[In order to come under this title, it is necessary that you should have been " begotten with the incorruptible seed, the Word of God," and been brought into God's family by the renewing influences of his Spirit. It is not supposed that you have grown to any stature in the family of Christ, but, on the contrary, that you have either recently " come out of darkness into the marvellous light of the Gospel," or, at least, made very little advance in the divine life. You are, however, born again. You have seen your guilt and helplessness ; you have fled to Christ for refuge : you have sought for mercy through the blood and righteousness of your incarnate God. You have obtained a new nature : and, though you are yet weak in all your faculties and all your powers, there is no part in you that is wholly unrenewed. Your understanding, though dark, is enlightened with some rays from the Sun of Righteous- ness. Your affections, though far from pure, are yet, on the whole, turned to God, and heavenly things. The Divine image, though far from perfect, is, in a measure, formed upon your souls ; so that it already appears whose you are, by the re- semblance which you bear to your heavenly Father.
Hear then the privileges which belong to you. In the first place, we declare from God himself, that " your sins are forgiven you." Whatever they may have been, however numerous, however heinous, (God makes no distinction, nor can we presume to make any,) they are all " blotted out of the book of God's remembrance," nor shall so much as one of them ever appear in judgment against you. From the first moment that you believed in Christ, and became truly re- generate, this was your happy portion : you were not to wait for it till a life of holiness should confirm your title to it : a free and full pardon was yours, the very instant you became a child of God. But remember for whose sake this pardon has been bestowed upon you. It has not been for your own sake ; for you deserved nothing but wrath ; yea, if God at this moment were to enter into judgment with you according to your present deserts, you must inevitably perish. God has had respect to his dear Son: and " for his sake" has forgiven you. The pardon you enjoy, was bought with the precious blood of Christ. It is altogether on account of what Christ has done and suffered for you, that you have found acceptance. " There is no other name given under heaven whereby you, or any other sinner, can be saved, but the name of Jesus Christ."
Further, it is said of you, that " ye have known the Father." Your views of the Gospel arc at present very partial, and con- fused. You merely see that you were sinners before God: and that God, in infinite mercy, sent his only-begotten Son to die for you; and that through the death of Christ you are to
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obtain mercy. Hence you are emboldened to look unto God as reconciled to you in Christ Jesus ; and with a spirit of adoption to cry, Abba, Father. Thus, though you see as yet but little of the work and offices of Christ, you know the Father as a just, yet merciful, and gracious God.]
II. We would next address "you, young men" —
[As in the natural world children grow up to manhood, so in the spiritual world there is a similar progress to maturity. We might proceed to draw the necessary distinctions between your infantile and adult state : but the privileges annexed to your state in the words of our text, will serve at the same time to mark the progress which you have made in the divine life ; and therefore we shall confine ourselves to them.