Gooding, David: 3 - Disturbingly Moral!

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. It is something much more than a popular conception of our Lord, that he told us, as no one else has told us, that God is a God of love. It's a conception solidly based on the historical records, and of course it is not a conception that I wish to find fault with in any way whatsoever. Certainly Christ did tell us that God was a God of love. He put such emphasis thereon, and if I might use the phrase, he made his religion turn so much thereon, that we might even, without any exaggeration, describe him and his teaching on God's love as unique. This evening, I wish to deal rather with the deductions that are popularly and currently made from that teaching of our Lord's, the deductions that are made from the fact that God is love. I want to divide them into two main groups and give one sample of each. There are the deductions that I would describe as too little, and there are the deductions that I would describe as too much. As the notorious example of the former, uh, a deduction that is utterly inadequate and too little, I would cite the commonly held opinion that it is impossible for a man to be absolutely sure here in this life that he has been permanently and finally accepted by God. It's an opinion commonly held in spite of the fact that the Bible assures us that God has so loved his world of men that whosoever believes on Christ shall not perish. Yet and nevertheless, men commonly will assert, in fact, some will assert it as the basic platform of their religious belief, that it is impossible for any man to be certain that God has permanently accepted him and will never cast him out. Impossible to say definitely, therefore, that you are saved. It's an odd sort of a belief. It marches very awkwardly with the idea that God is love. For if we could descend to the level of human love for a moment, none of us, I'm sure, would approve in our hearts of a mother who brought her children up in uncertainty, never allowing them to feel that they were secure in her affections, but always making her acceptance of them depend on their behavior, and leaving them in doubt throughout all their formative years as to whether finally she would accept them at all. There are such kinds of mothers, unfortunately, in the world. Curiously maimed people, with curious eye perfectionist, neurotic perfectionist ideas on the bringing up of infants. But all our hearts surely would maintain that it is a mother's prime function to assure her children that she does accept them, and though she is exceedingly keen on their behavior and their moral development, nevertheless, her acceptance of them, her love of them is not dependent on their behavior. Yet, curiously, when we come to God, who is infinite in love, where we come to a situation where the issues are infinitely more important than is a mother's acceptance of a child, it is commonly held, in fact, it is preached in the name of religion, and indeed in some quarters in the name of Christianity, that it is altogether impossible and wrong for a man to believe he can be certain of his salvation here and now. It all must be left in suspense, so they say. If that stands at the extreme of what I should call too little, we have, on the other hand, a widely held popular conception that I should call a, a too much deduction from the love of God. It runs, if I might, uh, put it briefly, that God is such a God of love, that all men, no matter how they have lived, no matter whether they have cared in this life to have to do with God, and whether they have received his son and confessed him as Lord, or whether they've gone their merry, careless way, all men at last shall turn up in God's heaven. On the face of it, you might suspect the doctrine because, as I say, on the face of it, it is childish. Has God some kind of a fairy mother's wand? That when men die at the end, he waves it over them and, uh, hey presto, they are good and acceptable in his sight, whereas they weren't acceptable on Earth. Then I ask, why doesn't God use the wand a bit more liberally while men are in this life? Is it that God has some special vision reserved for men who in this life have obstinately refused to accept him or e- or yet his son, that he has some kind of vision that he will apply when they reach the other side that will in a trice convert them. Then I suggest if he is a god of love, he disclose the vision now, for many quite obviously are in sore need of it. And if thousand or more years of suffering in some kind of a purgatory would make a man fit for God after he has finished this life, well, in the name of divine love, let the purgatory now begin. Let it begin here. Let God make a hell of this life, that he might bring men at last to his heaven in the next. Now it's a childish idea. There is no such magic wand. There is no such extra vision. There is nothing on the other side that will make a man a little bit different. But it is argued, is not God a God of love? And if God be a God of love, how is it possible that he would ever punish a man? How is it possible that he would permanently reject a man? A deduction, false. A deduction that would turn the love of God to a mere careless sentiment. The extreme absurdity is reached, of course, in men who try to hold both of those views together. On the one hand, that, um, God will eventually bring everybody somehow to his heaven, however they have lived on earth, because he's a God of love, and yet at the same time, the proposition that no one here on earth can be sure that he will be saved. You will perceive at once the contradiction between the two. If you can't be sure you're saved, then you can't be sure, in spite of God's love. If everybody's going to be saved in the end, then you can be sure. You can't hold both without becoming absurd. The contradiction, of course, is not in the teaching of Christ. When we go back to what he himself taught, it did at least make sense. The contradictions have come about, I submit to you, because in what Christ taught about the love of God, there were certain profoundly disturbing elements. And being what we are, we find the disturbing elements somewhat distasteful, and we, uh, prefer to forget them or water them down. But of course, seeing those elements were an integral part of what Christ taught, if you omit them, then you arrive at an account of his teaching that is contradictious and nonsensical. We must, therefore, if we have the courage, we must go back and face the records again and ask ourselves exactly what Christ did teach about God, about his love, and about his holiness. I would like, if I may, to cite in this connection certain passages and excerpts from our Lord's teaching. And in particular, his teaching on morality, if I may use that term in the widest possible sense, not in that strict and, uh, limited sense, uh, of sexual morality, but the whole array of human behavior. And I would like to point out how his most famous sermons, the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, are geared to demonstrating to his hearers how lamentably inadequate were men's ideas of morality. Now, it's a very interesting thing, if you will take the trouble to read the historic documents and notice the context in which Christ preached these things. It's a very interesting thing to find that when he preached these sermons on morality, he wasn't, uh, particularly addressing his remarks, uh, to the, uh, sinners amongst men. When he so powerfully pointed out men's inadequate ideas of morals, he wasn't particularly addressing himself to the prostitutes on the street, or yet the drunkards, informing them that prostitution was a sin which they hadn't known before, and drunkenness was altogether to be regretted, wasn't that? In fact, uh, you will very find, very seldom find our Lord, at least as recorded in the, in the historical documents, preaching sermons on morality to those people who were blatantly immoral in our modern sense. The simple reason that most of them knew they were sinners. And found it easy to recognize the rightness of God's call on them to repent. The people that needed this kind of treatment were, uh, strangely enough, the more religious amongst men. The people who were so decent in their behavior that in their heart of hearts they genuinely thought they were in the running to gain acceptance with God. And if they couldn't be sure of it exactly here and now, that they were definitely saved, yet, uh, they were persuaded in their inner hearts that give them a few more years and a little more endeavor, they would pull themselves over the pass mark at any rate, and had good hopes at last of being accepted by God on the ground of their moral striving. It was to them our Lord came out with his powerful statement, except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will in no wise enter the kingdom of God. Now, what did he mean? Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. We must be very careful here. Some scribes, some Pharisees were given to a little unconscious hypocrisy, you know, saying prayers but doing very little good. Our Lord wasn't tilting at that. This was the sort of thing he meant. He said, you, for instance, hold it wrong, do you not, to murder? And you feel within your heart of hearts that, of course, you haven't yet gone to the extreme of sin because you've never plunged a dagger into anybody's heart. You've never mixed a little cyanide with anybody's drink. And therefore, the impression begins to grow upon you that, uh, as I say, given a little more opportunity, you will qualify for a place in God's acceptance in heaven. That is lamentably inadequate. There are more ways, one, of killing a man, of course. You happen to be a very, very powerful, wealthy businessman, you can gang up with another very powerful and wealthy businessman, and you can put your prices down to the lowest in order deliberately to drive a third businessman out of business, and you can do it if you want to. And you needn't care whether it brings him to a nervous breakdown and a mental home permanently, for you never will be charged with murder in the courts. But even that isn't really getting at the heart of what our Lord is saying. He's saying this. It's not sufficient not to put a dagger in somebody, but whosoever is angry with his brother, angry in the sense of uncontrolled passion. Anger that springs from selfishness. Whosoever is angry with his brother, whosoever speaks in a moment of temper, irresponsible words against his brother. That man is da- in danger of hellfire, said our Lord. You see, it's not the outward act that is all important, though of course it is better that you don't kill a man, whatever you feel. But, um, it's a matter of the heart, says our Lord. Those evil, sinister reactions that all of us find springing in our hearts. We may have disciplined ourselves not to let them translate themselves into actual deeds, but that th- that they are there at all, says Christ, renders a man in danger of hellfire. All right, said Christ, you think you're qualifying for God's acceptance because you've never actually committed adultery. So, and it's a good thing. But let not that, uh, deceive a man into thinking that all is well. For the man that has let his mind play on a woman who is married, or a married man who has let his mind play on a woman who isn't married, and allowed it so to continue. God counts it just as evil. For this is the thing. The outward act is wrong, but no less serious is the inner act. It is not what we do merely, but what we are, Christ is saying. Not our external acts merely, but our inner heart that is so desperately wrong. Not only is Christ, uh, speaking like this when it comes to the negative side of morality, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. But likewise, he brings things down to the internal, to the spiritual, to the matter of our hearts, when he announces what positive morality is. You've heard, he said, people say that you should love your neighbor and, um, hate your enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemy, positively love him, pray for him, bless him. Do good to him. That's not a kind of deluxe edition of Christianity, a sort of a super duper standard, an additional course for the exceptional saints. This is the minimum below which if a man fall, then he has no chance of acceptance with God on the ground of having performed God's moral law. And when one, uh, good lawyer asked him on one occasion what was the chiefest of all the commandments, put in a nutshell, Lord, he said, uh, what in your view i- is morality in a nutshell? It wasn't thou shalt not do this or thou shalt not do that. This is the whole heart of the matter, he said. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy mind, all thy soul, and all thy strength. That is the law. To fail to love the Lord our God with our minds. That is to break the biggest and the greatest commandment. Breaking the biggest and the greatest of the commandments is by definition the biggest and the greatest sin. We do need, I submit, in our modern world, to get our perspectives right. For if this be God's demand, then it is, is it not obvious that all of us, without any exception, come short? And at this point, we must be very careful once more, lest we take the wrong turn. When our Lord said, and so illustrated his point, that except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of scribe and Pharisee, you will not enter the kingdom of God. He wasn't criticizing their standards so that he should map out now his standards as a way of salvation. He wasn't saying in a word, now they have not done enough. If you wish to enter God's kingdom, you must do a little bit better. He wasn't doing that. He was indeed enunciating the way of his kingdom. But the rules of his kingdom are one thing. The way into his kingdom is quite another. Let us listen to our Lord's diagnosis of what is wrong and what is necessary. Here again, perhaps, our ideas of what our Lord taught on the subject of morality, uh, might need some revising. For after all, is it not the common notion, to put it crudely, that the way into God's kingdom is to be good? And so long as if we reach a moderately decent standard of goodness at last, we have hopes of getting in. And that, of course, being good does mean keeping the law, it does mean, uh, keeping the golden rule and doing unto my neighbor as I would my neighbor does unto me, at least doing it fairly often. That, of course, springs again from a lamentably inadequate notion of God's standards of morality. It is, in fact, quite an impossible method. As our Lord pointed out to the learned rabbi from Jerusalem, the way into God's kingdom, he says, is not by moral effort in the sense of keeping the moral rules and regulations. Rather, is it thus with a man, that a man is so sinful, falls so lamentably short of God's standards, that unless he be born again, he shall not enter the kingdom of God. When Nicodemus raised his eyebrows at that, our Lord explained, did he not? You'll see it is like this, Nicodemus. It is not so much what a man does as what's as what a man is. And whatever is born of flesh is flesh. And in as much as the human nature with which we are born is a perverted thing, is a sinful thing, it were altogether inadequate to think that by some course i- in moral training, you were going to turn that fleshly human nature into something fit for God's kingdom. It cannot and is not done, says our Lord. Something far more drastic is needed, namely that a man be regenerated, that God perform a function upon that man's whole being, that the man be born again so that he can enter into the kingdom of God. But now, if it be granted that the, the Jesus Christ of history expounded God's standards of morality in this fashion, we ought next to ask, did we not, how seriously did he regard our breach of God's moral law? In a word, h- how much does it matter? This perhaps is one of the most profoundly disturbing things that our Lord ever said. We may need to brace ourselves just now for the next five minutes to face it. Yet face it we must. If ever we are going to understand God's love, and discover it for ourselves and enjoy it as love that is genuine love and not mere weak wishy-washy sentiment, we must face what our Lord taught about the seriousness of man's breach of God's moral law. He taught us that God's moral law is absolute, not relative. He taught us that God's moral law is eternal, not merely temporary. It isn't like a game of rugby. Within any one game, of course, you must keep to the same rules, must you not, as you come to some confusion. But you know, if after having played rugby, um, for ten years, you have made a mess of it that way, well, perhaps somebody will change the rules for rugby next time, and you'll be able to find, uh, much better rules that suit you. Not so with God's moral law. Our Lord taught that it is unchangeable, that heaven and earth would pass away before one jot or tittle of that law should fail. It sounded strange coming from him, at least perhaps it doesn't sound strange to us, it sounded strange to his contemporaries. For the Pharisees in particular, so we are told by, uh, more than one historian, had got themselves into the way of somewhat deriding Jesus Christ of Nazareth. They were very skeptical, skeptical of his popular evangelizing of the crowds. His receiving men and women and saying their sins were forgiven and assuring them that they were accepted by God and they were saved. Superior Pharisees had taken to, uh, even denouncing our Lord for this. They said this was the height of immorality. This would play into the arms of lax living, they said. And what you ought to preach is, is that man does depend on his moral striving. And they said, you know, if you kept, uh, if you kept people like that on their tiptoes, then you would get the maximum of good behavior out of them, wouldn't you? So long as you kept them on their tiptoes, never knowing for certain what would happen to them i- in eternity. And so they dubbed our Lord his rather inefficient theologian and altogether too lax. There came days when he turned the tables. May I remind you of one of them? Our Lord had been speaking to his disciples, not now of the condition upon which they might enter God's kingdom or nor yet his heaven, but speaking to men whom he had assured of eternal life. He began to, uh, tell them how now to conduct themselves. Now they were saved. Now they were sure of entrance to God's heaven at last and kingdom, and he began to show them the attitude they must adopt to material things, the mammon of unrighteousness, he called it. He urged them to use all their assets, whatever they were, financial or mental, that they should use them for the furtherance of God's kingdom, for the benefit of their fellow men, that they might make friends thereby, friends of the sort that they should meet again in the life to come, in the kingdom of God. This was a new idea to Pharisees, to take religion so seriously that it affected your cash, that it affected your private life. The idea that eternity is so real, that you can treat this life and eternity in a sort of a business-like manner and deliberately live, so that eternity will be stocked for you with friends. And as one historian tells us, it cut them to the quick. At heart, they were lovers of money. And their reaction was openly to deride this young preacher from Nazareth. They never heard anything so, so ridiculous in all their life, they said. Isn't this absurd and extreme. Living for eternity, conducting your business in the light of eternity. They merited what they got. Said our Lord, gentlemen, who seem to have some loose idea of God's morality. You should be careful, lest your standards are merely relative standards. That you are being good and respectable because it's a good thing to be respectable i- in the sight of your fellow men and townsmen. God knows your hearts, gentlemen. The fact is that God's moral standards are so absolute that not one jot or tittle shall be remitted, though heaven and earth pass away. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but God's word shall not pass away, said our Lord. This is something eternal. He went on to tell that famous story of a man who, with much show of religion, had trifled with God's moral standards, had taken the view that after all they were relative, that so be it, so be it a man doesn't keep them too well, well, in the end all will be all right. The famous story, and as far as I read the historians, we have no right to call it a parable. Of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus. Both died, you remember. Both opened their eyes on eternity. The rich man in hell and in torment. Why in hell? Certainly not because he was rich. Christ was no rabid socialist or communist. But he had professed to be religious. He had professed to believe a Bible that said, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. For all his profession, he did not really believe that the Bible meant what it said. He found out that God's moral standards are absolute and eternal. One of the most profoundly disturbing things, perhaps, our Lord ever uttered... was his description of that man's position. There is, said he, a great gulf fixed. It was because our Lord believed that and taught that, that he was heard not seldom to advise his fellow men in this kind of term. Better, he said, if you find your hand or your eye or your foot causing you to stumble and leading you into sin, into breach of God's moral law, better for you that you cut off the hand, that you plucked out the eye, that you entered into this life maimed and at disadvantage, than that you sin and be cast into hell. And he pressed home his exhortation with another of those reminders that God's moral law is absolute and eternal. He said, there in hell, their worm dieth not. The fire is not quenched. He was, I know, borrowing phrases from the Old Testament, where the prophet is describing some whom God will be obliged to make an object lesson of in a coming day, physically. If a body, if a dead body is left, it rots. The worms eat it until there is nothing more to be eaten, and then they go. If you burn a corpse in fire, the fire will burn until there is no more corpse left. But of these people, it is said that their worms shall not die. Their flame shall not go out. Somehow Somehow. theirs is to be a permanent and eternal condition. Those words our Lord takes and applies them to the spiritual realm to impress upon us how absolute, how eternal are God's moral standards. Their worm shall not die either. Their fire shall not go out. Who have fallen below God's holy requirements and have not availed themselves of God's salvation. Somebody will say, but this is extraordinarily gloomy, and have we not wandered somewhat away from the love of God with which we began? It is gloomy. But I repeat, if ever we are going to understand what God's love is, and how that love has expressed itself in salvation, if ever we're going to have a view of God's love as something more than cheap sentiment, a fantasy of wishful thinking, we must first of all face our own moral state as God sees it. Let us be assured at once that God loves us even though we are yet sinners. Let us understand the magnitude of that love by first seeing in what kind of moral condition God sees us. For there is certainly forgiveness. And though God's moral law is absolute and eternal, there is a way of pardon, there is a way of release from what otherwise would be an utterly inescapable condition. There is a forgiveness. But even here we shall observe that the way of God's forgiveness, the way of man's salvation, as it is described in the New Testament, is one of the profoundest statements of morality that you will find anywhere in all the Bible. God's forgiveness is not quite the easygoing thing some people imagine. Oh, I know we have quoted to us the parable of the prodigal son. We are told that this is God, this father that longed for the man to come back, and when he came back, welcomed him in, just like that, and restored him to his position, and conveniently forgot about the past. Now, it is true indeed that when a sinner comes back in genuine repentance towards God, God will receive him, and indeed he will go further than some people would have him go. He will assure the man that he is accepted and never will be cast out, that is sure. That particular parable was aimed at get out- getting under the skin of men who were behaving like the elder brother, who were objecting to people being saved and knowing it. And in consequence, that particular parable doesn't concern itself to illustrate the, what I might call the mechanics, the philosophy, the basis of God's forgiveness. And so we wa- we need to be very wary of the sort of proposition that because God is a God of love, he will welcome anybody at any time and will never punish anybody and doesn't, uh, really need a sacrifice before he will forgive men. For our Lord himself put it this way. As he instituted what became the earliest of all the ceremonies that the early church kept. As he instituted the Holy Communion, he took wine as a symbol of his blood, and he said, this is my blood which is shed for the forgiveness of sins. You notice that term? This is my blood which is shed for the forgiveness of sins. You will perceive at once, it is not merely an airy and breezy matter of coming back to God and saying, all right, now let's start from square one. There are accounts to be settled. God's morality will not be at peace until those ca- accounts are honorably and fully settled. What did he mean when he said that he had shed his blood, he was going to shed his blood for forgiveness? Let me quote you another saying of his that he made around about this time. The Son of Man, he said, is not come to serve, uh, to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. He was, of course, alluding, as those who know their Old Testament will perceive, to the great servant song, the great prophecy of Isaiah, in which, before Messiah came, his redemptive role was sketched out. How that Messiah was to be bruised for our iniquities and wounded for our transgressions. How that the chastisement of our peace was to be on him. How that we were to be healed if we would, but healed only through his stripe. And that famous prophecy, you will remember, contains that profound phrase. It pleased the Lord to bruise him. Thou hast put him to grief. Thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. I would not pretend to try and explain the atonement. Who can pierce through that veil of thick darkness which God caused to surround our Lord's cross, or adequately describe what our Lord meant when he cried that God had forsaken him? But evident it is that when our Lord hung upon the cross, God bruised him. God put him to grief. That somehow, on that occasion, God took up with him the controversy of human sin. And in the coin of suffering, Christ paid the ransom that would deliver mankind from an impasse that otherwise would be eternal. Oh yes, God certainly wanted to forgive. But the love of God that seeks to forgive men is not an easygoing, carefree love that will take the view that sin doesn't matter. For gentlemen, if God took the view that sin doesn't matter, who knows and who would guarantee that heaven wouldn't turn out to be the hell that this earth has turned out to be? God cares. There shall be no Hitlers in heaven to gas six million Jews, simply because God cares about sin. And there won't be men in heaven that diddle the income tax either, because the way that God cares about sin is absolute. And God, yes, God will forgive a man, and God will receive him. But not at the expense of saying sin doesn't matter. It matters. And because sin matters. Our Lord informed us in the days of his flesh, that he would have to be lifted up. The Son of Man, he said, must be lifted up, so that whosoever believes in him should not perish. This is coming, of course, as we well know, to the heart of the Christian gospel. The cross of Christ is the place par excellence where we may see the love of God in all its staggering and breathtaking dimensions. It still staggers people, even those who talk about God's love, it still staggers people when they are told that the sacrifice of Christ is so valid and has covered sin so thoroughly, that now God is prepared to offer a man forgiveness, absolute forgiveness. That God is prepared to tell a man that if he repent and receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, then the man is saved now and shall remain saved eternally. It staggers people to discover that the love of God is so infinite that it has paid all the expense of human sin. That God's love is so courageous that it is prepared to tell a man here and now on earth, not to keep him in suspense, but to tell a man here on earth that God has received him, and that all his sin, past, present, and future, is covered by that great atoning sacrifice of Christ. That is a staggering thing. And would God our fellow men and women knew it, all of them. Would God that our fellow men and women daily enjoyed the love of God in that so realistic way. But the love of God finds all its security here, that it is realistic. God has estimated my sin. God has paid for my sin. He hasn't got to pretend that I'm better than I am. He knows what I am. He will never be surprised by what I shall subsequently do, for he know- knew it from the start. It doesn't mean that if I trust Christ and receive God's assurance of salvation, that thereafter I am free to go on and live as I please? Certainly not. There was an occasion, you remember, when some people got this wrong. A woman had been taken in adultery and brought before our Lord. I needn't repeat all the details of how the religious people of the day who were out to overturn his ideas of evangelism thought they were going to get him in a cleft stick and make him look fool. The upshot of the story was that that woman too found forgiveness. Found in our Lord the assurance that she would never come into condemnation. There were people around, and they heard this, and presently they said they believed, and they came along to the Lord to be taught. All right, said our Lord, we, we take it from here, do we? You believe. You are now converted. You are a Christian. Very good. Now, he said, now this is the next lesson. When a man knows, you know, that he is, uh, saved and he will never come into condemnation, when a man knows that he is loved of God and God will never cast him out, then begins the next lesson where God begins to really get down to the root of that man's sin and begins to straighten out his personality. Now he said, gentlemen, if you continue in my word, you will be my disciples indeed, and you shall progressively get to know the truth, and the truth shall progressively set you free. Free from what, they said. Uh, free from sin, he said. What do you think? They said, look here, we'd thank you to say a little less about sin. We're getting a little bit weary of this, you know. We don't like your innuendos. You'd think that we were vicious people. You keep talking about, uh, being in bondage to sin. We dislike the term, they said. Oh, indeed, said our Lord, you do. Then, gentlemen, you see, unfortunately, this is what salvation is about, being freed from sin. They got angry. He had to be blunt. The man that thinks that there is a salvation that permits the man thereafter to go on and do as he please, thereby shows himself on the wrong side. You, said our Lord, are of your father, the devil. But where a man has genuinely planted and received Christ and trusted in his atoning sacrifice, in that man you will find, however much he falters, a genuine desire to go on with Christ in Christ's school and allow Christ progressively to set him free from sin. But do you not see how sound is this method? It may be long, who knows how long, before that man shall be fully and finally set free from the last quirk, the last sinful attitude. I now see the love of God that has paid all the expenses of his education and guarantees to the man that his acceptance with God does not depend on how well he progresses. Therein does the man find courage to turn round and face himself and to begin those long struggles, those bitter and painful struggles that ensue when Christ really turns a man inside out and met- gets that man to look at himself realistically. So then salvation through the love of Christ, through the sacrifice of Christ, is possible on these terms. But it must start here. That a man find out the inadequacy of his own morals and strength, and learn what it is to trust the Savior. For if one verse tells us that God so loved the world that he gave his Son, that whosoever believeth should have eternal life, its adjacent verse tells us how Christ must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish. The term was borrowed from an Old Testament story, which briefly put was this, that when the Israelites on an occasion had sinned and were bitten by serpents in God's judgment, God commanded that a brazen serpent be lifted up on a pole, and he proclaimed it that whosoever should look to that pole should live. Said our Lord to Nicodemus, theologian, said he, Nicodemus, now this will be the mechanics. I shall be lifted up, referring, of course, to his cross and sacrifice. And the way of a man's salvation is this, it starts here when the man learns to look, when he learns to believe. They only looked to that serpent in ancient times, who had come to the deliberate admission that their wound was incurable. I am persuaded that there are many men who have never yet entered into peace with God, who cannot honestly say that they are saved and have eternal life, I am convinced in my own heart that the reason is here. They have never yet accepted God's standards of morality. And so, instead of abandoning faith in themselves and looking solely to Christ and his cross and sacrifice, they look within. They look for rising feelings of worthiness. They seek to see how they could merit being saved. They look for some improvement of conduct. Until these things appear, they wouldn't dare to say they were saved. Consciously or unconsciously, they are trying to build themselves up, something in themselves that will bring them over the bar, high enough to be sure that God loves them and has received them. It were a kindness, so to batter down their self-confidence by display and demonstration of God's standards of morality, that in desperation, if need be, in despair of themselves, they shall learn to look completely away from self and put their trust only in the Savior and in his atoning sacrifice upon the cross.