Doctrine 3: There Are Those Planted in the Visible Church Who Bear No Fruit

DOCTRINE III. There are those that are planted in the visible Church, that bear no fruit.

This is a necessary inference from the owner's coming to this fig tree, looking for fruit, and finding none, for if God be aimed at in this owner, as we have observed, he could not miss, or not find fruit, if there had been any; being omniscient. And though there be but one tree named, (as in the other parable of the man without a wedding garment, there is one mentioned which is enough to intimate that such a thing may be, and so sufficient to put every one upon self-examination;) yet it is certain that it intimates that there are more.

In the clearing up of this doctrine we may consider, 1. The evidence that there are such. 2. Who are so to be accounted? 3. How this comes to pass. 4. Why God suffers such in the visible Church.

1. For the evidence that there are such; yes more, that the biggest part of visible professors are for the most part such, we have warrant sufficient from the Scripture to conclude: nor do we find that the visible Church was ever without such since the beginning. In Adam's family there was a Cain who offered unaccepted sacrifice. In Noah's a cursed Cham, whom the deluge had not washed from his wickedness. Abraham had a scoffing Ishmael, and Isaac a profane Esau. When Israel were in the wilderness, and were accounted holiness to the Lord, yet there was many a vile wretch discovered, and a mixed multitude always rebelling against God. What they were afterwards, God's frequent complaints by his prophets do sufficiently discover. How it was with his vineyard, we see (Isaiah 5, beginning), and the application of it we have, verse 5. And if we shall descend to Gospel times, we shall find it so; Christ himself when he was here had a Judas in his own family; and what do the warnings and predictions of the Apostles signify, but that there were too many of these in the primitive churches? And they warn us of worse and more degenerate times to come afterwards, but this will be most evidently discovered to us in the consideration of the next thing; namely,

2. Who are so to be accounted?

A. In general, all those that do not bear the right and proper fruit will come under this denomination; and those are only the fruits of righteousness and holiness; all others are in God's esteem barren: whatever fruits they bear to themselves, if they bring forth none to God, they are empty (Hosea 10:1). The fruits that God looks for in his Church are good works, acts of true obedience to his revealed will; and to the making of such fruit there is a great deal required. It is necessary that the tree be good before the fruit can be so. Besides the matter of the action, that it be conformable to the rule of God's word, there must be a principle of grace within from where it must proceed, and saving faith in the soul to purify the heart, and to work by love, without which it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). And it must be in conjunction with a sincere aim at the glory of God, as the ultimate scope of the action. It must be a work of the sanctifying Spirit, and that it cannot be, if it fall of any of these ingredients; and hence in particular we may conclude, such as these to bear none; namely,

1. All profane persons that are in the visible Church; and it is a matter of sad lamentation, that there are too many such, who call themselves Christians, and yet are always doing the works of the flesh, of which we have a catalogue (Galatians 5:19, &c.). They mind nothing that is good, but are wholly addicted to vanity and debauchery, and yet they can boast of their church privileges, and bolster themselves up in wickedness by them: such were they (Jeremiah 7:9, 10). The very lives and conversations of these declared them to be graceless (Isaiah 3:9). The cursed fruits that they bear discover that they have an evil root of bitterness in them; and charity must put out its eyes, before it can think better of them: God will never acknowledge the vintage of Gomorrah to be fruit.

2. All hypocrites. These indeed make a show as if they were green trees, and are full of the leaves of an outward profession: they carry it fair to men, and make a great stir in a profession, talk much of religion, and frequent ordinances with a great deal of seeming zeal: they are very good Christians as far as words will go; and possibly too they may have a show of fruit upon them: they may do a great many things so far as the matter of duty reaches and in that part of their conversation which lies open to the view and observation of men, may use much severity and strictness: but these are not the fruits that God accepts; they are not found but rotten. Our Savior compares them to sepulchres (Matthew 23:27, 28). These trees are not good, how then should their fruit be so? However they hope to recommend their lives to men, they do not approve their hearts to God: they labor; but it is to make a spider's web: their arms are wrong set; they seek not the glory of God, but to be seen of men; and they have all their reward when they have gotten the applause they desired, for God will reject them.

3. All legalists. I distinguish these from hypocrites, because the other are mere stage-players and dissemblers, whereas these are real and conscientious in what they do; they have an enlightened conscience in them, and moral principles that are active, and they are led by them. The duties of first and second table are carefully practised by them, and yet not, as the others to be seen of men merely, but to answer their consciences, and to earn heaven and happiness: they are built upon the Old Covenant, and hope to comply with the terms of it: or they make the Gospel but a covenant of works, and think that if they do their best, God will accept them, and this makes them very laborious: but still, all this is not fruit, it needs something to make it of the right kind; it is wrought by their own strength, and will prove loss. Of this stamp was Paul in his Pharisaism, but see what an esteem he set upon this afterwards (Philippians 3:4, &c).

In a word, all that are in a state of unregeneracy. As long as men have no principle of saving grace wrought in them by the Spirit of God, they do not bear fruit; where there is not faith, there can be no exercise of it; and whatever is not influenced by that, belongs to dead works; that which is such, is pleasing to God, he takes content in it; but these can do no such thing (Romans 8:8). They that are in the flesh cannot please God; and the Apostle assures us that all have not faith.

How does this come to pass? It may seem strange that there should be empty plants in the courts of God's house, but we may be satisfied in this, when we have weighed the case: Hence;

1. Negatively. It is not because there is any thing wanting on God's part as to means of fruitfulness. God can leave this to men's own judgments, if they [illegible] will speak uprightly (Isaiah 5:3–4). There are the same advantages afforded to one and the other in the visible Church: they enjoy the same Gospel, and ordinances, in which the calls, counsels, invitations, encouragements, are alike exhibited to them: the dresser of the vineyard has a charge given him concerning all, to look after them with care: the ministry are appointed to declare the whole counsel of God: they that bear no fruit live under the same means that they do who bear the most, and there is nothing more done mediately for the one than another. It is the same word that convinces one and prejudices another; there is nothing is here to be said for it.

2. Positively; let these things be observed.

1. There is a natural barrenness to good in all Adam's posterity. Man indeed was made at first in the image of God, which was a fertile principle in him, and both enabled and disposed him to the service of God; but the fall has lost him that power, and as he comes into the world in a state of apostasy, he could do nothing at all that [illegible] acceptable to God; his soul is become such a soil, as no good plant will grow in it; it will bring forth nothing but thorns and thistles. Man's impotency to holy duties, is one part of the misery fallen upon him by sin; and it is such as has left him neither ability nor disposition to it (Romans 3:12, etc.). For if a man must be good in order to his being capable of doing good, the natural man is capable of doing none: for he is conceived [in] sin, and goes astray from the womb, speaking lies.

2. There are also cursed principles of corruption in natural men, that help to increase this barrenness. Original sin in man is not merely morally privative, or a disabling of man from doing good, by emptying him of the grace which he had at the first; but there is something morally positive in it too, that is, all the moral powers of his soul are habitually bent to sin, his heart is set in him to do wickedly (Ecclesiastes 8:11). So that he can as well withhold from acting as from sinning; and by these renewed acts of such a principle, the habit is fortified, which adds to the barrenness of the soul a deeper rooting and confirmation in it; and nature, being strengthened by custom, is yet made more unlikely to do any thing that may answer God's expectation: it is more settled in its evil way: and therefore God puts stress upon this argument (Jeremiah 13:23). That is to say, whatever might have been hoped before, yet now they are next to hopeless.

3. Hence their hearts do naturally and voluntarily resist the Spirit of God, striving with them in the means. Instead of complying with and entertaining of him, they do oppose him, and this men always do of themselves or by their own inclinations (Acts 7:51). The way of men's hearts, and the sight of their eyes, to which they are addicted, and that by a rooted approbation and choice, are quite contrary to the things that the Spirit of God invites men to in the Word and ordinances; so that wherever he comes to make offers of them to men, he finds a fixed enmity in them against these things, so that such not only will not, but they cannot be subject (Romans 8:7). This is the flesh, that lusts against the Spirit, and needs must it be exceeding strong in natural men since in the regenerate, the remains of it often brings them into captivity, and so it makes them that they cannot do the things that they would (Galatians 5:17).

4. There is also many times a great neglect in parents of doing their duty to their children, in order to their being fruitful. They love to have church privileges for their children; they cannot bear that they should not be acknowledged Christians, and not have the badge of Christ's Covenant upon them; but alas! this is all they mind — how woful neglects of duty are there [among] such parents? They do not teach their children the principles of the oracles of God, do not counsel and command them to serve God, do not restrain them from the exorbitances that their youthful carnal minds naturally incline them to, do not set them a good example of holiness, but often give them an ill example, do not pray with them, nor see that they attend upon the means of grace, and give an account of their profiting: and children thus left, will run after sin fast enough; and God also thus punishes parents' neglects.

5. They oftentimes fall into snares and temptations from Satan and his instruments. The Devil has a peculiar design upon the Church of Christ; the gates of hell set themselves against it [so that] where the means of grace are most clearly dispensed, and the best endeavours are used to bring souls to Christ, hell is most of all alarmed, and Satan uses all manner of stratagems to hold such in his hands; and if, while they are visibly Christ's, he can keep them spiritually his own, his ends are answered. He has also his agents, lewd persons, whom he employs, to tempt, allure, and draw men away, especially young persons, into vain company, to evil practices, and such things as may keep them from seriousness, and engage them to the lusts of their own hearts; and if any word comes close to their consciences at any time, these fowls readily pick it up.

There is often a judicial blinding and hardening that falls upon them, by God's righteous judgment; God affords them rousing and awakening means, and they sleep under them, and harden their hearts against them, and will not comply with his calls and counsels, and God hereupon sends them a penal hardness, whereby they are confirmed in it, so it was with them (Psalm 81:11, 12), and such an one fell upon them (Deuteronomy 29:4). Yes, this was the amazing errand which God told the Prophet that he sent him upon (Isaiah 6:9, 10). And how can such bear fruit, when Christ says to them as he did to the fig-tree, Never more let fruit be found on you? Now all these things may satisfy us how it may so be, that all the means may fail, as to men's being fruitful under the enjoyment of them. But then the question still remains, namely,

Why God suffers such in his visible Church? This may also seem a mystery. That he sees, and knows them, yes, observes them we have heard; and that they do not answer his expectation, and for that reason must needs be a provocation to him: why then should he let them be there?

In general; God knows how to advance his glory, and gain his ends by them in thus doing. God's last end in all he does is his own glory; he has a name to get by his works; and there are various ways in which he promotes it. As there are divers attributes which he displays to us, so there are divers subjects in which he will have them exalted, and whatever serves to the exaltation of these, proportionably to the cost that is laid out upon it, is not in vain: now that God both can and will do so in this affair, will be more particularly seen in the consideration of these things.

God hereby declares his great patience. This is one of the perfections of God, which he sets a high price upon: he tells us that he is a God that bears, and forbears, and endures sinners with much long-suffering; and it mightily commends him to the souls of his people that he is so; the discoveries which they make of it, are to them matter of great encouragement; and in none is it more evidently made to appear, than in these: that fruitless trees should be let alone in the Vineyard, and have all the protection and husbandry of it afforded to them; and though still they abide barren, yet they are not presently cut down, but suffered there, this is great patience. It is nothing so much to bear with a wicked world, that have not these means; these are therefore called the riches of God's goodness (Romans 2:3).

Hereby he discovers the great wickedness which is in the hearts of men; it would never have been known how vile men are, if they had not lived under the means of grace, and there been waited upon with all the offers of grace, and endeavours with them for their good. For men to transgress in a land of uprightness, to sin against all the counsels, warnings, invitations, encouragements, obligations, of the Gospel, is the top of wickedness: and this mightily clears up the righteousness of the judgment of God against ungodly men.

This also discovers to his people evidently, that it is by grace that they are saved. Godly men have by this means before them continually such monuments as the very looking on them, helps to convince them that it is not of themselves, but the gift of God, that they are made fruitful; when they see them of the same nature with them, under the same dispensations, notwithstanding all to abide in their impenitency, and live unprofitably under all the advantages of profiting; it tells them what hearts and natures they have in them, and how much they owe to the praise of God's grace, that has made them to differ.

Hereby these also are prepared to be the more eminent instances of God's revenging justice. Not only God's grace, but his justice too, are to be eminently exalted in the visible Church: here are to be found the more stupendous monuments of his severity, where his mighty works have been done, and men have not [illegible]: it is not so much in Tyre and Sidon, as Chorazin, etc., not so much in Sodom or Capernaum. There are they who by their despising and abusing the greatest mercies of God, do lay up the more treasures of wrath against themselves; and therefore, when Christ comes to Judgment, there is a peculiar vengeance, is to be taken upon such (2 Thessalonians 1:8).

Sometimes God does it for gracious ends, to make the more convincing displays of his rich grace in them. God sometimes suffers barren trees to grow a long while in his Vineyard, till one would think that all the hopes of their bearing were now past; and they have been dying and rotting so long till we were almost concluding them to be past recovery, and after this he comes and magnifies his mercy upon them, in recovering of them by a saving conversion, and they are, as it were, born out of time. Such an one Paul tells us he was: and by this means the great efficacy, and mighty influence of his grace, comes to be made known, and his name is praised, by and for them.