Holiness

“An affection to sin, which cost the Redeemer of the world so dear, would be inconsistent with a sound knowledge and serious study of a crucified Saviour. We should see no charms in sin, which may not be overcome by that ravishing love which appears in every drop of the Redeemer’s blood. Can we, with lively thoughts of this, sin against so much tenderness, compassion, grace, and the other perfections of God, which sound so loud in our ears from the cross of Jesus? Shall we consider him hanging there to deliver us from hell, and yet retain any spirit to walk in the way which leads thereto? Shall we consider him upon the cross, unlocking the gates of heaven, and yet turn our backs upon that place he was so desirous to purchase for us, and give us the possession of? Shall we see him groaning in our place and stead, and dare to tell him by our unworthy carriage, that we regard him not, and that he might have spared his pains? It must be a miserable soul, worse than brutish, that can walk on in ways of enmity, with a sense of a crucified Christ in his mind. Could we then affect that sin which appears so horrible in the doctrine of the cross? Can we take any pleasure in that which procured so much pain to our best friend ? Can we love that which hath brought a curse, better than him who bore the curse for us? For want of this study of Christ crucified we walk on in sin, as if he suffered to purchase a license for it, rather than the destruction of it. The due consideration of this death would incline our wills to new desires and resolutions. It would stifle that luxury, ambition, worldliness, which harass our souls. We should not dare to rush into any iniquity through the wounds of Christ. We should not, under a sense of his dying groans, cherish that for which he suffered. We should not do the works of darkness under the effusions of his blood, if we did in a serious posture set ourselves at the feet of his cross.” – Stephen Charnock

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A Lord’s Day Meditation

Stephen Charnock, the 17th century Puritan author, has given the church a wonderful book of mediations on the existence and attributes of God. While reading through his work a few moments ago I found a very experiential section that I’ll post below; may it assist your Lord’s Day meditations.

Not a man but shall one day be sensible, when the eternal God shall call him out to examination, and charge his conscience to discover every crime, which will then own the authority whereby it acted ; when the heart shall be torn open, and the secrets of it brought to public view; and the world and man himself shall see what a viperous brood of corrupt principles and ends nested in his heart. Let us, therefore, be truly sensible of it, till the consideration draw tears from our eyes and sorrow from our souls ; let us urge the thoughts of it upon our hearts till the core of that pride be eaten out, and our stubbornness changed into humility ; till our heads become waters, and our eyes fountains of tears, and be a spring of prayer to God to change the heart, and mortify the atheism in it ; and consider: what a sad thing it is to be a practical atheist : and who is not so by nature?

Some following questions:

Let us be sensible of it in ourselves.

Have any of our hearts been a soil wherein the fear and reverence of God hath naturally grown?

Have we a desire to know him, or a will to embrace him?

Do we delight in his will, and love the remembrance of his name?

Are our respects to him, as God, equal to the speculative knowledge we have of his nature?

Is the heart, wherein he hath stamped his image, reserved for his residence?

Is not the world more affected than the Creator of the world; as though that could contribute to us a greater happiness than the Author of it?

Have not creatures as much of our love, fear, trust, nay, more, than God that framed both them and us?

Have we not too often relied upon our own strength, and made a calf of our own wisdom, and said of God, as the Israelites of Moses, “As for this Moses we wot not what is become of him?” (Exod. xxxii. 1) and given oftener the glory of our good success to our drag and our net, to our craft and our industry, than to the wisdom and blessing of God?

Are we, then, free from this sort of atheism?

It is as impossible to have two Gods at one time in one heart, as to have two kings at one time in full power in one kingdom.

Have there not been frequent neglects of God?

Have we not been deaf whilst he hath knocked at our doors slept when he hath sounded in our ears, as if there had been no such being as a God in the world?

How many strugglings have been against our approaches to him! Hath not folly often been committed, with vain imaginations starting up in the time of religious service, which we would scarce vouchsafe a look to at another time, and in another business, but would have thrust them away with indignation?

Had they stept in to interrupt our worldly affairs, they would have been troublesome intruders; but while we are with God they are acceptable guests.

How unwilling have our hearts been to fortify themselves with strong and influencing considerations of God, before we addressed to him!

Is it not too often that our lifelessness in prayer proceeds from this atheism ; a neglect of seeing what arguments and pleas may be drawn from the divine perfections, to second our suit in hand, and quicken our hearts in the service?

Whence are those indispositions to any spiritual duty, but because we have not due thoughts of the majesty, holiness, goodness, and excellency of God?

Is there any duty which leads to a more particular inquiry after him, or a more clear vision of him, but our hearts have been ready to rise up and call it cursed rather than blessed?

Are not our minds bemisted with an ignorance of him, our wills drawn by aversion from him, our affections rising in distaste of him? more willing to know anything than his nature, and more industrious to do anything than his will?

Do we not all fall under some one or other of these considerations?

Is it not fit, then, that we should have a sense of them?

A sobering conclusion:

It is to be bewailed by us, that so little of God is in our hearts, when so many evidences of the love of God are in the creatures; that God should be so little our end, who hath been so much our benefactor; that he should be so little in our thoughts, who sparkles in everything which presents itself to our eyes.

A God that doesn’t change His mind…

If a King gives a condemned man a pardon but the pardon doesn’t reach the condemned man for a few days, or even months, when does the pardon actually take place? Does the pardon depend on the decree from the King to pardon or the condemned man’s apprehension of it? Just a thought.

“There is no succession in the knowledge of God. The variety of successions and changes in the world make not succession, or new objects in the Divine mind; for all things are present to him from eternity in regard of his knowledge, though they are not actually present in the world, in regard of their existence. He doth not know one thing now, and another anon; he sees all things at once; “Known unto God are all things from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18); but in their true order of succession, as they lie in the eternal council of God, to be brought forth in time. Though there be a succession and order of things as they are wrought, there is yet no succession in God in regard of his knowledge of them. God knows the things that shall be wrought, and the order of them in their being brought upon the stage of the world; yet both the things and the order he knows by one act. Though all things be present with God, yet they are present to him in the order of their appearance in the world, and not so present with him as if they should be wrought at once. The death of Christ was to precede his resurrection in order of time; there is a succession in this; both at once are known by God; yet the act of his knowledge is not exercised about Christ as dying and rising at the same time; so that there is succession in things when there is no succession in God’s knowledge of them. Since God knows time, he knows all things as they are in time; he doth not know all things to be at once, though he knows at once what is, has been, and will be. All things are past, present, and to come, in regard of their existence; but there is not past, present, and to come, in regard of God’s knowledge of them, because he sees and knows not by any other, but by himself; he is his own light by which he sees, his own glass wherein he sees; beholding himself, he beholds all things.”

Stephen Charnock

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Fear of the Cudgel

Charnock,

It is evident, in abstinence from some sins, not because they offend God, but because they are against the interest of some other beloved corruption, or a bar to something men hunt after in the world. When temperance is cherished not to honor God, but preserve a crazy carcase ; prodigality forsaken, out of a humor of avarice ; uncleanness forsaken, not out of a hatred of lust, but love to their money ; declining a denial of the interest and truth of God, not out of affection to them, but an ambitious zeal for their own reputation. There is a kind of conversion from sin, when God is not made the. term of it (Jer. iv. 1) : ” If thou wilt return, O Israel, return unto me, saith the Lord.”

When we forbear sin as dogs do the meat they love: they forbear not out of a hatred of the carrion, but fear of the cudgel ; these are as wicked in their abstaining from sin, as others are in their furious committing it. Nothing of the honor of God and the end of his appointments is indeed in all this, but the conveniences self gathers from them. Again, many of the motived the generality of the world uses to their friends and relations to draw them from vices, are drawn from self, and used to prop up natural or sinful self in them. Come, reform yourself, take other courses, you will smut your reputation and be despicable ; you will destroy your estate, and commence a beggar ; your family will be undone, and you may rot in a prison : not laying close to them the duty they owe to God, the dishonor which accrues to him by their unworthy courses, and the ingratitude to the God of their mercies ; not that the other motives are to be laid aside and slighted.

Mint and cummin may be tithed, but the weightier concerns are not to be omitted ; but this shows that self is the bias, not only of men in their own course, but in their dealings with others; what should be subordinate to the honor of God, and the duty we owe to him, is made superior.

The Existence and Attributes of God

Page 127, “The law of God is the rule of that order he would have observed in the world; he that makes another law his rule, thrusts out the order of the Creator, and establishes the disorder of the creature.”

Page 129, “That deplorable person under the sensible stroke of God’s sovereign justice, would oppose his nay to God’s will (Luke xvi. 30): ‘And he said, Nay, father Abraham, but if one went to them from the dead they will repent.’ He would presume to prescribe more effectual means than Moses and the prophets, to inform men of the danger they incurred by their sensuality. “

Page 129-30, “When our friends have been struck with a rod, against our sentiments and wishes, have not our hearts been apt to swell in complaints against God, as though he disregarded the goodness of such a person, did not see with our eyes, and measure him by our esteem of him? as if he should have asked our counsel, before he had resolved, and managed himself according to our will, rather than his own. If he be patient to the wicked, we are apt to tax his holiness, and accuse him as an enemy to his own law. If he inflict severity upon the righteous, we are ready to suspect his goodness, and charge him to be an enemy to his affectionate creature. If he spare the Nimrods of the world, we are ready to ask, ‘Where is the God of judgement?’ If he afflict the pillars of the earth, we are ready to question, where is the God of mercy? It is impossible, since the depraved nature of man, and the various interests and passions in the world, that infinite power and wisdom can act righteously for the good of the universe, but he will shake some corrupt interest or other upon earth; so various are the inclinations of men, and such a weather-**** judgement hath every man in himself, that he divine method he applauds this day, upon a change of his interest, he will cavil at the next.”

Page 131, “We cast out our mire and dirt against God when he acts cross to our wishes, and flatter him when the wind of his providence joins itself to the tide of our interest. Men set a high price upon themselves, and are angry God values them not at the same rate, as if their judgement concerning themselves were more piercing then his.”

Page 131, “This is the epidemical disease of human nature; they think they deserve caresses instead of rods, and upon crosses are more ready to tear out the heart of God, than reflect humbly upon their own hearts.”

Same page, “Instead of silently submitting to his will and adoring his wisdom, we declaim against him, as an unwise and unjust governor: we would invert his order, make him the steward and ourselves the proprietors of what we are and have: we deny ourselves to be sinners, and our mercies to be forfeited.”

Charnock…again…

We are rather pressed to it than enter ourselves volunteers.  What we call service to God is done naturally much against our wills; it is not a delightful food, but a bitter potion; we are rather haled, than run to it.  There is a contradiction of sin within us against our service, as there was a contradiction of sinners without our Saviour against his doing the will of God.  Our hearts are unwieldy to any spiritual service of God; we are fain to use a violence with them sometimes: Hezekiah, it is said, “walked before the Lord, with a perfect heart” (2 Kings xx.9); he walked, he made himself to walk: man naturally cares not for a walk with God; if he hath any communion with him, it is with such a dulness and heaviness of spirit as if he wished himself out of his company.  Man’s nature, being contrary to holiness, hath an aversion to any act of homage to God, because holiness must at least be pretended.  In every duty wherein we have a communion with God, holiness is requisite: now as men are against the truth of holiness, because it is unsuitable to them, so they are not friends to those duties which require it, and for some space divert them from the thoughts of their beloved lusts.  The word of the Lord is a yoke, prayer a drudgery, obedience a strange element.  We are like fish, that “drank up iniquity like water,: (Job xv.16) and come not to the bank without the force of an angle; no more willing to do service for God, than a fish is of itself to do service for man.  It is a constrained act to satisfy conscience, and such are servile, not son-like performances, and spring from bondage more than affection; if conscience, like a task-master, did not scourge them to duty, they would never perform it.

The following page:

How many grudge to spend their best time in the serving the will of God, and reserve for him the sickly and rheumatic part of their lives; the remainder of that which the devil and their own lusts have fed upon!  Would not any prince or governor judge a present half eaten up by wild beasts, or that which died in a ditch, a contempt of his royalty?  A corrupt thing is too base and vile for so great a King as God is, whose name is dreadful. (Mal. i. 14)  When by age men are weary of their own bodies, they would preset them to God; yet grudgingly, as if a tired body were too good for him, snuffing at the command of service.  God calls for our  best, and we give him the worst.

Charnock

page 119, “The intention makes not a good action if so, when men kill the best servants of God with a design to do God service, as our Saviour foretells, (John xvi. 2) the action would not be murder; yet who can call it otherwise, since God is wronged in the persons of his servants?  Since most of the worship of the world, which men’s corrupt natures incline them to, is false and different from the revealed will of God, it is a practical acknowledgment of the devil, as the governor, by acknowledging and practising those doctrines, which have not the stamp of divine revelation upon them, but were minted by Satan to depress the honor of God in the world.  It doth concern men, then, to take good heed, that in their acts of worship they have a divine rule; otherwise it is an owning the devil as the rule: for there is no medium; whatsoever is not from God, is from Satan.  But to bring this closer to us, and consider that which is more common among us: men that are in natural condition, and wedded to their lusts, are under the paternal government of Satan (John viii. 44) : “Ye are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.”  If we divide sin into spiritual and carnal, which division comprehends all, the devil’s authority is owned in both; in spiritual, we conform to his example, because those he commits; in carnal, we obey his will, because those he directs: he acts the one, and sets us a copy; he tempts to the other, and gives us a kind of a precept.  Thus man by nature being a willing servant of sin, is more desirous to be bound in the devil’s iron chain, than in God’s silken cords.  What greater atheism can there be, than to use God as if he were inferior to the devil? to take the part of his greatest enemy, who drew all others into the faction against him? to pleasure Satan by offending God, and gratify our adversary with the injury of our Creator?  For a subject to take arms against his prince with the deadliest enemy both himself and prince hath in the whole world, adds a greater blackness to the rebellion.”

Quotes from the Existence and Attributes of God

page 96, “Sin endeavors to subject the blessed God to the humor and lust of every person in the world.”

page 98, “The spirit of adoption makes men act toward God as a father, a spirit of bondage only eyes him as a judge.  Those that look upon their superiors as tyrannical, will not be much concerned in their welfare; and would be more glad to have their nails pared, than be under perpetual fear of them.  Many men regard not the Infinite Goodness in the service of him, but consider him as cruel, tyrannical, injurious to their liberty.”

page 99, “The refusing instruction and casting his Word behind the back is part of atheism.”

page 100, “The law of God is accounted a strange thing; a thing of a different climate, and a far country from the heart of man; wherewith the mind of man had no desire to have any; or they regarded it as a sordid thing: what God accounts great and valuable, they account mean and despicable.  Men may show a civility to a stranger, but scarce contract an intimacy: there can be no amicable agreement between the holy will of God and the heart of a depraved creature: one is holy, the other unholy; one is universally good, the other stark naught.  The purity of the Divine rule renders it nauseous to the impurity of the carnal heart.  Water and fire may as well friendly kiss each other and live together without quarrelling and hissing, as the holy will of God and the unregenerate heart of a fallen creature.”

page 102, “Owls have eyes to perceive that there is a sun, but by reason of the weakness of their sight have no pleasure to look upon a beam of it: so neither can a man by nature love, or delight in the will of God, because of his natural corruption.  That law that riseth up in men for conviction and instruction, they keep down under the power of corruption; making their souls not the sanctuary, but the prison of truth (Rom. i. 18).  They will keep it down in their hearts, if they cannot keep it out of their heads, and will not endeavor to know and taste the spirit of it.”

page 103, “The devil’s children will follow the steps of their father, and endeavor to bruise the heal of divine truth, that would endeavor to break the head of the corrupt lust.”

page 105, “Truth may be admitted one day and the next day rejected; as Austin saith of a wicked man, he loves the truth shining, but he hates the truth reproving.  This is not to make God, but our own humor, our rule and measure.”

page 106, “As men love to be without a holy God in the world, so they love to be without a holy law, the transcript and image of God’s holiness in their hearts; and without holy men, the lights kindled by the Father of lights.”

page 107, “Gracious speeches, instead of bettering many men, distemper them, as sometimes sweet perfumes affect a weak head with aches.”

Quotes from The Existence and Attributes of God by Charnock

Page 92 – The testimony of works is louder and clearer than that of words; and the frame of men’s hearts must be measured rather by what they do then by what they say.

Page 92 – Those that have neither God in their thoughts, nor in their tongues, nor in their works, cannot properly be said to acknowledge him.  Where the honor of God is not practically owned in the lives of men, the being of God is not sensibly acknowledged in the hearts of men.  The principle must be of the same kind with the actions; if the actions be atheistical, the principle of them can be no better.

Page 93 – In sins of omission we own not God, in neglecting to perform what he enjoins; in sins of commission we set up some lust in the place of God, and pay to that the homage which is due to our Maker.  In both we disown him; in the one by not doing what he commands, in the other by doing what he forbids.  We deny his sovereignty when we violate his laws; we disgrace his holiness when we cast our filth before his face; we disparage his wisdom when we set up another rule as the guide of our actions than that law he hath fixed; we slight his sufficiency when we prefer a satisfaction in sin before a happiness in him alone; and his goodness, when we judge it not strong enough to attract us to him.  Every sin invades the rights of God, and strips him of one or other of his perfections.  It is such a vilifying of God as if he were not God; as if he were not the supreme Creator and Benefactor of the world; as if we had not our being from him; as if the air we breathed in, the food we lived by, were our own by right of supremacy, not of donation.  For a subject to slight his sovereign, is to slight his royalty; or a servant his master, is to deny his superiority.