6. We must then lay hold on this sacrifice. The people were to be sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice, Exod. xxiv. 8, so must we with the blood of our Lamb. Thus only can it save us, 1 Peter i. 2. Thus is our Saviour described by this part of his office: Isa. lii. 15, 'He shall sprinkle many nations.' Our guilt cannot look upon a consuming fire without a propitiatory sacrifice; our services are blemished, so that they will rather provoke his justice than merit his mercy; we must have something to put a stop to a just fury, expiate an infinite guilt, and perfume our unsavoury services. Here it is in Christ, but there must be faith in us. Faith is as necessary by the ordination of God in a way of instrumentality, as the grace of God in a way of efficiency, and the blood of Christ in a way of meritoriousness of our justification. All must concur, the will of God the offended governor, the will of the sacrificing mediator, and the will of the offender. This will must be a real will, an active operative will, not a faint velleity. We must have a faith to justify our persons, and we must have an active sincerity to justify the reality of our faith. Christ was real in his sacrifice, God was real in the acceptation of it, we must be real in believing it. Rocks and mountains cannot secure them that neglect so great a sacrifice, that regard this atoning blood as an unholy thing. It is as dreadful for men to have this sacrifice smoking against them, and this blood calling for vengeance on them, as it is comfortable to have it pleaded for them and sprinkled on them. Why will any then despise and neglect a necessary sovereign remedy ready at hand? Is it excusable, that when we should have brought the sacrifice ourselves, or ourselves have been the sacrifice, we should slight him who hath voluntarily been a sacrifice for us, and cherish a hell merited by our sin, rather than accept of a righteousness purchased at no less rate than the blood of God? This sacrifice is full of all necessary virtue to save us, but the blood of it must be sprinkled upon our souls by faith. Without this we shall remain in our sins, under the wrath of God and sword of vengeance.Stephen Charnock, “Christ Our Passover,” in The Works of Stephen Charnock, 5 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1985), 4:538.
(3.) It is a voluntary and willful refusal, and therefore a consent to the punishment. Unbelievers are excluded from heaven, and locked up in misery by their own consent; not formal and explicit, but virtual and implicit. They voluntarily neglect the performance of those conditions upon which a right to heaven is founded, and willingly continue in that state which subjects them to eternal misery. Whosoever refuseth the conditions, refuseth by that act the privileges which depend upon those conditions. He that will not pay a pepper-corn per annum for an estate of a considerable value, when it is all the rent demanded, willfully deprives himself of the right of tenancy. He that will not sue out the pardon of his crimes upon easy conditions enjoined him, deprives himself of the benefit of the prince’s proclamation, and justly perisheth, because, as the conditions are the fruits of the greatest mercy in the prince, so the refusal is a demonstration of the greatest hatred in the rebel. Those that choose to gratify Satan in his triumphs over them, rather than please Christ who hath bled for them, perish by their own wilfulness. The Scripture chargeth it upon this score: Christ would gather men, but ‘they will not,’ Mat. 23:37, 38; God doth not destroy Israel, but Israel ‘destroys himself,’ Hos. 13:9. The Holy Ghost, in the close of the canon of the Scripture, lays it there: Rev. 22:17, ‘Whosoever will, let him take of the waters of life freely.’ If any man will, he may have it; if he hath it not, it is because he doth not will it; and he that doth not will it, doth consequently will the waters of death; and what is more reasonable, than that those who will not accept of a tendered salvation should not enjoy it? The whole design of Scripture is to publish God’s willingness to impart the fruits of the death of Christ, and upon the close the Holy Ghost puts the question, whether they will partake of them or no. As much as to say, God hath discharged himself; let men look to it, they will be found at last the willful cause of their own ruin.Stephen Charnock, “A Discourse of the Misery of Unbelievers (John 3:36),” The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock, 5 vols. (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; W. Robertson; G. Herbert, 1864–1866), 4:343–44. Credit to Oz Marquez for the find.
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