Use 5: Of Awakening

It is matter of awful and awakening consideration to every soul, and calls upon us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. To think how many run, and obtain not the prize, but fall short of the crown of life. Oh! To think, there are many believers that shall never be saved — with what fear and care should it fill us? Hebrews 4:1: Let us fear therefore, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. It is not every running, every believing, we see, will serve the turn. Oh! How solemn a thing it is to think, there are many believers that never shall be saved: not only many sinners, many drunkards, many whoremongers, sabbath-breakers, thieves, liars, swearers, many profane persons, but many seeming believers, many professors, many church members, many that seem fair and go far, never shall be saved. The Scripture says, He that believes shall be saved — that is, he that indeed, truly and effectually believes. But the Scripture also tells us, that there are many that are in a sense believers, that have some kind of faith; others think, and themselves think they are believers; and yet such shall miss of heaven in the height of their hopes: they shall not be saved. Oh! What need to throw down yourself before God, and to lie at him for a thorough work to be wrought. Run not away with tastes; rest not in beginnings, in pangs, in sudden stirrings, in overtures; but follow on in the use of all means, with groanings unutterable (Hosea 6:3). Oh! Cry to heaven for effectual faith, effectual conviction, humiliation, conversion, believing — a faith that is well rooted. Put up David's petition with the greatest importunity (Psalm 119:80): Let my heart be sound in your statutes. Rest not in uncertainties relating to the state of your soul — that perhaps you may be saved, and perhaps you may be damned — but use all diligence to make your calling and election sure. Oh! Be awakened to look to your state and standing, and to see what bottom you build your hopes of salvation upon, that you may not mistake in that great point of saving faith. Tremble to live in a state of unbelief; to sit under the hearing of the word preached, and yet fall short of saving faith.

By way of awakening, consider: (1.) The misery and danger of such an estate. (2.) The sin and sinfulness of it.

The misery and danger of a state of unbelief. The gospel terms run thus: He that believes shall be saved; and he that believes not shall be damned (Mark 16:16). Oh! Can you be at quiet, in a state of unbelief? The time hastens, that you shall have no portion in this world: what will become of you if you have no part in Christ? Oh! Do not sit down careless and say, All is well; I shall yet have time enough to get into a state of salvation, and to obtain saving faith. To awaken out of this stupidity, remember these four particulars.

1. At present your state is a state of utmost misery. The wrath of God is piled upon you: the whole curse of the law is now abiding on your soul (John 3:36). You are ready to drop into hell every moment: devils are preying upon your soul. The shackles of sins and lusts, the chains of darkness, the bolts and irons of a blind mind and hard heart are upon them. You are sinking in the seas of the wrath of God; and at present you have no hold of anything that can save you. So that your present state is doleful, and not to be rested in.

2. You know not whether you shall have much, or any time more to attain saving faith in. Your present state is certainly miserable; but your future time to escape it is uncertain. Oh! The stopping of ears today may be your undoing for ever. You reckon on more time; but remember (Luke 12:20): You fool, this night shall your soul be required of you. And remember the advice of our Savior, verse 40: Be therefore ready; for the Son of Man comes at an hour when you think not.

3. Remember faith is not in your own power (Ephesians 2:8). It must be the operation of the mighty God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost must come into your soul, and put forth an almighty power there, if ever saving faith be wrought in you. And you who receive this grace in vain now — how can you expect that he should do any such thing for you hereafter?

4. The longer you live and continue in unbelief, the more unlikely it is that ever you should be brought to believe. Your heart is still the more hardened, and God the more estranged, and Satan has the more hold of you. But thus see the misery and danger of a state of unbelief.

2. See the sin and sinfulness of such a state. Unspeakable is the sin that the unbeliever lies under: all sin lives and reigns, where unbelief lives and reigns; for now the curse reigns in its strength, and sin has dominion (Romans 6:14). A man is in his sins still, if not in Christ by faith. Faith flies to a Savior for deliverance from sin; but unbelief despises a Savior, and chooses to live in sin. Unbelief in its own nature is an exceeding great sin: a despising of God, when he tenders the greatest gift of his love, his only begotten Son; when he offers himself and his grace upon the sweetest and easiest terms. Oh! This sin of unbelief, it is a damning sin. And if we inquire, who they are that are guilty here, and in a state of unbelief — for we see all men have not faith — briefly to single out such.

1. They that have no acquaintance with Christ, but are utter strangers to him; either grossly ignorant, or utterly negligent of him. Where there is faith, it brings the soul acquainted with Christ. But there are those that live under the means and ministry of the word, that are utter strangers to Christ, as to any distinct knowledge of him. Christ is but a general name, an empty sound in their ears. These are in their unbelief — the god of this world having blinded the minds of them that believe not (2 Corinthians 4:4).

2. They whose hearts were never yet broken and humbled. Faith grows in a contrite soul, and not upon a rock. The stony ground, where the heart is an unbroken stone and has no depth of soft earth, will not bear the good grain of effectual saving faith. And how many rocks are there that were never broken — hearts of stone, never turned to flesh — to whom sin was never bitter, nor wrath terrible, nor Christ sweet.

3. They that allow themselves in any known sin (2 Timothy 2:19). They that have sound and saving faith do faithfully maintain a war against sin, as sin, and so against all sin. It is otherwise with the unbeliever: he knows there is some sweet sin, some secret sin that he spares and loves and will not forsake. To go on boldly, carelessly and impenitently in any known sin is inconsistent with effectual faith in Christ, and with that regeneration that the believer is made partaker of.

4. They are yet in unbelief that are so engaged to the things and contentments of the world as that they cannot part with them for Christ (John 5:44; James 4:4; 1 John 2:15).

5. They that establish their own righteousness (Romans 10:3). We must remember that faith is a going out of ourselves to Christ, and resting on him for righteousness.