Doctrine: If After All Patience and Pains Barren Souls Become Fruitful, All Shall Be Well

DOCTRINE. If after all patience and pains used with them, Barren Souls become fruitful, all shall be well.

Though they have been long in God's Vineyard, under the dispensation of Gospel means, and enjoyed all manner of endeavours that have been used with them, have worn out the greatest part of a day of grace, and withstood thousands of calls and counsels, doing God no service all this while, but dishonouring him; have cumbred the ground, provoked God to anger against them, and stirred him up to proceed to threaten them with cutting down: if yet at the last it repents them, and they loath themselves for their sin, and return to him again with all their heart, and with all their soul, all shall still be well at the last.

There are three respects in which the truth of the doctrine does discover itself; the proposing and clearing of which will suffice for the explication and confirmation of it.

1. It shall be well with the sinner himself, though he has done so much to undo himself, and has brought himself so near to the brink of eternal ruin, and had almost sinned himself beyond hope, yet this shall turn the scale, and recruit him again.

There are three things in which this may be discovered.

1. His former barrenness shall not be charged upon him. All the guilt of it shall be removed: it was a great height that he was arrived to; he had been all this while heaping up provocation, and filling a terrible account: but upon his returning to God, all these scores are crossed, and his person is justified; his sins are blotted out as a cloud, an act of oblivion is past, and his iniquities shall be remembered no more against him (Ezekiel 18:21, 22).

2. God will repent him of the evil which he had threatened him withal. It is true, repentance cannot properly be in God, because it argues something rash, imprudent, inconsiderate in him that acts it, of which the infinitely wise God is incapable: but it is ascribed to him on the account of his providence. God sometimes threatens sinners, and in those threatenings, there is a reserve, in case of their repentance: and then, when the sinner repents, God is said to repent, namely, when he revokes the threatening, and does not put it in execution, hence that (Jeremiah 18:8). The meaning of such language is, the sinner is now out of the danger of those judgments; he shall not die, hence that advice (Zephaniah 2, beginning), which intends not the eternal purpose of God, but the threatening of the law which was denounced against them.

3. Hence his estate is now safe. He is put into a state of life and salvation; he is past from death to life; God is atoned to him, and loves him, and accepts of him: he shall abide in the vineyard as long as God sees meet to use him for his service there, and then he shall be transplanted into the Kingdom of Glory: he is numbered among the children and entitled to the inheritance, he may now say as the Prophet (Isaiah 12:1), I will praise you for you were angry with me, but your anger is turned away. Now the evidence of this comfortable truth will appear in these things.

1. The design of the whole day of grace, is to give sinners an opportunity to repent that they may be saved. That is it indeed that makes it a day of grace, because in it men have not only a space, but with it a call to return to God that they may live: it is to invite them to, and afford them the means for it, as long therefore as this day lasts, God signifies hereby that he is reconcilable to sinners, that he delights not in their death, but had rather that they should turn and live: for which reason he calls upon them so to do: it is the day of their visitation, in which he holds out before them, the things of their peace, and therefore gives them offers that if they do accept of them, they shall have peace.

2. Hence the lengthening out of this day is on purpose to continue this opportunity to them: when sinners under the Gospel, though they neglect it, and hearken not to the voice of God in it, are yet spared, and the wrath of God does not fall upon them in its weight, it is to afford them a farther trial; it is to see if it will at last repent them of their sins, and they will be persuaded to return to God with all their hearts. Thus God interprets his patience exercised towards Jezebel herself, and charges it upon her as an aggravation of her guilt, that she did not so improve it (Revelation 2:22). When the sinner is cut off there is no more room for this, but while he is spared, there is a price continued in his hands.

3. Hence all the evangelical calls that are ministerially given to the sinner, carry the encouraging promise in them. God stirs up the hearts of his servants to offer mercy to sinners that have been careless, to invite and excite them to repentance, and they are to make conditional promises to them, that if they do still repent and return, God is willing to receive them into his favor. They do not publish these terms of their own heads, but they do it by commission; they are ambassadors, and they have it in their instructions thus to do (Jeremiah 3:12, 13), and the Word of God has a great many of these, which look this way, and have not other limitations but to the present call, let it be when it will (Jeremiah 3:1, 2; Isaiah 55:7), and that forecited (Ezekiel 18:21, 22), and the purpose of these is, to remove all doubts out of the minds of such as are ready to be discouraged.

4. The sinner is now brought under the promises which a faithful God cannot fail of performing. The Gospel promises are propounded to men upon condition, if that be fulfilled in and by the man. God is under the obligation, his word is past for it; pardon, and peace, and glory are now the man's by covenant: and whenever any are made fruitful Christians, when they bring forth to God according to his will, the condition is fulfilled in them; they are the men of and to whom God has said that he will do them good. There must be faith and holiness put into the man, before he can bear spiritual fruits, and to them the blessing is assured; and God is as good as his word; it is impossible for him to lie: such a soul therefore must needs be in a safe state, if all the blessings that are laid up in the promise, and purchased by the blood of Christ can make him so.

No, this fruitfulness is a declaration of God's everlasting love to him. It is an evidence that God has chosen him in Christ before the foundation of the world. Electing love is the first grace, on which all the rest depend: the sinner cannot remove his own barrenness, or empower himself to serve God. If ever he be made fruitful, it is God [illegible] do it in him: he only can take away [illegible] natural unprofitableness of his, and in [illegible] the principle of a new life into him, the [illegible] birth is the Spirit's work; the man is sold under spiritual death till he comes [illegible] breathes life into him: and this is done according to his pleasure. He shows this mercy to whom he will; and the only motive which he has before him to do it in time, is because he purposed it from eternity. Now therefore the secret of God breaks into light; and though before none knew of it, and the sinner might seem to be without hope; now he comes to know that God had appointed him to be an heir of eternal life before the world was. His condition is therefore as safe as unchangeable love can make it.

It shall be well also in respect of God's glory. It shall be no grief to him, he shall never repent that he did spare the sinner, and give him a farther time of trial, but be abundantly satisfied in it. We read (Luke 15:9), there is joy in heaven, &c. And there is reason why God should take content in it, because it will bring him honor; the thing will be to him for a name, and a praise. This will appear if we consider,

That which God peculiarly designs by the Gospel, is the glory of his grace. It is true, his justice is also greatly illustrated by it, in as much as sinners under it do aggravate their guilt, and bring the more fearful judgments upon themselves. But the Gospel is properly a discovery of Christ in his great work of redemption, and all this is for the riches of the glory of his grace (Ephesians 1:6). And where his grace is exalted, there God is greatly glorified, for he shall be praised in all his saints, and his other perfections are magnified in and with this: his justice in that way wherein he revealed his grace by Christ, and upon his satisfaction; his holiness, in that he gets him an everlasting name and renown in this way; his power in that he is able to bring about this great salvation; his wisdom in the contrivance of the way to accomplish it. Hence therefore the whole treaty of the Gospel, that is held with sinners, carries in it a demonstration of this grace.

There is a more special and eminent degree of glory that redounds to God by this. When a sinner who has so obstinately withstood all endeavors that have been used with him; has been for so many years growing harder and harder, and by all this laying in so much provocation, through the multiplied affronts that he has offered to God, shall at last be brought over to him, and become a plant of renown in his vineyard; here are more illustrious discoveries of his grace in this one: he is a most admirable monument of mercy. As the mighty power of God is manifested, in the turning of a heart that has been so long glued to his idols, so his unchangeable love is here commended. If anything could have made him to alter his design, so much, and so long continued provocation would have done it. Paul therefore speaking of himself, who was brought in after he had so long set himself against Christ, speaks of it with admiration (1 Timothy 1:16).

Hence all the dishonor that he had before done to God, gives lustre to this grace. Grace is properly a free favor bestowed upon another, which he had not merit of, nor could have challenged to himself of him that bestowed it, had he not done it of his own bounty, it had never been conferred. And there are two special enhancements of it, namely, the greatness of the favor bestowed, and the great unworthiness of the subject that participates in it. The more there may be said why he should not, the more there must needs appear of the condescendency of him that does it. Now as it is sin that most of all speaks the unworthiness of men, so the more aggravations there are in it, the farther does it set the man off from this, and renders him the more unworthy. And there can be nothing that more aggravates sin, than that a man should, under all the offers of mercy, and means of repentance, go on in a course of sin, notwithstanding all the strivings of the Spirit of God with him. This therefore is grace indeed. When Paul would exalt it, he tells us what he was before it came (1 Timothy 1:13): a blasphemer, a persecutor, and injurious.

And the sinner is now made, not only a monument, but also an instrument of God's glory. As he before dishonored him, so now he serves him; he bears fruit, and it is for God, and he is glorified by it (John 15:8). And usually it comes to pass, that though he is born so much out of time, and so has but a short opportunity allowed him wherein to glorify God in this life, as having spent the greatest part of his time in vanity; yet he is more deeply engaged than ordinary in God's service, and more strenuously endeavors to make up his lost way, and redeem the little spot of time that is allowed him, being quickened thereunto by the thought of his former unprofitableness. What haste did Paul make in the work of Christ? He labored more than all the rest of his fellow Apostles; and though he came in after them, yet he came not behind the chief of them, and this is much to the glory of God.

It shall be well in respect of God's people; and those of them more especially who have been the deepest concerned for the sinner, and taken the most pains with him, for,

They shall now reap the fruit of all their labours. They were a long time making of sad complaints, that they had laboured in vain, and were ever and anon almost ready to faint and despond, and to conclude, surely there will never any good be done upon this sinner, he is even grown altogether hopeless, all our pains have been thrown away upon him: but now their labor appears not to be lost, because they are brought in to Christ; and it is a full recompense: although a man be at a great deal of expense, and use long patience about any design that his heart is deeply engaged in, and it be a great while before it comes to take effectually, yet if at length it be compassed, the man is not frustrated. Now they can heartily glorify God in such as these are (Galatians 1:23).

The desires of their hearts are thus accomplished, and so their joy is fulfilled. The great thing which they longed for, and which carried them forth in all their endeavours, for which they cheerfully attended all the duty lying on them, was the conversion of sinners; this was it that they waited to see, and cast many an earnest look for the discovery of it: and therefore when they do come to see it, they cannot but rejoice, as a mother does in a child, or a conqueror that takes great spoils, it makes them to forget all the labor and toil which they have been at, and their hearts are comforted in it. All the grief which they were sinking under before, for fear of the issue, is now turned into joy, to see them brought home to Christ; their mourning over those perishing souls is turned into a dance. They are glad on God's account, that he shall have honor now by such an one, who before did nothing but dishonor him; they rejoice on the sinner's account, that he shall now obtain salvation, and be happy for ever in the favor of God; and they rejoice on their own account, to think what comfort they shall have in these in the day of Christ.