ALAS! I CAN DO NOTHING!
AFTER THE ANXIOUS HEART has accepted the doctrine of
atonement, and learned the great truth that salvation is by faith
in the Lord Jesus, it is often sore troubled with a sense of
inability toward that which is good. Many are groaning, "I can do
nothing." They are not making this into an excuse, but they feel
it as a daily burden. They would if they could. They can each one
honestly say, "To will is present with me, but how to perform
that which I would I find not."
This feeling seems to make all the gospel null and void; for
what is the use of food to a hungry man if he cannot get at it?
Of what avail is the river of the water of life if one cannot
drink? We recall the story of the doctor and the poor woman's
child. The sage practitioner told the mother that her little one
would soon be better under proper treatment, but it was
absolutely needful that her boy should regularly drink the best
wine, and that he should spend a season at one of the German
spas. This, to a widow who could hardly get bread to eat! Now, it
sometimes seems to the troubled heart that the simple gospel of
"Believe and live," is not, after all, so very simple; for it
asks the poor sinner to do what he cannot do. To the really
awakened, but half instructed, there appears to be a missing
link; yonder is the salvation of Jesus, but how is it to be
reached? The soul is without strength, and knows not what to do.
It lies within sight of the city of refuge, and cannot enter its
gate.
Is this want of strength provided for in the plan of
salvation? It is. The work of the Lord is perfect. It begins
where we are, and asks nothing of us in order to its completion.
When the good Samaritan saw the traveler lying wounded and half
dead, he did not bid him rise and come to him, and mount the ass
and ride off to the inn. No, "he came where he was," and
ministered to him, and lifted him upon the beast and bore him to
the inn. Thus doth the Lord Jesus deal with us in our low and
wretched estate.
We have seen that God justifieth, that He justifieth the
ungodly and that He justifies them through faith in the precious
blood of Jesus; we have now to see the condition these ungodly
ones are in when Jesus works out their salvation. Many awakened
persons are not only troubled about their sin, but about their
moral weakness. They have no strength with which to escape from
the mire into which they have fallen, nor to keep out of it in
after days. They not only lament over what they have done, but
over what they cannot do. They feel themselves to be powerless,
helpless, and spiritually lifeless. It may sound odd to say that
they feel dead, and yet it is even so. They are, in their own
esteem, to all good incapable. They cannot travel the road to
Heaven, for their bones are broken. "None of the men of strength
have found their hands;" in fact, they are "without strength."
Happily, it is written, as the commendation of God's love to us:
When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died
for the ungodly ( Romans 5:6 ).
Here we see conscious helplessness succored--succored by the
interposition of the Lord Jesus. Our helplessness is extreme. It
is not written, "When we were comparatively weak Christ died for
us"; or, "When we had only a little strength"; but the
description is absolute and unrestricted; "When we were yet
without strength." We had no strength whatever which could aid in
our salvation; our Lord's words were emphatically true, "Without
me ye can do nothing." I may go further than the text, and remind
you of the great love wherewith the Lord loved us, "even when we
were dead in trespasses and sins." To be dead is even more than
to be without strength.
The one thing that the poor strengthless sinner has to fix
his mind upon, and firmly retain, as his one ground of hope, is
the divine assurance that "in due time Christ died for the
ungodly." Believe this, and all inability will disappear. As it
is fabled of Midas that he turned everything into gold by his
touch, so it is true of faith that it turns everything it touches
into good. Our very needs and weaknesses become blessings when
faith deals with them.
Let us dwell upon certain forms of this want of strength. To
begin with, one man will say, "Sir, I do not seem to have
strength to collect my thoughts, and keep them fixed upon those
solemn topics which concern my salvation; a short prayer is
almost too much for me. It is so partly, perhaps, through natural
weakness, partly because I have injured myself through
dissipation, and partly also because I worry myself with wordly
cares, so that I am not capable of those high thoughts which are
necessary ere a soul can be saved." This is a very common form of
sinful weakness. Note this! You are without strength on this
point; and there are many like you. They could not carry out a
train of consecutive thought to save their lives. Many poor men
and women are illiterate and untrained, and these would find deep
thought to be very heavy work. Others are so light and trifling
by nature, that they could no more follow out a long process of
argument and reasoning, than they could fly. They could never
attain to the knowledge of any profound mystery if they expended
their whole life in the effort. You need not, therefore, despair:
that which is necessary to salvation is not continuous thought,
but a simple reliance upon Jesus. Hold you on to this one fact--
"In due time Christ died for the ungodly." This truth will not
require from you any deep research or profound reasoning, or
convincing argument. There it stands: "In due time Christ died
for the ungodly." Fix your mind on that, and rest there.
Let this one great, gracious, glorious fact lie in your
spirit till it perfumes all your thoughts, and makes you rejoice
even though you are without strength, seeing the Lord Jesus has
become your strength and your song, yea, He has become your
salvation. According to the Scriptures it is a revealed fact,
that in due time Christ died for the ungodly when they were yet
without strength. You have heard these words hundreds of times,
maybe, and yet you have never before perceived their meaning.
There is a cheering savor about them, is there not? Jesus did not
die for our righteousness, but He died for our sins. He did not
come to save us because we were worth the saving, but because we
were utterly worthless, ruined, and undone. He came not to earth
out of any reason that was in us, but solely and only out of
reasons which He fetched from the depths of His own divine love.
In due time He died for those whom He describes, not as godly,
but as ungodly, applying to them as hopeless an adjective as He
could well have selected. If you have but little mind, yet fasten
it to this truth, which is fitted to the smallest capacity, and
is able to cheer the heaviest heart. Let this text lie under your
tongue like a sweet morsel, till it dissolves into your heart and
flavors all your thoughts; and then it will little matter though
those thoughts should be as scattered as autumn leaves. Persons
who have never shone in science, nor displayed the least
originality of mind, have nevertheless been fully able to accept
the doctrine of the cross, and have been saved thereby. Why
should not you?
I hear another man cry, "Oh, sir my want of strength lies
mainly in this, that I cannot repent sufficiently!" A curious
idea men have of what repentance is! Many fancy that so many
tears are to be shed, and so many groans are to be heaved, and so
much despair is to be endured. Whence comes this unreasonable
notion? Unbelief and despair are sins, and therefore I do not see
how they can be constituent elements of acceptable repentance;
yet there are many who regard them as necessary parts of true
Christian experience. They are in great error. Still, I know what
they mean, for in the days of my darkness I used to feel in the
same way. I desired to repent, but I thought that I could not do
it, and yet all the while I was repenting. Odd as it may sound, I
felt that I could not feel. I used to get into a corner and weep,
because I could not weep; and I fell into bitter sorrow because I
could not sorrow for sin. What a jumble it all is when in our
unbelieving state we begin to judge our own condition! It is like
a blind man looking at his own eyes. My heart was melted within
me for fear, because I thought that my heart was as hard as an
adamant stone. My heart was broken to think that it would not
break. Now I can see that I was exhibiting the very thing which I
thought I did not possess; but then I knew not where I was.
Oh that I could help others into the light which I now
enjoy! Fain would I say a word which might shorten the time of
their bewilderment. I would say a few plain words, and pray "the
Comforter" to apply them to the heart.
Remember that the man who truly repents is never satisfied
with his own repentance. We can no more repent perfectly than we
can live perfectly. However pure our tears, there will always be
some dirt in them: there will be something to be repented of even
in our best repentance. But listen! To repent is to change your
mind about sin, and Christ, and all the great things of God.
There is sorrow implied in this; but the main point is the
turning of the heart from sin to Christ. If there be this
turning, you have the essence of true repentance, even though no
alarm and no despair should ever have cast their shadow upon your
mind.
If you cannot repent as you would, it will greatly aid you
to do so if you will firmly believe that "in due time Christ died
for the ungodly." Think of this again and again. How can you
continue to be hard-hearted when you know that out of supreme
love "Christ died for the ungodly"? Let me persuade you to reason
with yourself thus: Ungodly as I am, though this heart of steel
will not relent, though I smite in vain upon my breast, yet He
died for such as I am, since He died for the ungodly. Oh that I
may believe this and feel the power of it upon my flinty heart!
Blot out every other reflection from your soul, and sit down
by the hour together, and meditate deeply on this one resplendent
display of unmerited, unexpected, unexampled love, "Christ died
for the ungodly." Read over carefully the narrative of the Lord's
death, as you find it in the four evangelists. If anything can
melt your stubborn heart, it will be a sight of the sufferings of
Jesus, and the consideration that he suffered all this for His
enemies.
O Jesus! sweet the tears I shed,
While at Thy feet I kneel,
Gaze on Thy wounded, fainting head,
And all Thy sorrows feel.
My heart dissolves to see Thee bleed,
This heart so hard before;