THE CHIEF OF SINNERS SAVED

The salvation of sinners was the main design of Christ’s coming into the world. And God has given examples in Scripture that He often makes the chiefest sinners objects of His choicest mercy.

Adam, the ringleader of all rebellions of mankind in the world, had the promise of the seed of the woman to break the serpent’s head to him.

Abraham, the father of the faithful, was probably an idolater in Ur of the Chaldees, and a worshiper of the sun and fire, as his fathers were, yet God makes a particular covenant with this man, presents him with a richer act of grace than any in the world besides him had, even that the Messiah should come from his seed.

Manasseh is an eminent example of this doctrine. His story (2 Chron. 33) represents him as a black devil if all the aggravations of his sins were considered.

It was Christ’s employment in the world to court and gain such creatures. What was that woman, John 4:18 that He must needs to out of His way to convert? A harlot, an idolater. She continued in her adultery at the very time Christ spoke to her, yet He makes her a monument of His grace. And not only so, but the first witness of the gospel to her neighbors; “Is not this the Christ?” and an instrument to conduct them to Him, “Come, see a man which told me all things,” etc.

When He comes to act His last part, He saved a thief, who was at hell-gates, ready to be pushed in by the devil.

Since there was but one that in His own person He converted after He went to heaven, what was he? One who had breathed out slaughter and threatening against the church. This man, galloping to hell as fast as his mad rage and passion could carry him. Christ stops his career, ordains a preacher of a persecutor; gives him as large a commission as He had given any of His favorites, for He makes him the chiefest apostle of the Gentiles.

In His dealing with sinners God has a regard for His own glory.

1. The glory of His patience. We wonder, when we see a notorious sinner, how God can let His thunders still lie by Him, and His sword rust in His sheath. But God, by such a forbearance, shows Himself to be God indeed. If He were not God, He could not keep Himself from pouring out a just vengeance upon him.

2. The glory of His grace. It is partly for the admiration of this grace that God intends the day of judgment. It is a strange place; “When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe in that day.” The apostle uses two words: glorified, this is the work of angels and saints, who shall sing out His praises for it; admired, that the very devil and damned shall do; for though their malice and condition will not suffer them to praise Him, yet His inexpressible love in making such black sinners so beautiful, shall astonish them.

The fulness and the freeness of His grace will be revealed. If Christ should only take persons of moral and natural excellencies, men might suspect that Christ were some way or other engaged to them, and that the gift of salvation were limited to the endowments of nature, and the good exercise and use of a man’s own will. But when He puts no difference between persons of the least and those of the greatest demerit, but affecting the foulest monsters of sin, as well as the fairest of nature’s children, He builds triumphant arches to His grace upon this rubbish, He makes men and angels admiringly gaze upon these infinitely free compassions, when He takes souls full of disease and misery into His arms. It is so great, that such swine should be preferred before them; as the eldest son was angry that his father should lavish out his kindness upon the prodigal more than upon himself.

3. The glory of His power. Scripture makes conversion a most wonderful work, and resembles it to creation, and the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Conversion, simply considered, is concluded by divines to be a greater work than creation. God’s creating power drew the world out of nothing, but His converting power frames the new creature out of .something worse than nothing.

Naturally there is nothing but confusion and darkness in the soul. We have not the least spark of divine light, no more than the chaos had, when God, who commanded light to shine out of that darkness, shined in our hearts. To bring a principle of light into the heart and to set it up in spite of all the opposition that the devil and man’s own corruption makes, is greater than creation.

What power must that be which can stop the tide of the sea, and make it suddenly recoil back! What vast power must that be that can change a black cloud into a glorious sun! This and more does God do in conversion. He not only takes smooth pieces of the softest matter, but the most rugged timber full of knots, to plane and show both His strength and art upon them.

4. The glory of His wisdom. The work of grace being a new creation, it is not only an act of God’s power, but of His wisdom, as the natural creation was. The apostle takes notice of the wisdom of God in his own conversion; for when he relates the history of it, he breaks out into a Hallelujah, and sends up a volley of praises to God for the grace he has obtained. And in that doxology he puts emphasis on the wisdom of God: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God be honor and glory for ever and ever.” (I Tim. 1:17) Only wise God; only which he does not add to any other attribute he there gives Him. This wisdom appears not only in the subjects He chooses, but also in the time. He lays hold of the fittest opportunities to bring His wonderful providences upon the stage. He has His set time to deliver His church from her enemies, and He has His set time also to deliver every particular soul that He intends to make a member of His church, from the devil. He waits the fittest reason to manifest His grace: “Therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you,” Why? “For the Lord is a God of judgment,” i.e. a God of wisdom; therefore He will time things to the best advantage, both for His glory, and the sinner’s good. His timing of His grace was excellent in the conversion of Paul. There could not be a fitter time to glorify His grace than when Paul was almost at the’ length of his chain; almost to the sin against the Holy; Ghost. For if he had had but a little more light, and done that out of malice which he did out of ignorance, he would have been lost forever. He obtained mercy. Why? Because he did it ignorantly. If he had had knowledge suitable to his fury, it had been the unpardonable sin. Christ suffered him to run to the brink of hell before He laid hold upon him.

Did hot Christ show Himself to be a God of judgment here? He sat watching in heaven for His season to turn Paul with the greatest advantage. His wisdom answers many ends at once. At one blow He struck dead Paul’s sin, His people’s fears, the high priest’s expectations, and the devil’s hopes. He triumphs over His enemies, secures His friends, saves Paul’s soul, and promotes His interest by him. He disappoints the devil of his expectations, and hell of her longing.

By raising any soul from a death in sin, God evidences the particular value of Christ’s blood for that soul. And each new conversion proclaims to the world that the fountain of His blood is inexhaustible; that the virtue of it is not spent and drained, though so much has been drawn out of it for these five thousand years and upwards, for the cleansing of sins past before His coming, and sins since His death. This evidences that His priesthood now is of as much efficacy as His sufferings on earth were valuable; and that His merit is as much in virtue above our iniquity, as His person is in excellency above our nothingness.

TO CONCLUDE with a caution:

1. Do not think your sins are pardoned because they are not so great as those God has pardoned in others. Consider, God cast off Saul for less sins than David committed. Evil angels were cast off for one sin.

2. Let not this doctrine encourage any person to go on in sin. If you do now suck such poison out of this doctrine, and boast that name God proclaims, Exodus 34:6, 7, do not deceive yourselves, but remember it is one part of His name “by no means to clear the guilty.” There is forgiveness with God, but it is “that He may be feared,” not despised. God never intended mercy as a sanctuary to protect sin. If you do thus slight the design of His mercy, which you can never prize at too high a rate, it is certain you never had the least taste of it.

And it is dangerous to go on in sin. If you lose the present time, you are in danger to lose eternity. There are many in hell who never sinned at such a presumptuous rate. God is merciful to the penitent, but He will not be unfaithful to His threatenings. To go on in sin because God is merciful, is to make that which is the savor of life to become the savor of death unto you. See what an answer Paul gives to such an imagination, “Let us do evil, that good may come; whose damnation is just.” (Bom. 3:8) He takes a handful of hell-fire and flings it in their faces. As God’s goodness is great, which you despise, so the wrath will be the hotter you treasure up.

A word to you whom God has made of a great sinner the object of His mercy. If He made you to differ from others in the enjoyment of His mercy, you should also differ from others in the sounding of His praise. Had you chosen God first, It had been some ingenuity in God to answer that affection; but God chose you first, when there was nothing lovely in you. He might have written your name as easily in His black book as in His white. Is it not admirable mercy for a God provoked, to take pains with stiff-necked sinners, and to beat down mountains of high imaginations to rear up a temple to Himself? If mercy had knocked only once or twice, you would have dropped into hell; but mercy would not stop knocking, until you were made a statue fit for glory. Then glorify God for His grace.

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