Obstacles to Coming to Christ
“Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me” (John 6:45).
There are several obstacles that hinder poor Christians from coming to Christ. I want to bring them under the following headings.
Obstacles That Keep People from Christ
First, some obstacles keep people from taking hold of Christ at all.
1. Blind, careless, or presumptuous security makes people content with their present condition. They assume all is well with them when it is not.
2. Once convinced of this, they consider how to save themselves by their own strength. They set about reforming their lives, thinking they can make amends to God by giving up some sins for which ministers have reproved them.
3. When a sinner becomes convinced that he cannot please God by his own efforts, he goes a step further. He sees that his actions, prayers, and duties have no power in themselves. He must leave them all and cling to Christ alone by faith. But he thinks he can do this easily enough. He thrusts himself upon Christ, supposing the whole work is done and nothing more needs attention.
4. If he sees that this fails too, he goes further still. He admits that he cannot come to Christ unless Christ gives him a hand and helps him up. So he attends the ordinances and works hard at every good means, imagining that through them he can eventually forge a faith of his own that will make him happy. There he rests, clinging, as it were, to the outside of the ark. When the wind and waves grow fierce, they beat him off, and he sinks forever.
Obstacles That Trouble Gracious Hearts
Second, other obstacles do not deprive a person of his claim to eternal happiness, but make his way tedious and uncomfortable. He cannot come to Christ as readily as he longs to do. This happens when we use our own reasoning to devise a way to Christ that he never ordained or revealed. We set our standards beside God’s standard, or our threshold beside his (Ezek 43:8). We imagine a condition for believing that Christ never required. No wonder we fall short of him. We put obstacles and barriers in our own way, bind our hands and feet, and then say we cannot grasp him or go to him. Poor Christians, this is what you do, and the fault is your own.
Among the many obstacles of this kind, three especially hinder gracious hearts from coming to Christ and receiving the comfort he is willing to give them.
Looking for Holiness Before Coming to the Promise
1. A distressed soul may truly be humbled. It sees the beauty of holiness, the image of God stamped on his children’s hearts, and the precious promises he has made to those who are his. Seeing these things, the soul reasons, “Surely, if I were so holy and gracious, I could hope for the pardon of my sins. If my heart were eager to perform my duties, and if I had the strength to overcome my corruptions, then I might have some hope. But I have no power against sin and no heart to seek Christ earnestly. With so much lacking in me, how dare I think any mercy belongs to me?” Such people dare not come to the promise. They will not venture upon it because they lack the eagerness for duty and the power against corruption that God’s saints sometimes have.
But these things do not prevent them from coming. They turn something that is no obstacle into one. Notice this: we must not expect to bring our eagerness and hope to the promise; we must go to the promise for them. The promise stirs hope, quickens desire, and kindles love and joy. Who made it a condition of the covenant that a person must have a certain degree of eagerness before coming to the promise? Our Savior is our husband. He requires no dowry from us and has never looked for one. He looks for poverty and emptiness. If you have nothing, he will receive you with your nothing, provided you will receive him. Thus it is written that “the rich he sends away empty,” while he satisfies the poor and refreshes the thirsty with good things. Nothing is required on our side except to receive him as a husband. The text says, “buy without money.” You must not think you can buy a husband.
The Lord looks for no power or sufficiency that comes from you, no power of your own against corruption, and no eagerness of your own for duty. If you are willing for Christ to take everything from you and dispose of you and all you have, then receive a Savior, and you have him.
But the poor soul says, “If I go to him without being able to see my way, how will I know I am not presuming? How will I know I have a true claim to the promise?”
I answer: no argument better proves your interest in Christ than your receiving the Lord Christ wholly as a Savior and only as a husband. “As many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12). He does not say that this power was given to those who already had a certain eagerness for duty or strength against corruption. If you will receive Christ on the terms on which he offers himself, no argument under heaven better proves your claim to the promise.
Looking Only at the Greatness of Sin
2. A desperate despair often seizes distressed sinners. Just as a sinner may look at the excellence of Christ and of grace alongside his own insufficiency and refuse to venture upon the promise, he may look entirely at his sinfulness and unworthiness and dare not venture upon it. He sees how many sins he has committed, how vile they are, and how long they have continued. He sees floods of abominations rushing into his soul, with Satan urging him on, and so he dares not turn to Christ.
This is the devil’s strategy. If he can, he makes a person see sin through his own spectacles, or not see it at all. In the latter case the person says, “There is plenty of mercy in a Savior, so I may live as I please.” But when the sinner insists on seeing his sin, the devil lets him see nothing else, intending to drive him to despair forever.
The poor sinner is now at a standstill. Tell him of God’s mercy, the abundant redemption in Christ, and the riches of God’s free grace, and he says, “Am I supposed to think there is mercy for me and that I have an interest in Christ? That would be strange.” His soul keeps staring at its corruptions, dwelling on them too much. He continually aggravates the sore without going to the physician. Notice that despair can keep a person from looking to Christ just as presumption can. Before he sees his sin, he thinks his condition is good, believes he has enough of his own, and sees no need to go to Christ. Once he sees his sin, he sees such vileness in it and in himself that he dares not go to Christ. He fears Christ will send him down to the ever-burning lake of fire and brimstone. The devil is very subtle here. Yet this does not prevent us from having a claim to Christ, nor should it discourage us from taking hold of salvation. Consider these points.
1. For whom did Christ come into the world, and for whom did he die? Was it for the righteous? They did not need him. He came for the poor sinner who judges and condemns himself and finds he cannot save himself. Paul says, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief” (2 Tim 1:15). And the prophet says, “There is a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness” (Zech 13:1). It is open for every sort of sin and sinner. However great and vile their iniquities, the fountain is open to them. Whoever will may come. No one who was saved had not first been a rebel. No one received mercy who had not first opposed God’s mercies and his grace in Christ. Fiery serpents stung the people in the wilderness. After they had been stung, a bronze serpent was provided to heal them.
2. Consider the folly of the sinner’s plea. Where does Scripture say that the greatness of a person’s sin can hinder the greatness of God’s mercy? Nowhere. David prays the opposite: “Have mercy upon me, O Lord, and pardon my sins, for they are great” (Ps 25:11). God himself does the opposite of what the sinner fears: “Thou hast made me serve with thy sins, and wearied me with thine iniquities; yet I am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for my name’s sake” (Isa 43:24-25). When the Jews wearied God with their disordered conduct and burdened him with their sinful ways, the Lord declared that, for his own name’s sake, he would not even remember their iniquities against them.
3. Even when sins are terrible in themselves, if the soul sees them and the heart is burdened by them, they do not hinder faith or make the person incapable of mercy. Rather, they make him readier to go to Christ. Please notice this truth: it is not properly our unworthiness but our pride that keeps us from Christ. We want to bring something of our own instead of receiving everything from him.
To the distressed soul that sees the vileness of its sins, I say this: suppose your sins were fewer. You still would not go to Christ because you were persuaded of the freedom of his grace. You would go because you thought your sins were not many, imagined you had some worthiness in yourself, and wanted to bring something to him rather than receive everything from him. That is why you hold back. Is it not plain that your pride and your high opinion of yourself hinder you? You think you must first possess a certain measure of grace and holiness. You would have Christ justify the godly person, rather than the ungodly. But on those terms he will never justify you or anyone else while the world stands.
The soul replies, “My sins are worse than that. They are many, but I have also rejected mercy and salvation when they were offered to me day after day.”
I answer: this cannot prevent you from coming, provided you see those evils in yourself. Though you have cast away the Lord’s kindness, he will not cast you away if you come and seek him earnestly, again and again. God says, “For the iniquity of his covetousness I was wroth ... and I smote him; I hid myself, and he went on frowardly in the way of his own heart.” Yet he also says, “I have seen his ways and will heal him” (Isa 57:17-18). If such conduct had prevented mercy, Judah would never have received it. And the Lord says, “Thou hast played the harlot with many lovers, yet return again unto me, saith the Lord” (Jer 3:1). It is not too late if a person has a heart to return. There is no limit to the riches of God’s free grace except the sin against the Holy Ghost. Thus Christ says, “I stand at the door and knock” (Rev 3:20). Though he cries until he is hoarse and stands until he is weary, he still stands there. If any adulterous or deceitful wretch opens the door, the Lord will come in, bring him abundant comfort, and eat with him.
[Objection:] “All that is true,” says the poor soul, “if only I had a heart to mourn over my baseness. I do see my sins, but my misery is that I cannot feel their burden. My heart will not break or mourn because I have dishonored God and offended him in so many ways.”
[Answer:] This does not prevent you either, provided your heart is weary of itself because it cannot be weary of sin. “The Lord sheweth mercy, because he will shew mercy” (Mic 7:18). It is not because you can please him, but because mercy pleases him. When did the Lord show mercy to Paul? Was it not when Paul showed the greatest malice against him? “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” (Acts 9:4). He persecuted Christ, yet Christ pitied him and showed him mercy. And when the harsh jailer was most opposed to the means of grace, the Lord showed him compassion. The man who had resisted those means was brought home by the very means he had resisted.
[Objection:] “But woe is me,” says the poor soul, “now you have touched the sorest point. This word hangs about my neck like a millstone while I am at sea, ready to sink forever. Here is the depth of my baseness: all the means of grace have done no better for me. Paul and the jailer may have been as bad as you say, but the means made them better. My hopeless condition is that the means of grace have no effect on me. Is there a heart in hell like mine? How bad must it be when all the means in the world can do it no good? Under all God’s ordinances my heart now seems harder and more unyielding than when I first believed. My condition must surely be hopeless. The very means that should soften me only harden me and make me worse.”
[Answer:] This is the devil’s last plea for holding the heart of a poor discouraged sinner. But even this does not prevent you from hoping for mercy. Consider three things in answer.
1. The word and the means of grace do you good if they make you more aware of your hardness and deadness. They may not work in the way you desire. Yet if they show you your baseness, hardness of heart, and dullness of spirit in the face of the body of death that hangs upon you, they are working in the best way, because they are working in God’s way, though not yours. Medicine may do its best work after first making the patient sick. So it is with the word.
Previously you had a proud heart. You trusted your abilities and strength, thinking that your care and your use of the means would work wonders. But the word works gently when it makes you understand that a wounded soul is God’s gift, not something produced by a person or by the means themselves. It makes you look to God for that gift, value it when you have it, and pray daily that he will preserve it. To feel your deadness is a sign of life; to feel your hardness is a sign of softness. Remember one caution: this does not apply if there is some lust or disorder after which your heart still hankers. In that case the word will harden you because you harden yourself. Apart from that exception, you are on a good path.
2. Please notice that your own heart is the reason it is not softened and the word seems not to work upon your soul. Its disorder obstructs your response to the word, to God’s providence, and to the covenant of grace. You want to set limits for the Holy One of Israel, but you cannot. His covenant is a covenant of grace. The Lord is free; he will not bend to your demands or give you grace at the time you choose. The times and seasons are not ours to know.
What if the Lord does not give you grace this year, or next year, or throughout your life? If he gives you a little of his favor at your last breath, that is more than he owes you. Hear today, wait tomorrow, and keep doing so, for you do not know when God may bless his ordinances. Do not complain about delay. God has waited for you a long time. If he makes you wait for peace of conscience and assurance of his love, he deals fairly with you and in the way that will be best for you. God gives what he will, when he will, and how he will. Therefore wait for his mercy.
3. Consider that you have rested on your own duties and efforts instead of going to God, who blesses both the means and the efforts of those who seek him. The fault is your own because you rely on your performance and on the power you think the means possess. You do not go to God, who could accomplish more than they ever can. If a person depended on God’s power and mercy in his ordinances, he would find help suited to his need even when he saw no success, as well as when he did. Sometimes God gives, and sometimes he delays. His love is as constant when he does not give as when he does. So work to give up all fleshly confidence in holy duties. Do not rest on your performance. Look beyond every duty to God in Christ and ask him to give the success that duties themselves cannot produce.
Watch what happens in your soul after you have merely performed a duty. Suppose a person remains perfectly calm although he goes on living and practicing sin every day. He prays and lies, fasts and cheats, yet thinks his duties make everything right. This is a sure sign that he trusts his performance in a fleshly way and has never found the Lord Christ in the duty. The person who seeks a Savior in his duties, without resting on his own performance, receives Christ into his soul. Notice what follows: Christ brings with him power to pardon and to purge. He gives the person more power against corruption and more watchfulness over his own soul than before.
Such a soul begins to challenge itself and lies down in shame, saying, “What am I to think of my praying and hearing? Where is their power and effect? Has Christ heard my prayers or entered my soul through his ordinances? Where is the power that purges sin? Where is the power that cleanses my corruptions?” Such concern marks a gracious heart that places no confidence in holy duties, but only in the Lord Christ.
Do not be satisfied merely because you see that you need a Savior, your mind understands it, and your reason agrees. You may still put a kind of confidence in the duty you performed or the service you rendered. You may think it gives you power to summon Christ when you want him, while you go on doing as you please. This is a remarkably cunning device of Satan. A person can see his need of a Savior and still settle for knowing, as a matter of thought or experience, that he cannot remove the guilt of sin himself and therefore needs a Savior to help him. Do not rest in that mere idea. Do not say, “I see that this is how it should be and must be,” and then rest content with performing services. Do not imagine that your duties allow you to summon a Savior to do whatever you want for your soul. Satan has fastened this deception upon you.
Many think that, once they have performed their duties, they have authority over Christ. They use the means as though their duties could command him, rather than lead them to him. They suppose they can employ Christ for their own purposes. Thus they make him a supporter of their wickedness rather than the one who subdues their corruptions. This is a great deceit: people rest in their own abilities and so abuse Christ. It appears in the following ways.
First, watch your heart while you perform a duty. Do praying, hearing, and other services make you bold and reckless enough to meddle with corruptions? If so, that is a sure sign that you place fleshly confidence in your performance. Suppose someone professing faith says, “What if I sin now and then? What if I sometimes steal or use false weights and measures? I will pray more and fast more often. Surely that will satisfy my conscience. I will make it be satisfied. I will provide security for my sin by praying against it.” Notice what is happening. He performs duties in order to command a Savior to allow his sin, so that he may commit it freely. He acts as though he were saying, “I have authority over my Savior. He must pardon my sin and allow me to commit it.” What wretched wickedness lies in that person’s heart! Your condition is fearful if you make your duties support your corruptions. You perform them, not to receive Christ’s help in preventing sin, but to have him remove sin’s sting and the fear of judgment so that you can do wrong without uneasiness or further disturbance.
Many make their services into saviors by using them to support their consciences. Here is why. A person may learn by painful experience what sin produces. He sees the poison of his corruptions and the miserable effects of his sinful practices. Once he thought swearing, lying, drinking, and keeping bad company were fine things. Now they are gravel in his heart and gall in his soul. His conscience confronts him. The burden of his disorderly life makes him feel ready to sink into hell. Conscience says, “These are your sins, and they will be your damnation. They were your delight, but they will end in your shame and ruin. You will soon feel their pain. Off to hell with you.”
In that state he has no cure for his conscience except to ask it to be quiet. He admits that he has lived wickedly and that his condition is miserable. But now, he says, he will reform everything. He used to neglect prayer; now he will pray. He used to hate God’s servants; now he will love them. His ways have been exceedingly evil; now he will change them and turn over a new leaf. He thinks that will be enough. Many poor souls treat the means as mediators in this way and so fall short of Christ. A gracious heart prays, hears, receives, and uses every possible means to obtain Christ. Yet it remains restless and unsatisfied until it enjoys and possesses Christ through those means. It does not rest on merely performing a duty or suppose its efforts can bring it into Christ.
Let me explain this more fully. Tell a rich moneylender, sick with a disease, that a certain physician can cure him but insists on his status and will come only at great expense. “The expense does not trouble me,” he says. “I have enough money to bring him here.” He puts all his confidence in his money. Likewise, a soul may see that the guilt of sin remains, conscience still protests, and the law condemns him. Christ alone is the Savior who can satisfy and cure him. But how, he asks, can he obtain Christ? He supposes that his prayers, fasting, and other performances can command Christ through the power and merit of the work done. That is the voice of a Pharisee and the characteristic language of a Papist. What promise supports it? None in Scripture. Yet foolish people rest on their own performance and so fall short of Christ and salvation.
[Objection:] “Oh,” says a poor sinner, “I would gladly get out of myself. I see all too well that I have rested, and still rest, on duties I have performed. But I cannot deny myself as I would.”
I answer: Satan subtly keeps us confined to ourselves by urging us to get out of ourselves through our own strength and persuading us that we can. This is an especially deep expression of both his malice and his cunning. He makes us believe, and in our ignorance we believe him, that we hold the staff in our own hands: that we have the power to get out of ourselves. But do we? No. To be brought entirely out of ourselves is a supernatural work. The same hand that brings us to Christ must bring us out of ourselves. That is self-denial.
Self-denial occurs when the soul knows it has nothing. God’s mighty hand and the work of his Spirit so overpower it that it expects no power or ability from itself, or from any creature, to do good. It knows that it is dead and cannot help itself; still less can another creature give it the help it needs. Therefore it looks to heaven and seeks all sufficiency from God alone. If I think I have the ability to get out of myself, am I not claiming to have a power within me to deny myself? But the truth is the opposite. To deny oneself is to know one has no power within oneself to perform any spiritual duty.
We must therefore listen only to the voice that calls us, the voice of Christ. The one who calls us from the ways of darkness and out of ourselves must bring us out, and he will. Look only to Christ for the power to draw you out of yourself and make you a believer. The same hand must do both, or neither will happen.
I would not have a poor person think, “If these means and ordinances do me no good and do not work upon my heart, I shall never have comfort.” Speak instead to God: “Truly, Lord, I expect no power from myself or from the means. I have resolved to look up to you, though you have hidden your face from your poor servant until now. I will not look within myself for such power. I will look to you, the giver of power and gifts. I will not look to the minister or to the means, but wait upon you, O Lord, and look to your power to work through your own means.”
Remember the prophet’s words: “Who is among you that feareth the Lord, and obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light, let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay himself upon his God” (Isa 50:10). When everything else fails, let the soul look to the Lord and get away from itself. That is the most fitting time to meet God. I would have a Christian choose it as the time to meet his Savior and disappoint Satan. As I have said, this is the devil’s last refuge; if he fails here, his strength is gone forever. Otherwise the sinner, seeing something of the beauty of grace, will not come; and seeing the baseness of his own heart, will not dare to come to Christ.
Looking for Joy Before Believing
3. The next complaint concerns a lack of the sense and feeling that a Christian thinks he must have, but cannot find. The distressed soul says, “Alas, I have never known the assurance of God’s love or received any evidence of his favor. How can I think I have faith? Those who believe have hearts filled with unspeakable and glorious joy; the word says so. But that joy is strange to me. How, then, can I think faith has been worked in me?”
I answer: the lack of such joy does not mean that you have no faith, nor does it prevent you from coming to God in Christ by believing. Remember three things.
First, do not expect this joy and refreshment before you go to the promise. Look for it after you have taken in the promise and fed upon it. Would you have the Lord give you the whole benefit before you have entered the agreement? Joy is a fruit that grows from faith after much wrestling. It does not flow from faith the instant a Christian begins to believe. The heart becomes joyful in time, but it is never filled with this joy before believing. When the sweet dew of the promises has fallen upon a person, perhaps for many days, then let him look for joy.
Second, joy, sense, and feeling may be absent where faith is present. A person can have sound faith without the sweetness he longs for. He may lack what he desires without lacking life or warmth. A tree may lack leaves and fruit without lacking sap or moisture. A person’s faith may be fairly strong when he feels nothing at all. David was justified and sanctified, yet lacked this joy. Job trusted God when he had little sense of comfort, saying, “thou makest me a but to shoot at; yet I will trust in thee though thou kill me.” Do not build your comfort on sense and feeling, as though building on sand. Go instead to the promise, the rock, for comfort.
[Question:] How does this desire for Christ arise?
I answer: God, in his infinite wisdom, has given the soul only two affections directed toward an absent good: hope and desire. The understanding says, “That would be profitable and comforting if I had it.” Hope then goes out to wait for that good. If it does not come, desire goes out to meet it. Hope stands and waits; desire travels about seeking and asking after the Lord Jesus. It goes from coast to coast, from east to west, crying, “Oh, if only I could! If only I might! When will I? How can I come to speak with the Lord Christ?”
It was so with the bride in the Song of Songs. When her beloved was gone, she wandered about seeking him and asked the watchmen whether they had seen the one her soul loved. So desire goes from one thing and place to another, never ceasing to seek some news of Christ. It goes to prayer to see whether prayer may obtain Christ. It goes to the word to see whether the word will reveal him. It goes to conversation with others to see whether they have heard of him. Then it comes to the congregation and to the sacrament, looking for news of the Lord Christ and of mercy.
The soul continues to wander and seek until, after it has hungered and longed for him, the Lord Christ comes to it. At length he is pleased to show himself. “Behold, the King cometh.” The soul says, “Behold the Lamb of God, that takes away thy sins.” Poor brokenhearted sinner, here is your Savior. He has come down from heaven to speak peace to your soul through the pardon of your sins. You who hunger for Christ, here he is to satisfy you. You who thirst for him, here he is to refresh you. You who have long sought him, he says, “Here I am, and all my merits are yours.” When the Lord Jesus presents himself to the soul, desire has met the Lord.
A sinner’s case is like that of a traitor under pursuit. He takes refuge in a stronghold, where he is besieged. Seeing no hope of escape or favor, he is ready to submit and lay his head on the block to receive the punishment for his offense. As he approaches execution, a messenger hints that he may yet be pardoned. This stirs hope in the poor prisoner. Then another messenger brings word from the king himself: if the prisoner comes to court, seeks the king, and earnestly asks his grace for mercy and favor, he will likely be pardoned. Desire carries him quickly to court to seek that favor.
There he listens and asks everyone, “Have you heard the king say anything about me? How does he regard me? What is happening with my case?” Some tell him, “The king has heard that you are humbled and sorry for what you did.” At last the king looks out a window, sees the offender, and asks, “Is this the traitor?” Someone replies, “Yes, your highness. This is the man who has humbled himself, pleads for mercy, and desires your favor above everything else.” The merciful king tells him that his pardon is being prepared and is on its way. The man’s heart leaps within him and opens toward the king. “God bless your majesty,” he says. “No prince has ever shown such favor to so poor a traitor.” His heart leaps for joy because his pardon is coming. Perhaps it has not yet been sealed. When it is sealed and everything is complete, the king calls him in and gives it to him.
So it is with a poor sinner, who is the offender. You who have committed high treason may give it no thought, but beware: one day God will pursue you. He may leave you alone for the present, then overtake you suddenly. Conscience will seize you by the throat and carry you down toward hell. The Lord pursues the sinner with a heavy blow of indignation. He sends conscience after him as an officer, and it says, “These are your sins. You must go to hell. God has sent me to carry out the sentence on your soul.”
The poor soul sees no escape from the Lord and no possible way to purchase favor. He resolves to lie down at God’s feet and hope. Hope is the soul’s capacity to look out for mercy. A man expecting a friend may climb a hill and look all around for a sign of him. So the soul hopes, waits, and stretches toward mercy. “When will it be, Lord? When will this pardon come?” It rises, as it were, on tiptoe and cries, “Oh, when will it come, Lord?”
How does God stir the heart to hope, and how is that hope sustained? This is worth considering.
1. The Lord gently steadies the heart and persuades it that its sins can be pardoned and that the good it lacks can be supplied. This greatly supports the soul. Hope always expects a good still to come. When a poor sinner sees how many sins he has committed, what they are like, how vile they are, and how cursed his soul is, he cannot rest. He finds no rest in any creature or in himself. Though he prays all day, he cannot obtain the pardon of a single sin. He expects no pardon or merciful power from anything he has or does. Even if every means and help, and every man and angel, joined together, they could not pardon one of his sins.
Then the Lord lifts his voice from heaven and says, “Your sins can be pardoned.” How infinite God’s power is! The guilt of sin has power to condemn the soul, but the Lord’s infinite power can overcome all its sins. Considering this raises some expectation in the heart that the Lord will show mercy, though it is hard to hope when the soul is troubled. “Can this heart be broken? Can these sins be pardoned? Can this soul be saved?” Now God’s power answers: he can pardon them. Never measure God’s power by your shallow understanding. All things are possible with God, though not with people. Abraham hoped when ordinary grounds for hope were gone. He looked to the Lord, who was able to do what he had promised. He did not dwell on the lifelessness of his own body, but hoped in the living God.
God’s justice cannot be so severe in punishing you that his mercy is unable to do you good. However many your sins are, and however great God’s justice is, mercy is greater than all your sins and rebellions. This can support your soul. Here, then, is the first ground for hope: your sins can be pardoned. God has more power to show you mercy than sin has power to destroy you.
The Lord Jesus Christ came to seek and save what was lost. That was the purpose of his coming. The broken and humble sinner says, “I am lost. Did Christ come to save sinners? Then either Christ must fail in his purpose or I must miss my comfort. God says, ‘come to me all ye that are weary and heavy laden.’ I am weary. If the Lord meant me no good, why would he invite me and tell me to come? Surely he means to show me mercy.”
Beware of despair. You may and must examine your condition, but to cast away all hope is a grave offense in the Lord’s eyes. You must cast away all fleshly confidence, yet you must hope. “Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.”
The Lord takes it very seriously when we refuse that hope. You descend into the deep dungeon of your corruption and say, “These sins can never be pardoned. I am still proud, and growing more stubborn. God does not see this distress or help me. His hand cannot reach me; his mercy cannot save me.” Notice what the prophet says to such a perplexed soul: “Why sayest thou my way is hid from the Lord!” (Isa 40:27). And, “The young men shall faint and be weary; but they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.” Why do you say such a thing? Is anything too hard for the Lord?
You do God a great wrong, though you think it humble to count yourself so vile and ask, “Can God pardon the sins of a wretch like me?” The psalmist says that the people “spake against the Lord” when they asked, “can the Lord prepare a table in the wilderness?” They were speaking against the Lord, not merely against themselves. So we speak against God and make an accusation against him. The soul says, “It is true that Manasseh was pardoned, Paul was converted, and God’s saints received mercy. But can my sin be pardoned? Can my soul be given life? No, my sins are too great to be pardoned.”
Consider how this dishonors God. It makes sin’s power to condemn you greater than God’s power to save you, and Satan’s power to ruin you greater than God’s power to relieve and help you. What more could you say or do against the Lord? Does this not make God subject to Satan and sin? It is as though you said that God’s almighty power is weaker than the weakness of sin and that his sufficiency is weaker than Satan’s malice. Poor humbled sinners often complain bitterly in this way, thinking they speak only against themselves. In fact they speak against the Lord. The people spoke against him when they asked, “can the Lord prepare a table in the wilderness?”
