us: and as he was freely given, so all the blessings which flow through him are freely given also. If any man feels that Christ was under obligation to die for him, or that God was bound to give his Son to make the needed sacrifice for sin, he totally mistakes, on a point of vital importance to the salvation of his soul. The doctrine that salvation is of grace, is not a useless speculation; but it enters into the very heart of Christian experience; and the faith which does not recognise it, does not receive Christ as he is presented in the Gospel. It is, therefore, a matter of unspeakable importance, that our view of this truth should be clear, and that it should be cordially embraced by every power of our minds.” [source]

Fellow Traveller

John Rusk,

Jesus Christ felt the weight of our sins, as already observed, “He bore our sins from the cradle to the Cross.” And God’s family shall feel the weight (in a measure) of their own sins, that they may faintly enter into the sufferings of the Lord Jesus; for how is it possible that we can tell, in the least, what He felt of sin, if we never feel, in any measure, the weight of our own; hence Paul declares, “that every man shall bear his own burden,” and sin is a sore burden, wherever it is felt. It was this that made David cry out, “I have no soundness in my flesh because of Thine anger, nor rest in my bones because of my sins; they are gone over my head, a sore burden, too heavy for me.” Now if they are so keenly felt by God’s elect, that have a body of sin and death in them, how infinitely more must sin be felt by he Lord Jesus who was holy, harmless, and undefiled, separate from sinners, and yet had the sins of the whole elect world (millions of souls) placed to His account, and He had them all His days, from His circumcision to the Cross; hence the Prophet Isaiah, declares, that “God laid upon Him (or caused to meet upon Him) the iniquities of us all.”

All the sins of every vessel of mercy before Jesus came in the flesh, and all the sins of every chosen vessel after He came down to the end of time, were caused to meet upon Him. Ah! Fellow traveller, sin is no trifling thing, to occasion the Son of God to wade through such scenes of sufferings for the worst or enemies; “for while we were yet enemies, Christ died for us.” Here was love without a parallel, voluntary, free, sovereign; for He might have left all the human race to perish in their corruption; but as His delights, before time, was with the sons of men, so He manifested that love in not standing at any cost to redeem their soul from Satan, sin, and death. Yes, my dear friends, He rejoiced to undertake the work; hence He says, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished“; and the thought of having us all with Himself forevermore, rejoiced His heart; hence Paul says, “who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, despised the shame,” etc., and never was known to murmur nor repine once; “He is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.” And yet had the tenderest feelings of human nature, the woman’s seed tender and delicate; He keenly felt what was coming, when He said, “how am I straitened now is My soul troubled Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me” and sweat as it were great drops of blood, falling to the ground.

Now the little of sufferings for sin which we feel, we have procured, so that we have no cause to complain; but, alas! We are continually murmuring at what little we feel; still feel it we shall all our days; for our text says, that these sufferings of Christ abound in us. And if you look back in the light of God, you will see how the discovery of sin has increased in you; and the viler you have seen and felt yourself, the more painful have your feelings been. I say this has gone on, till now you feel yourself the vilest wretch on earth; for as you grow in grace, so also in a knowledge of yourself; and so you can enter more and more into the dreadful nature of sin, and what great sufferings the Lord Jesus went through for you; is it so, or is it not? Then do not the sufferings of Christ abound in you.

God does not sell His blessings!

Thomas Bradbury,

Bless God, He does not descend to barter. Our God does not sell His blessings to the highest bidder, or to any bidder at all. He gives. Yes, and that without stint. Look at that precious word by James “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” (James 1:5) This apostle had no groveling views of his God. He knew how willing and delighted God is to give to the impotent, indigent, and importunate. God in Christ does not rebuke the frequent caller, neither can He upbraid the infirmities of those who know not what to pray for as they ought. His munificence is fully set forth here, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (James 1:17) This has respect to the gracious manner of His giving, as well as to the goodness, perfection, and certainty of His gifts. There is no evil in the giving or the quality of His gifts. They are good in the highest degree spiritual blessings for a spiritual people absolutely and infallibly sure to those for whom they were designed all of God secured in Christ ours by the indwelling, witness, and seal of the Holy Ghost. Thus we see that the children of God can “come behind in no gift” entrusted to Christ for them, and ensured to them by His Faithful Spirit.

These gifts are innumerable, continuing from the commencement of grace in regeneration to its consummation in glory. The Holy Ghost is the Earnest and Pledge of all the rest. He is the Father’s Covenant Gift to His enquiring and hungering children. How graciously Jesus states this fact to His short-sighted disciples, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” (Luke 11:13) The gift of the Holy Ghost is no transient matter. It is like all the rest of God’s gifts abiding eternal according to the promise of the Master: “I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever.” (John 14:16) That is a delightful title suggested by the Redeemer’s promise: “THE ABIDING COMFORTER.” According to the purpose of the Father, revealed in the promise of the Son, and by His own power, the Holy Ghost will see to it that in the case of all to whom He is given they shall come behind in no gift.

Holy Religion

Does God hate sin? Yes. Then that hatred finds a vent into the very heart of Christ.

Is God love? Yes. Then that love is expressed in the coming and the obedience and the death of Christ.

Is God a justifier of the ungodly? Yes, and that He does show Himself to be in the Lord Jesus; for He freely justifies all who believe in Him through the atoning work of Christ.

Is God familiar with sinners? Yes, He is familiar with them as He is seen and known and approached and heard in the Lord Jesus.

So there is the image of God shining in the hearts of poor sinners.

My dear friends, this holy religion is the religion we must have if we are going to heaven. Nothing short will do. The god of this world will blind our minds and eyes to this and set them on many things that please us, but the Holy Spirit’s teaching will bring us off from all these things to this glorious gospel. Why, how can some of us forget when we first saw God. I cannot forget when I first saw Him and trembled; when I said to myself, “Where that God is I shall never be.” His perfection in some measure shined upon my heart. How different when the other perfections shine in Jesus Christ! The perfections of Deity which are not seen in the law as it is a commanding law and is itself a covenant of works, are His love, His patience, His power, His compassion, His forgiveness; these do not shine in the law. The law has no sound of them, gives no hint of them, knows nothing about them. It knows this, a holy God, and it approves of a pure creature, a pure creature being a man who perfectly obeys the law; that is all the law knows with respect to its approval. It knows a sinner and it condemns him, and that is all it can do in itself. Disapproval. It condemns sin wherever it finds it, and curses for it. You must stand before God, and if you are under the law you must be measured and judged by it. If you enter into eternity under the law there is no word for you out of the gospel. All you will hear is the law in its sentence, because you have not obeyed it. What a terrible thing it will be to die under the law! What a fearful thing! Who can measure the fearfulness of it? Who can measure the condemnation of it? Who can fully imagine what it will be to be before God’s eye and before His majesty, justly condemned out of the mouth of God to dies? Now if those blessed perfections, with the added ones I have named, shine into our hearts, we die in quite another state, and stand before God in quite another state, happy, accepted, holy, forgiven, justified, sanctified; therefore eternally happy, filled with bliss. Nothing will do this but the glorious gospel of the blessed God, the glorious gospel of Christ as He is the image of God.

The glorious gospel of Christ with respect to the work of Christ. The work of Christ was this, to satisfy God and thereby save His people. It won’t seem much to you when I say this if you are not dissatisfied with yourself, if you are not convinced of who and what God is; but if you know yourself, if you know who God is, if you know what you are, then it will be wonderful that there should be a Man, the Man Christ Jesus who is true almighty God, who undertook, being able to die, to satisfy God, please Him and so save you.