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III. Present Salvation by Grace Must Be Through Faith
A present salvation must be through Grace and salvation by Grace must be through faith. You cannot get a hold of salvation by Grace by any other means than by faith. This live coal from off the altar needs the golden tongs of faith with which to carry it. I suppose that it might have been possible, if God had so willed it, that salvation might have been through works and yet by Grace, for if Adam had perfectly obeyed the Law of God, he still would only have done what he was bound to do—and so if God should have rewarded him, the reward, itself, must have been according to Grace— since the Creator owes nothing to the creature! This would have been a very difficult system to work, while the object of it was perfect, but in our case it would not work at all. Salvation in our case means deliverance from guilt and ruin. And this could not have been laid hold of by any measure of good works since we are not in a condition to perform any. Suppose I had to preach that you, as sinners, must do certain works and then you would be saved? And suppose that you could perform them? Such a salvation would not, then, have been seen to be altogether of Grace—it would have soon appeared to be of debt Apprehended in such a fashion, it would have come to you in some measure as the reward of work done and its whole aspect would have been changed. Salvation by Grace can only be gripped by the hands of faith! The attempt to lay hold upon it by the doing of certain acts of Law would cause the Grace to evaporate! “Therefore, it is of faith that it might be by Grace.” “If by Grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise Grace is no more Grace. But if it is of works, then is it no more Grace: otherwise work is no more work.”
Some try to lay hold upon salvation by Grace through the use of ceremonies—it will not do. You are christened, confirmed and caused to receive “the holy sacrament” from priestly hands. Or you are baptized, join the church, sit at the Lord’s Table. Does this bring you salvation? I ask you, “Have you salvation?” You dare not say, “yes”! If you did claim salvation of a sort, yet I am sure it would not be in your minds, salvation by Grace.
Again, you cannot lay hold upon salvation by Grace through your feelings. The hand of faith is constructed for the grasping of a present salvation by Grace, but feelingis not adapted for that end. If you go about to say, “I must feel that I am saved. I must feel so much sorrow and so much joy, or else I will not admit that I am saved,” you will find that this method will not answer. As well might you hope to see with your ears, or taste with your eyes, or hear with your nose as to believe by feeling—it is the wrong organ! After you have believed, you can enjoy salvation by feeling its heavenly influences! But to dream of getting a grasp of it by your own feelings is as foolish as to attempt to bear away the sunlight in the palm of your hand, or the breath of Heaven between the lashes of your eyes! There is an essential absurdity in the whole affair.
Moreover, the evidence yielded by feeling is singularly fickle. When your feelings are peaceful and delightful, they are soon broken in upon and become restless and melancholy. The most fickle of elements, the most feeble of creatures, the most contemptible of circumstances may sink or raise our spirits! Experienced men come to think less and less of their present emotions as they reflect upon the little reliance which can be safely placed upon them. Faith receives the statement of God concerning His way of gracious pardon and thus it brings salvation to the man believing! But feeling, warming under passionate appeals, yielding itself deliriously to a hope which it dares not examine, whirling round and round in a sort of frenzied dance of excitement which has become necessary for its own sustaining, is all on a stir, like the troubled sea which cannot rest. From its toiling and raging, feeling is apt to drop to lukewarmness, despondency, despair and all the kindred evils! Feelings are a set of cloudy, windy phenomena which cannot be trusted in reference to the eternal Truths of God. We now go a step further—
IV. Salvation by Grace, Through Faith, Is Not of Ourselves
The salvation, the faith and the whole gracious work together are not of ourselves!
First, they are not of our former merits—they are not the reward of former good endeavors. No unregenerate person has lived so well that God is bound to give him further Divine Grace and to bestow on him eternal life! Otherwise it were no longer of Grace, but of debt. Salvation is given to us, not earned by us. Our first life is always a wandering away from God and our new life of return to God is always a work of undeserved mercy, worked upon those who greatly need, but never deserve it!
It is not of ourselves! In the further sense, it is not out of our original excellence. Salvation comes from above. It is never evolved from within. Can eternal life be evolved from the bare ribs of death? Some dare to tell us that faith in Christ and the new birth are only the development of good things that lay hidden in us by nature. But in this, like their father, they speak of their own. Sirs, if an heir of wrath is left to be developed, he will become more and more fit for the place prepared for the devil and his angels! You may take the unregenerate man and educate him to the highest degree, but he remains and must forever remain dead in sin unless a higher power shall come in to save him from himself! Grace brings into the heart an entirely foreign element. It does not improve and perpetuate—it kills and makes alive! There is no continuity between the state of nature and the state of Grace. The one is darkness and the other is light—the one is death and the other is life. Grace, when it comes unto us, is like a firebrand dropped into the sea where it would certainly be quenched were it not of such a miraculous quality that it baffles the water and sets up its reign of fire and light even in the depths!
Salvation by Grace, through faith, is not of ourselves in the sense of being the result of our own power. We are bound to view salvation as being as surely a Divine act as Creation, or Providence, or Resurrection. At every point of the process of salvation, this word is appropriate—“not of yourselves.” From the first desire after it, to the full reception of it by faith, it is always of the Lord, alone, and not of ourselves. The man believes, but that belief is only one result among many of the implantation of Divine Life within the man’s soul by God, Himself!
Even the very will to be saved by Grace is not of ourselves, but is the gift of God! There lies the stress of the question. A man ought to believe in Jesus—it is his duty to receive Him whom God has set forth to be a Propitiation for sins. But man will not believe in Jesus—he prefers anything rather than faith in his Redeemer! Unless the Spirit of God convinces the judgment and constrains the will, man has no heart to believe in Jesus unto eternal life! I ask any saved man to look back upon his own conversion and explain how it came about. You turned to Christ and believed on His name—these were your own acts and deeds. But what caused you to turn? What sacred force was that which turned you from sin to righteousness? Do you attribute this singular renewal to the existence of a something better in you than has been yet discovered in your unconverted neighbor? No, you confess that you might have been what he now is if it had not been that there was a potent something which touched the spring of your will, enlightened your understanding and guided you to the foot of the Cross! Gratefully we confess the fact! It must be so. Salvation by Grace, through faith, is not of ourselves, and none of us will dream of taking any honor to ourselves from our conversion, or from any gracious effort which has flowed from the first Divine Cause. Last of all—
V. “By Grace Are You Saved Through Faith and that Not of Ourselves—it Is the Gift of God.”
Salvation may be called Theodora, or God’s gift. And each saved soul may be surnamed, Dorothea, which is another form of the same expression. Multiply your phrases and expand your expositions, but salvation truly traced to its wellhead is all contained in the unspeakable gift—the free, unmeasured benison of love!
Salvation is the gift of God, in opposition to a wage. When a man pays another his wage, he does what is right and no one dreams of condemning him for it. But we praise God for salvation because it is not the payment of debt but the gift of Grace. No man enters eternal life on earth, or in Heaven, as his due—it is the gift of God. We say, “Nothing is freer than a gift.” Salvation is so purely, so absolutely a gift of God that nothing can be more free! God gives it because He chooses to give it according to that grand text which has made many a man bite his lip in wrath—“I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” You are all guilty and condemned, but the Great King pardons whom He wills from among you! This is His royal prerogative! He saves in Infinite Sovereignty of Grace.
Salvation is the gift of God—that is to say completely so—in opposition to the notion of growth. Salvation is not a natural production from within. It is brought from a foreign zone and planted within the heart by heavenly hands! Salvation is in its entirety a gift from God. If you will have it, there it is, complete! Will you have it as a perfect gift, “No. I will produce it in my own workshop.” You cannot forge a work so rare and costly upon which even Jesus spent His life’s blood! Here is a garment without seam, woven from the top throughout. It will cover you and make you glorious! Will you have it? “No. I will sit at the loom and I will weave a raiment of my own!” Proud fool that you are! You spin cobwebs! You weave a dream! Oh, that you would freely take what Christ upon the Cross declared to be finished!
It is the gift of God. That is, it is eternally secure in opposition to the gifts of men, which soon pass away. “Not as the world gives, give I unto you,” says our Lord Jesus. If my Lord Jesus gives you salvation at this moment, you have it and you have it forever! He will never take it back—and if He does not take it from you, who can? If He saves you, now, through faith, you are saved—so saved that you shall never perish, neither shall any pluck you out of His hand. May it be so with all of us! Amen.