Selected From: Alexander Hislop, “Communion with God” in The Free Church Pulpit; Consisting of Discourses by the Most Eminent Divines of the Free Church of Scotland, Vol. III, Sermon CIX (New York: Robert Carter, 1848), 169–179.
“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” — James 4:8
In considering these words as the subject of discourse, I propose, by the help of God’s Spirit,
I. In the first place, to open up the meaning of the text.
II. Secondly, to show how a sinner ought to draw nigh unto God.
III. And lastly, to state some motives to induce him to do so.
I. In the first place then, with regard to the meaning of the passage, it is of importance, in order to arrive at just conclusions on the subject, that you distinctly understand what it does not mean.
The pride and self-sufficiency of the natural heart of man in considering a passage such as this, are ever prone to wrest it to his own destruction, and to convert that which, when rightly understood, contains a most glorious truth, into a poisonous and deadly error. Men of legal and Arminian spirits contend that we are hereby taught that, in the great work of conversion, the first effective movement is and must be on the part of man—that the sinner first, of his own free will, returns unto God, and that then, but not till then, does the grace of God take effect upon his soul. Now this is in direct opposition to the whole tenor of Scripture. The very nature of that state into which man by transgression fell, renders it impossible that a sinner can, by any will or power of his own, return unto God. When man was made in the glorious image of his Creator, the life of his soul was only and entirely in God. The moment that he fell—the moment that he was cast off by God in fulfillment of the threatened curse, “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,” in that moment did spiritual life utterly forsake his soul. The separation betwixt him and God was complete: the extinction of his spiritual life was consequently the same. When, therefore, we read that men in their natural state are dead in trespasses and sins, we are not to regard the expression as merely a strong figure of speech, but as one pregnant with meaning, displaying in all the naked and stern simplicity of truth, the absolute hopelessness and helplessness of our case. Not more certainly does the separation of the soul from the body leave our earthly frame to total dissolution and decay, than does the separation of the soul from God issue in the immediate and complete extinction of the spiritual life of that soul. The soul that is forsaken of God has not and cannot have one particle of real goodness, or of any thing truly pleasing in the sight of God. When, therefore, the putrid corpse that lies rotting in the grave shall, by its own power, rise from the dust and rejoin the spirit that has left it, then shall lost and ruined man, by his own moral strength, return unto the God from whom he has so fatally revolted. But the case is even worse than this. Not merely is there no power—not merely is there no free will on the part of man to draw near unto God; there is a positive and, as far as he himself is concerned, an incurable aversion and antipathy to Him and his service. “The carnal mind is enmity against God—it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Until, therefore, this enmity be subdued by effectual grace from on high, until sinners be made willing in the day of God’s power, until He himself work in them both to will and to do of his good pleasure, they will not, and they cannot, take one step in return; they will not, and they cannot, do any thing but revolt more and more, and every day depart farther and farther from the living God. The nature of the case, and the express words of Scripture, alike combine to prove that no man can come unto Christ, which is the same as to come unto God, “except the Father draw him.” Never yet did one of the fallen race of Adam truly and sincerely draw nigh unto God, until God, by his mighty and efficacious grace, had first drawn nigh unto his soul. Does the sinner feel within his heart the slightest spark of real desire after God, the most faint and feeble inclination truly to seek his face, then beyond all question, God has been there.
How then are we to understand the text, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you”? We are to understand it as conveying a gracious promise of conscious and sensible communion with the Father of our spirits to every one who makes a true and acceptable approach unto God—a promise that, just as truly as the returning sinner feels his own heart going up unto God, so shall he feel God, in his lovingkindness and tender mercy, coming down into his soul. While the very first breathing of a soul after God is merely the effect of God’s presence and power in that soul, it is nevertheless true that real and efficacious grace may have been working upon a sinner’s heart for some considerable time before the man himself may have any distinct or sensible proof of the gracious designs of God in respect to him. Cases there may have been in which God may at once, without any previous exercise on the part of man, have revealed himself as a God of love and plenteous redemption, in which that Scripture may have been graciously fulfilled, “I am found of them that sought not for me.” But in his ordinary dealing with sinful men, his procedure generally is to communicate first the grace to seek him, and then the grace to find him. And most certain it is that no man has the slightest warrant to expect that, if he do not really, heartily, and perseveringly seek God’s face, he shall ever experience that favour of his which is life, and that lovingkindness which is better than life. And a most vile and blasphemous delusion it is, and sprung from the bottomless pit, for any one to fold his hands in indolence, and soothe himself in a course of sin with the thought that, because he has no power in himself to repent and turn unto God, therefore he may give himself no concern, and put himself to no trouble on the subject, because that when the day of God’s power comes, he shall be willing to return and obey, but that till that day comes, it is vain for him to think of it. Let such a person know, if any such there be here, that his damnation is just, and that without a miracle of grace, it is not more just than it is certain. You have no power, dear friends, of yourselves to turn unto God, but you yourselves must turn unto God, otherwise you perish. You have no ability of your own whereby you can draw nigh unto him, but he invites you, he commands you now to draw nigh, and he offers you strength to enable you to do so. If you seek him, you shall find him. If you draw nigh in prayer to him, he will draw nigh in mercy and gracious communion to you.
II. How then, in the second place, ought a sinner to draw nigh unto God.
1st. First, he must draw nigh unto God by the way of his own appointment, and that way is Christ. The angels that kept their first estate and that never sinned, appear in their own name, and in their own righteousness before God, and are accepted in his sight. On the same ground did man, before his fall, enjoy free and delightful intercourse with his Maker. But that old way, the way of works, our apostacy from God hath barred up completely and forever. Without righteousness, and that a perfect righteousness, answerable to the spotless holiness of his nature and his law, no creature can come with acceptance before God. “With him evil cannot dwell, nor fools stand in his sight.” “He is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and he cannot look upon sin.” But man is altogether corrupt, altogether defiled with sin. In him, that is, in his flesh, dwelleth no good thing. It is impossible that a creature so vile, so utterly lost to every thing that is good, can present any thing to his Maker that can recommend him to his favour. He must therefore have another righteousness than his own in which to appear before the Holy God. But where is he to find a righteousness that will stand him in stead, that will avail him for his acceptance with God? Not in saints, not in angels, not in the whole universe beside, except in Him who is the incarnate Son of God. As there is but “one God,” so there is but “one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” said our Redeemer himself, “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” If we will madly plume ourselves on our own righteousness—if we will not receive the testimony of God with regard to our lost and ruined state—if we will fondly cling to the flattering delusion that we are rich and increased in goods, and standing in need of nothing—if we will not submit ourselves unto the righteousness of God as revealed in the obedience and sacrifice of his Son, we may presumptuously think of drawing nigh unto God, but he will not draw nigh unto us, he will shut his ears to our prayers, he will turn away his face from us, the tokens of his love will be denied to our souls. But if, with an humble and a contrite heart, confessing our sins and justifying God for the strictness of that inflexible law that condemns us, we lift up the eye of faith unto Him who bore the sins of all the redeemed in his own body on the tree, and sitteth now a priest upon his throne, pleading the merits of his life and death for all that come unto God by him, then shall our hearts be sprinkled by his blood from an evil conscience, then shall our persons be clothed with a righteousness in which that eye which is as a flame of fire shall see no stain of pollution or of sin. Then only can God look upon fallen man with a pleasant countenance. If therefore, my friends, you would know the love of God, you must come unto him through the true and living way, through the rent veil of the Redeemer’s flesh. If you will not first come unto Christ, you cannot draw nigh unto God—God will not draw nigh unto you. Alas, dear friends, if you were truly alive to your own natural state—if you were but deeply convinced of the evil of sin—if you had only eyes to see the holiness and the majesty of the God whose law you have broken, you would not dare to come in the filthy rags of your own righteousness into his awful presence. Let no one think that God, the God with whom we have to do, is a less dreadful and terrible God than he who revealed himself on Mount Sinai to Israel of old, in thunder, and lightning, and blackness, and tempest. The external dispensation is changed, the revelation of the awful attributes of God before the eyes of men is postponed. But the attributes of God ever have been, and ever will be the same. And to those who venture to approach him without respect to the righteousness and atonement of Christ, our God is still a consuming fire. In times of youth, and health, and prosperity, and carnal security, while your eyes are blinded by the god of this world, you may think it a small matter to approach in your own name to the Most High God; you may think it no great act of grace and condescension, if he should hear and answer the prayers of such honest, upright, and virtuous individuals as you may conceive yourselves to be. But if God should only lift up a very small corner of the veil, which by nature is over your hearts, and give you a glimpse of his glory, you would look in vain for your righteousness; and instead of feeling any confidence to approach to him, the feeling of your heart would be akin to that experienced by those who, in the great day of wrath, shall call upon the rocks to fall upon them, and the mountains to cover them from the face of his Majesty. In Christ only is God reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses.
2nd. In drawing nigh unto God, a sinner must have a sense not only of his own unrighteousness, but of his own helplessness. He must come unto God, not only trusting for acceptance to the merits of Christ, but relying for strength upon the Holy Ghost. It is only when we are weak that we are really strong. It is only when truly sensible of our own inability that we shall apply for the strength which is made perfect in weakness. I have already had occasion to show that unless power be first exerted upon us from on high, we shall never take one step in return to God. I observe now that that power which effectually draws unto Christ, and unto God by him, is the power and grace of the blessed Spirit of God. He it is that alone can convince us of sin, that can reveal Christ unto us, that can persuade and enable us to embrace him, although so freely offered in the gospel. “The natural man,” saith Paul, “receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,” in other words, the gospel; “but they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,” that is, by the power of the Holy Ghost. If, therefore, the faith which is in us be only the offspring of our own minds, if it result merely from the exercise of our own faculties, if it be not produced by the almighty power of the Holy Ghost, our faith is only a delusive imaginary faith, a faith that will never interest us in the righteousness of Christ, that will not bring us near unto God, that will never bring communications of grace into our souls, that will never deliver us from the wrath to come. Without the Holy Ghost, we cannot breathe one prayer that shall enter with acceptance into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. However ardent may be the emotions we feel in drawing nigh unto him, however importunate our supplications, however unwearied our attendance on the worship of God, yet, if these arise not from the Spirit’s work upon our hearts, our prayers, our tears, our supplications are polluted and abominable in his sight. They spring only from the old corrupted, sin-defiled nature, and come not up before God perfumed with the incense of Christ’s righteousness and atoning death. Nothing that has not come down from God can ever ascend to God. Under the ceremonial law, this great truth was taught in the injunction that no fire should be used in consuming the sacrifices offered unto God, except that which had come down from heaven. And under the dispensation of Christianity, we are as clearly taught that, unless we be baptized with the Holy Ghost, as with fire, our faith is vain, our prayers, our worship, our sacrifices are utterly vain. If, therefore, dear friends, you would draw nigh with acceptance, and feel the love of God shed abroad in your hearts, you must “pray in the Holy Ghost.”
3rd. You must draw nigh to God in all his ordinances. All the ordinances of God are appointed by the same authority, and depend upon the same gracious blessing for their efficacy. If sinful man will presume to pick and choose from among these, which he will observe and which he will neglect, he ought not to be surprised that he finds them wells without water unto his soul. If, for instance, a man thinks fit to draw near unto God in the public exercise of his worship, but makes not conscience of diligently waiting upon him in secret; if he comes on the Sabbath into God’s house as God’s people come, and sits as God’s people sit, but all the while never thinks of entering into his closet and shutting to the door when at home, has such a one any right to complain that he never gets so much as a crumb of the children’s bread? that while the fleeces of others are wet with the refreshing dews of heaven, his is dry and unmoistened? that while others are perceiving the goings of their God in the sanctuary, and rejoicing in the light of his countenance, he is sitting a blind, dead, stupid, insensible soul, without eyes to see or a heart to feel the glory of that grace that is shining and working around him? Again, if the devil, changing himself into an angel of light, should persuade you that because the word of God contains all that is needful for salvation, and because the Holy Ghost is all-sufficient to instruct you and make that word effectual, therefore you need not attend upon the ministrations of sinners like yourselves, therefore you may warrantably absent yourselves from the courts of God’s house, or come only when it may suit your convenience; do you think that you would have any reason to expect his blessing, even upon the inspired record of salvation, whilst you are living in violation of the solemn injunction, “not to forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is”? If his holy providence should disable you from attending on the public ordinances of religion, in such a case, you might warrantably and confidently expect his countenance and blessing upon the rest. But if you labour under no such restraint, deceive not yourselves: God will not draw nigh to you in any of his ordinances, if you do not draw nigh to him in all of them.
4th. Lastly, you must draw nigh to God with clean hands and with a pure heart. In the clause immediately following the text, it is added, “Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, purify your hearts ye double-minded.” It is vain for you to look for deliverance from the guilt of sin through the blood of Christ, to profess dependence upon the grace of the Holy Ghost in your approaches to God, if you are walking in any course of sin, if you are practising any known iniquity. You may be ever so orthodox in your creed, ever so zealous for the purity of the faith—you may be punctual and exact in your attendance upon the worship of God—it is even conceivable that, to pacify your consciences, you may call upon his name in secret, but if there be only one sinful practice in which you allow yourselves, all your other observances will be unavailing. There is an Achan in the camp, and till the accursed thing be put away, there is nothing but wrath and woe denounced against you. That such a course of conduct on the part of the professed people of God is as absurd as it is wicked, is clear; but it is not on that account the less frequently to be met with. God’s ancient people were often sternly rebuked for this very thing. “Cry aloud, spare not,” says God, by the prophet Isaiah, “lift up thy voice like a trumpet, show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness and forsook not the ordinance of their God; they ask of me the ordinance of justice, they take delight in approaching to God.” That which was the case then is but too often the case still. In every age of the Church, there have been such spots in her feasts of charity, “sporting themselves with their own deceiving.” Such may flatter themselves with the hopes of heaven and final salvation, but without repentance, their hope is the hope of the hypocrite that shall utterly perish. “Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom: give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah, to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord: I am full of burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand to tread my courts? Your new moons, and your appointed feasts, my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me, I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear.”
But those who would make an acceptable approach unto God must draw near, not only with clean hands, but with pure hearts. The God with whom we have to do will not be put off with bodily service, however faultless. He is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. He requireth truth in the inward parts. If I regard iniquity in my heart, says David, the Lord will not hear me. Not only the sinful practice, but the unholy desire will cut off from us the light of his gracious countenance. If we would come to him with acceptance, we must renounce every wicked way, and every unrighteous thought at once, completely and for ever. And not only those things which are in their own nature positively sinful, but every thing that comes in competition with his glory must be equally abandoned. He requires the first, the chiefest place in our hearts and affections. He will admit of no compromise, he will not dwell in a double or divided heart, a heart that wishes to serve at one and the same time Christ and the world—God and Mammon. God in Christ must be all to you, or he will be nothing. If you do not choose to serve him in this way, you cannot serve him at all. You may seek him prayerfully and carefully all your life long, but if you set up the stumbling blocks of your iniquity before your eyes, if you will not consent to give him that place in your affections which he challenges as his due, you shall seek him in vain. Are there here any poor deluded sinners, who up to this moment have been satisfying themselves with a name to live, who have been trusting to a form of godliness, while they denied the power of it? Let them hear the righteous requirement of God’s Word. “Ye shall seek me, and find me,” saith the Lord. When? “when ye shall search for me with your whole heart.” If ye will not search for him thus, you may give up the search. The pure in heart, and the pure in heart only, have the blessed assurance that they shall see God, that their fellowship shall be with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
III. I come now very briefly to present to you some motives that ought to induce you with all your hearts to draw nigh unto God.
1st. And first, consider the graciousness of the invitation. By looking at the context, you will find that it is addressed to “adulterers and adulteresses.” To those who are puffed up with a notion of their own goodness, this will be no recommendation; but if there be one poor and contrite and broken-hearted sinner among those whom I am now addressing, this will be felt to be exactly such an invitation as he needs. Yes, ye adulterers and adulteresses, if any such there be here—ye drunkards, ye profane, ye wicked and abominable of every description, ye vilest of the vile—the invitation of the text is addressed even to you. Ye may have added iniquity unto iniquity, and sin to sin—ye may, by your wickedness, have made yourselves the offscourings of the earth, and a hissing and a byword to your neighbours and acquaintances, but here is good news, here is joyful tidings for you. The God of heaven and of earth, who has all glory and blessedness in himself, who needs not the services of men or of angels, looks down upon you with an eye of the most tender compassion: he invites, he entreats, he beseeches you to draw nigh unto him, that you may have life, that you may have holiness and everlasting salvation (2 Cor 5:20). And that he is in earnest in the invitation, intensely in earnest, has been abundantly demonstrated by the fact that he spared not the Son of his love, but hath freely given him up to the death, the accursed death of the cross, that the very chief of sinners, the most abandoned of the ungodly, might have pardon, and peace, and the love of God shed abroad in their hearts. He gave up the well-beloved of his heart, the Elect in whom his soul delighted, to be baptized with the baptism of wrath, that sinners such as you might be baptized with the sanctifying and comforting grace of the Holy Ghost. Ah! my friends, if the love of God in the gift of his Son, and his gracious invitation to you, to all to partake of that love, will not move you to return unto him, what is there that can possibly influence your hard and obdurate hearts? Now while God offers you his unspeakable gift—while Christ offers you himself, how do you treat the offer? Can you not find in your hearts to accept of it? Then hear, O heavens! And be astonished, O earth! The High and the Holy One comes down from the throne of his glory to this world of sin and sorrow, bears in his spotless soul the curse of the broken law in the room of fallen man, and now invites and beseeches sinners, by the agonies of the garden and the cross, to be reconciled unto God. And yet, men, whose breath is in their nostrils, who are every moment in danger of eternal perdition, can doubt—and consider—and hesitate—whether they will accept of a full and free salvation, whether they will consent to be delivered from the wrath to come. Now, whoever heard of infatuation like this? Can you possibly so sin against your own souls, as to put away from you so great salvation? Can you resist the mercy of a crucified and beseeching Saviour? Oh! the blessed angels of God are amazed at your blindness and obduracy. The very spirits of darkness, that tempt and cheat you, are laughing you to scorn for your inconceivable madness.
2nd. But secondly, consider the greatness of the benefit that will be secured you, if you draw nigh unto God with your whole heart, in the way of his own gracious appointment; “God will draw nigh unto you.” “If any man,” said our Saviour, “love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” You will have communion with the Father of your spirits; you will henceforth and for ever be temples of the Holy Ghost; God will manifest himself unto you as he doth not unto the world; he will make you, even in this vale of tears, drink of the rivers of pleasure which are at his right hand; he will show you the “glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” All your interests, both for this life and that which is to come, will be infallibly safe. All things shall be yours, “Whether the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and ye Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” Prosperity shall no longer, as to the men of the world, be a trap and a snare unto you; and adversity shall only work out for you a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life, and you shall dwell in the house of the Lord for evermore. And oh! dear friends, are not these benefits, are not those blessings worth seeking, yea, worth striving for? What are all the pursuits, the pleasures, the riches, the honours of this world in comparison of these, but shadows, but phantoms, but dreams, which give no real satisfaction while they are possessed, and which must soon fly away for ever? Oh! give not sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids till you find a place in your hearts for the mighty God of Jacob. Now, even now, Christ Jesus stands at the door of your hearts and knocks; now, even now, he says, if any man will open the door, I will come in unto him and will sup with him, and he with me. Will you allow him to knock in vain?
3rd. It would be but little encouragement merely to hold up to you the blessings of communion with God, if you were left in any doubt or uncertainty as to whether these blessings are attainable or not. Now this is the glory of the gospel, that it lays the most solid ground for your assurance of success. This is indeed the only thing of which you can be absolutely certain that you shall gain it, seek as earnestly as you may. Riches may take wings to themselves and fly away from those who most diligently pursue them. Pleasure may elude the grasp of her most devoted votary. Shame and contempt may be the portion of those who most earnestly and skillfully hunt after fame and renown. But no man ever yet sought the favour and friendship of God with his whole heart who missed of his aim; and no man ever shall have to complain that he drew nigh unto Him in the way of his appointment and that his labour was in vain. And why? Because the word of God is pledged, that they that “seek him shall find him, that every one that asketh receiveth, and that to him that knocketh, the door shall be opened.” Will you believe the word of a mortal man, and will you not believe the word of Him who can neither lie nor deceive? Nay, he has not merely pledged his word on the subject, he has given you his oath. “As I live,” saith the Lord, “I have no pleasure in the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die, O house of Israel?” If a fellow creature, of whose goodness and truth you are convinced, were to invite you to partake of his bounty, would you ever think of doubting your warrant to accept of his invitation; and will you repose less confidence in God? When Christ Jesus invites you to come unto him, that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly, will you dare to question his sincerity, or hang back in doubt of his willingness to receive you? “Whosoever will,” saith he, “let him come and take of the water of life freely.” “Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.” If he were to call you expressly by name, he could not more explicitly invite you; and will you dare to doubt that the merciful Saviour, the faithful and true witness, means what he says? Let the thought perish. I call heaven and earth to witness, that the offer of a full, a free, and eternal salvation has been made to every one of you this day, and that if ye will not come unto him, your blood will be upon your own heads, your own consciences will bear witness against you in the day of the Lord.
4th. Lastly, I beseech you to consider the dreadful consequences which will result to you from your continued estrangement from God. “All they that are afar from thee shall perish.” You shall perish, because you have broken God’s righteous law; you shall doubly perish, because you have rejected the offered grace of his gospel. You have had one more opportunity of hearing the message of peace and reconciliation. Christ Jesus has been pleading with you; the Holy Ghost, I doubt not, has been striving with you; and if you are unwilling still to submit to the mercy of God, your bands are every day growing the stronger, and if you persist in the stubbornness and impenitency of your hearts, you will be driven away at last in your wickedness. In your bitter experience, you shall know the dreadfulness of mercy abused. You shall feel the full weight of the wrath of the Lamb, as recorded for your warning in the Book of Proverbs, “Because I have called, and ye have refused, I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded, but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh, when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you, then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer, they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.” Oh then, now while it is the accepted time, now while it is the day of salvation, hear ye the word of the Lord: “Draw nigh unto God” in the way of his own appointment, and beyond all question, “God will draw nigh” in his mercy and lovingkindness “unto you.”
Amen.
