"Our Holiness is His Work"...
... Ichabod Smith Spencer shares how he dealt with a man inquiring
about God’s election while refusing to come to Christ in repentance and
faith.... Spencer gives three purposes why the Bible presents the
doctrine of predestination. The first purpose is to teach men the
character of God; the second is to repress the audacity of the wicked;
and the third is to comfort God’s people.
Spencer’s words about
such a comfort is quite powerful, and thought the quote is a bit
lengthy, let me encourage you to read it all. It is a good word we all
need to hear.
The third main purpose of this doctrine [of
predestination] is, as I suppose, to comfort God’s people. The grand
trial of a life of religion is a trial of the heart. We have sins, we
have weaknesses and temptations, which tend to a dreadful
discouragement. Sin easily besets us. We easily wander from God.
Holiness is an up-hill work. Our feet often stagger in the path of our
pilgrimage, and tears of bitterness gush from our eyes, lest such weak,
and tempted, and erring creatures should never reach heaven. Devils
tempt us. The world presents its deceitful allurements, and more
deceitful and dangerous claims. What shall cheer us when our heart sinks
within us? Whither shall we fly for comfort, when our hearts are
bleeding, when our sins are so many, when our gain in holiness is so
little, when our light goes out, and the gloom of an impenetrable
midnight settles down upon our poor and helpless soul? We cannot,
indeed, mount up to the inner sanctuary of God, open the seven-sealed
book, and read our names recorded in it by the pen of the Eternal. But
we can know that such a book is there; and that the pen of our Father
has filled it with his eternal decrees, not one of which shall fail of
accomplishment, as surely as his own throne shall stand. And when we
find in ourselves, amid our tearful struggles, even the feeble
beginnings of holiness, we know that God has commenced his work for
us,–a work which he planned before the world was; and that he who has
‘begun a good in work in us, will perform it until the day of Jesus
Christ,’ carrying into effect his eternal plan. Just as well as we know
our likeness to God, we know our election to God. We know that our
holiness is his work, a work which he purposed from the beginning. If he
had purposed it but just when he began it,–if it were a work undertaken
from some recent impulse, then we should have good reason to fear that
some other impulse would drive him to abandon it. But when we know it
from a part of his eternal counsels, and is no sidework, no episode, no
interlude, or sudden interposition not before provided for—then we are
assured that God is not going to forsake us; and deep as is our
home-bred depravity, and many and malignant as are our foes, we are
cheered with the assurance, that God will bring us off victorious, and
‘the purpose according to election shall stand.’ We love to see our
salvation embraced in the eternal plan of God; and we know it is
embraced there, if we are his children by faith in Christ Jesus. We
cannot read his secret counsels; but we can read his spiritual workings
in us. We know the counsels by the evidence of the workings; and then we
are cheered and encouraged amid our trials, by the idea that God will
no more abandon us than he will abandon the eternal plan which his
wisdom formed before the foundation of the world. ‘Who shall lay
anything to the charge of God’s elect?’ He had their names in his book
before they had shed a tear, before a devil existed to tempt them.
- Ichabod Smith Spencer, A Pastor’s Sketches: Conversations with
Anxious Souls Concerning the Way of Salvation vol. 1 (Vestavia Hills,
AL: Solid Ground Books), 237-39.