PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Great Commission. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, vol. IV
Mackintosh, Charles Henry, 1820-1896 · 116,580 words · 166 reading sections
Part 121
Reader, think of this, we beseech you. Think deeply, think seriously. If thou art unconverted, think of it for thyself, for, assuredly, it concerns thee. And if thou art converted, think of it for others, as the apostle says, "Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." It is impossible for anyone to reflect upon…
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Thus it is, we feel persuaded, with hundreds of the true saints of God. They do not see God as the Condemner of sin in Christ on the cross, and the Justifier of the believing sinner in Christ rising from the dead. They are looking to Christ on the cross to screen them from God as a Judge, instead of looking to God as a…
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But, then, let us ask, Whence this dread of having all our naughtiness exposed at the judgment-seat of Christ? Does not He know all about us? Are we more afraid of being manifested to the gaze of men and angels than to the gaze of our blessed and adorable Lord? If we are manifested to Him, what matters it to whom besid…
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All this must be sedulously avoided. The grace that has delivered us from judgment should exert a more powerful influence upon our ways than the fear of that judgment. And not only so, but we must remember that while we, _as sinners_, are delivered from judgment and wrath, yet, _as servants_, we must give account of ou…
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These two things should never be separated, and they never will be in any divinely taught mind or divinely regulated conscience. They will be perfectly joined together, and, in holy harmony, exert their formative power over the soul. It should be our aim to walk, even now, in the light of the judgment-seat. This would …
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And what, let us ask, is sin? It is the acting of the will in opposition to God. It is doing our own pleasure--doing what we like ourselves. This is the root--this the source of sin. Let it take what shape, or clothe itself in what forms it may; be it gross or be it most refined in its actings, the great root-principle…
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The fact is, the enemy does not want souls to see that, in the death of Christ, sentence was passed on fallen human nature and upon the whole world. This was not the case in incarnation at all. An incarnate Christ put man to the test--a dead Christ put man to death--a risen Christ takes the believer into union with Him…
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Nor is the distinction by any means unimportant. The word "atonement," or "propitiation," occurs, in some one or other of its forms, six times in the Greek New Testament. (See carefully Luke xviii. 13; Rom. iii. 25; Heb. ii. 17; ix. 5; 1 John ii. 2; iv. 10.) The word "reconciliation" occurs, in one or other of its form…
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But we must not enlarge, much as we should like to do so. Little remains to be said as to the _objects_ of the ministry of reconciliation, inasmuch as we have, in a measure, anticipated them by speaking of "men and things," for these are, in very deed, the objects, and they are included in that comprehensive word "worl…
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And now we must close, and we do it reluctantly. We do it with a certain painful consciousness of the feebleness and poverty of our handling of this lofty and comprehensive theme. But all this we must leave in the Master's hand. He knows all about the subject and the treatment thereof--all about the reader and the writ…
236 wordsSECTION 131THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS
Some call Him a Saviour, in word, But mix their own works with His plan; And hope He His help will afford, When they have done all that they can: If doings prove rather too light (A little they own they may fail), They purpose to make up full weight, By casting His name in the scale. Some style Him "the Pearl of great…
167 wordsSECTION 132THE GREAT COMMISSION
"And He said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me. Then opened He their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them,…
241 wordsSECTION 133THE COMMISSION ITSELF.
The apostles of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ were specially charged to preach "repentance and remission of sins." Let us all remember this. We are prone to forget it, to the serious damaging of our preaching, and of the souls of our hearers. Some of us are apt to overlook the first part of the commission, in our e…
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Now, in the face of this body of evidence--with the example of our Lord and His apostles so fully and clearly before us--may we not very lawfully inquire whether there is not a serious defect in much of our modern preaching? Do we preach repentance as we ought? Do we assign to it the place which it gets in the preachin…
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We are not aware of any formal definition of the subject furnished by the Holy Ghost. He does not tell us in so many words what repentance is; but the more we study the Word in reference to the great question, the more deeply we feel convinced that true repentance involves the solemn judgment of ourselves, our conditio…
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Man must take his true place before God, and that is the place of self-judgment, contrition of heart, real sorrow for sin, and true confession. It is here the gospel meets him. The fulness of God ever waits on an empty vessel, and a truly repentant soul is the empty vessel into which all the fulness and grace of God ca…
336 wordsSECTION 137PART II.
Since writing our last paper, we have been much interested in the way in which repentance is presented in those inimitable parables in Luke XV. There we learn, in a manner the most touching and convincing, not only the abiding and universal necessity,--the moral fitness in every case of true repentance,--but also that …
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It will perhaps be said that the words just quoted apply to Israel. Primarily, they do; but morally they apply to every contrite heart on the face of the earth. And, further, it cannot be said that Luke xv. applies specially to Israel. It applies to all. "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinne…
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Thus it is always. The fulness of God ever waits on an empty vessel. If I am full of myself, full of my own fancied goodness, my own morality, my own righteousness, I have no room for God, no room for Christ. "He filleth the _hungry_ with good things; but the _rich_ He hath sent _empty_ away." A self-emptied soul can b…
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It is not possible to conceive anything higher or fuller than the grace that shines out here. It is a part of the divine response to the prayer of Christ on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." This surely is royal grace. It is victorious grace--grace reigning through righteousness. It was…
512 wordsSECTION 141PART III.
We shall now turn for a few moments to the ministry of the apostle of the Gentiles, and see how he fulfilled the great commission. We have already heard him on the subject of "repentance." Let us hear him also on the great question of "remission of sins." Paul was not of the twelve. He did not receive his commission f…
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But how do we know that every man in his natural, unconverted state is blind? Because, according to Paul's commission, the very first thing which the gospel is to do for him is "to open his eyes." This proves, beyond all question, that he must be blind. Paul was sent to the people and to the Gentiles--that is, to the w…
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God's word, then, most distinctly declares that man in his natural, unrenewed, unconverted state is Satan's bondslave. It speaks of Satan as "the god of this world," as "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." It speaks of man as "led captive by the devil at his…
763 wordsSECTION 144PART IV.
Having in the former papers dwelt a little upon the _terms_ of "the great commission," we shall now, in dependence upon divine teaching, seek to unfold the truth as to the _basis_. It is of the greatest importance to have a clear understanding of the solid ground on which "repentance and remission of sins" are announce…
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This is most needful, owing to the excessive levity of our hearts. We are ready enough to receive the truth of the remission of sins, and then go on in an easy, self-indulgent, world-loving spirit, thus proving how feebly we enter into the sufferings of our blessed Lord, or into the real nature of sin. All this is trul…
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And what must be the result of all this? We can hardly bear to contemplate it. We greatly fear that, should our Lord tarry, the fruit of much of what is going on around us will be a terrible combination of the very highest profession with the very lowest practice. It cannot be otherwise. High truth taken up in a light,…
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Christian reader! art thou one with us in this current of thought and feeling? If so, then let us most earnestly entreat thee to join us in earnest prayer to God that He will graciously raise our spiritual tone by drawing us closer to Himself, and filling our hearts with love to Him and earnest desire for the promotion…
73 wordsSECTION 148PART V.
In pursuing our subject, we have yet to consider the _authority_ and the _sphere_ of "the great commission;" but ere proceeding to treat of these we must dwell a little longer on the _basis_. The commission is truly a great one, and would need a solid foundation on which to rest it; and such it has, blessed be God, in …
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Yet there it stands, a stupendous fact before the eye of faith. Our blessed Lord Himself assures us that it was absolutely necessary. "Thus it is written, and thus it _behooved_ Christ to suffer." But why was it necessary? Why should the only perfect, sinless, spotless Man have to suffer? Why should He be forsaken of G…
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But we would here put a question which arises naturally out of our present thesis. It is this: Was Christ judged, bruised and forsaken on the cross--did God visit His only begotten and well beloved Son with the full weight of His righteous wrath against sin--and shall impenitent sinners escape? We solemnly press this q…
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We shall have occasion to recur to the foregoing line of thought when we come to consider the _authority_ on which "the great commission" comes to us. We have been drawn into it by the sad fact that in every direction, and on every subject, we are assailed by the contemptible reasonings of infidelity; and we feel imper…
141 wordsSECTION 152PART VI.
We have seen that the _basis_ of "the great commission" is the death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This must never be lost sight of. "It behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day." It is a risen Christ that sends forth His heralds to preach "repentance and remission of …
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No marvel, therefore, if the apostles, filled as they were with the Holy Ghost, persistently and powerfully presented the magnificent truth of resurrection. Hear them again before the council--a council composed of the great religious leaders and guides of the people. "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye sl…
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From all this it is perfectly plain that the blessed apostle Paul gave a most prominent place in all his preachings to the glorious truth of resurrection. Whether he addresses a congregation of Jews in the synagogue at Antioch, or an assembly of Gentiles on Mars' Hill at Athens, he presents a risen Christ. In a word, h…
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Here lies the grand point of the apostle's blessed and powerful argument. We must, if we would have settled peace, believe in God as the One who raised up Jesus from the dead, and who in so doing proved Himself friendly to us, and proved too His infinite satisfaction in the work of the Cross. Jesus, having been "delive…
337 wordsSECTION 156PART VII.
We are now called to consider the deeply important subject of the _authority_ on which the great commission proceeds. This we have presented to us in that one commanding and most comprehensive sentence "_It is written_"--a sentence which ought to be engraved in characters deep and broad on the tablet of every Christian…
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"And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were no…
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But not only did the Son of God--Himself, as God, the Author of every line of Holy Scripture--use the word of God as His only weapon against the enemy, but He made it also the basis and the material of His public ministry. When His conflict in the wilderness was over, "He returned in the power of the Spirit into Galile…
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But we turn to Luke xxiv., and listen to the glowing words uttered in the ears of the two bewildered travelers to Emmaus--words which are the sure and blessed remedy for all bewilderment--the perfect solution of every honest difficulty--the divine and all-satisfying answer to every upright inquiry. We do not quote the …
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Here we might close this branch of our subject, but we feel bound to furnish our readers with two more uncommonly fine illustrations of our thesis; one from the Acts, and one from the Epistles. In Acts xxiv. the apostle Paul, in his address to Felix, thus expresses himself as to the ground of his faith: "But this I con…
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These figures are feebleness itself when used to illustrate the egregious folly of submitting the Holy Scriptures to the judgment of any human mind. No, reader, the word of God speaks for itself. It carries its own powerful credentials with it. Its own internal evidences are amply sufficient for every pious, right-mind…
484 wordsSECTION 162PART VIII.
In full keeping with all that has passed in review before us is the _sphere_ of "the great commission," as set forth in that comprehensive clause, "_Among all nations_." Such was to be the wide range of those heralds whom the risen Lord was sending forth to preach "repentance and remission of sins." Theirs was emphatic…
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Precious grace of God! May it be published with increased energy and clearness throughout the divinely appointed sphere. Alas, alas, that those who know it should be so slow to make it known to others! That slowness is, most surely, not of God. He absolutely delights in the publication of His saving, pardoning grace. H…
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But we must draw this paper, and this series of papers, to a close. We might do so here, were it not that there is one more point in our subject which we feel must not be omitted, and that is the _power_ by which "the great commission" was to be carried out. To leave this out would be a great defect, a serious blank in…
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True, He called on man to judge himself, to repent, to take his only true and proper place. Why not? How could it be otherwise? Repentance is--as we have already fully shown and earnestly insisted upon in these papers--a universal and abiding necessity for man. But the Spirit of God came down to speak face to face with…
355 wordsSECTION 166C. H. M.
* * * * * Transcriber's note: Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.…
18 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.