Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 656
” When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by His Grace, to reveal His Son in me.” Galatians 1:15.
You all know the story of the Apostle Paul. He had been a persecutor and went armed with letters to Damascus to hail men and women and drag them to prison. On the road there he saw a light exceedingly bright—above the brightness of the sun—and a voice spoke out of Heaven to him saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” By this miraculous interposition he was converted—three days he spent in darkness. But when Ananias came to tell him of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, there fell from his eyes, as it were, scales. He was baptized, became the most mighty of all Christian teachers, and could truly say that he was not a whit behind the very chief of the Apostles.
Paul’s conversion is generally considered so very remarkable for its suddenness and distinctness and truly it is. Yet, at the same time, it is no exception to the general rule of conversions, but is rather a type, or model, or pattern of the way in which God shows forth His long-suffering to them that are led to believe on Him. It appears from my text, however, that there is another part of Paul’s history which deserves our attention quite as much as the suddenness of his conversion, namely, the fact that although he was suddenly converted, yet God had had thoughts of mercy towards him from his very birth.
God did not begin to work with him when he was on the road to Damascus. That was not the first occasion on which eyes of love had darted upon this chief of sinners. Paul declares that God had separated him and set him apart even from his mother’s womb that he might, by-and-by, be called by Grace and have Jesus Christ revealed in him! I selected this text, not so much for its own sake as to give me an opportunity for saying a little this evening upon a doctrine not often touched upon, namely, that of PRECEDING GRACE, or the Grace which comes before regeneration and conversion.
I think we sometimes overlook it. We do not attach enough importance to the Grace of God in its dealings with men before He actually brings them to Himself. Paul says that God had designs of love towards him even before He had called him out of the dead world into spiritual life.
I. To begin, then, let us talk for a little while upon THE PURPOSE OF GOD PRECEDING SAVING GRACE AS IT MAY CLEARLY BE SEEN DEVELOPING ITSELF IN HUMAN HISTORY. You generally judge what a man’s purpose is by his actions. If you saw a man very carefully making molds in the sand, then watched him take several pieces of iron and melt them down. And if you further noticed him pouring the melted iron into the molds, you might not know precisely what class of machine he was making, but you would very justly conclude that he was making some part of an engine or other machinery. Perhaps you might guess a beam, or a lever, or a crank, or a wheel—and according to what you saw the molds in the sand to be you would form your idea of what the man was intending to make.
Now, when I look at the life of a man, even before conversion, I think I can discover something of God’s molding and fashioning in him even before regenerating Grace comes into his heart. Let me give you an illustration of my course of thought. When God created man—we are told in the book of Genesis—He made him “out of the dust of the earth.” Mark him beneath his Maker’s hand, the framework of a man, the tabernacle for an immortal soul—a man made of clay, fully made I suppose, and perfect in all respects excepting one and that soon followed—for after God had formed him out of the dust, then He breathed into his nostrils the breath of Life and man became a living soul.
Now it strikes me that during the early part of the history of the people whom God means to save, though they have not received into their hearts any spiritual life, nor experienced any of the work of regeneration, yet their life before conversion is really a working of them in the clay. Let us endeavor to bring this out more distinctly. Can you not perceive God’s purpose in the Apostle Paul when you think of the singular gifts with which he was endowed? Here was a man, a rhetorician so noble that there are in his works passages of eloquence not to be equaled, much less excelled, by Demosthenes and Cicero.
As a logician his arguments are most conclusive as well as profound. Never had man such eagle eyes to pierce into the depths of a matter! Never had man such eagle wings to mount up into its sublimities! He argues out questions so difficult to understand that at all times they have been the battlegrounds of controversies! And yet he seems to perceive them clearly and distinctly and to unfold and expound them with a precision of language not to be misunderstood. All Apostles of Jesus Christ put together are not equal to Paul in the way of teaching. Truly he might have said of them all, “You are but as children compared with me.”