Pride of Grace Is To Trust In The Strength Of Our Grace 1/3

Pride of Grace Is To Trust In The STRENGTH Of Our Grace.

           First. A Christian may be proud of his grace, by trusting in the strength of his grace.  To trust in the strength of grace is to be proud of grace.  This is op­posed to that poverty of spirit so commended by our Saviour, Matt. 5, by which a man lives in the continual sense of his spiritual beggary and nothingness, and so hath his recourse to Christ, as the poor to the rich man's door, knowing he hath nothing at home to maintain him.  Such a one was Paul, not able to do anything of himself.  He is not ashamed to let the world know that Christ carries his purse for him.  ‘Our sufficiency is of God;’ yea, after many years trading, this holy man sees nothing he hath got.  ‘I count not myself to have apprehended,’ Php 3:13.  He is still pressing forward.  Ask him how he lives, he will tell you who keeps house for him, ‘I live, yet not I,’ Gal. 2:20.  Ask a beggar where he hath his meat, clothes, &c., he will say, ‘I thank my good master.’  Now Satan chiefly labours to puff the soul up with an overweening conceit of his own ability, as the readiest means to bring him into his snare.  Satan knows it is God's method to give his children into his hands, when once they grow proud and self-confident.  Hezekiah was left to a temptation, ‘to try him,’ II Chr. 32.31.  Why?  God had tried him to purpose a little before in an affliction; what needs this?  O, Heze­kiah’s heart was lift up after his affliction.  It was time for God to let the tempter alone a little to foil him.  Probably now Hezekiah had high thoughts of his grace—O he would never do as he had done before—and God will let him see what a weak crea­ture he is.  Peter makes a whip for his own back in that bravado, ‘Though all should forsake thee, yet will not I.’  Christ now in mere mercy must set Satan on him to lay him on his back, that seeing the weak­ness of his faith, he might be dismounted from the height of his pride.  All that I shall say from this is, to entreat thee, Christian, to have a care of this kind of pride.  You know what Joab said to David, when he perceived his heart lift up with the strength of his kingdom, and therefore would have the people numbered.  ‘Now the Lord thy God add unto the people, how many soever they be, an hundredfold, but why doth my lord the king delight in this thing?’ II Sam. 24:3.  The Lord add to the strength of thy grace an hundredfold, but why delightest thou in this? why shouldst thou be lift up? is it not grace? shall the groom be proud because he rides on his master’s horse? or the mud-wall because the sun shines on it?  Mayest thou not say of every dram of grace, as the young man of his hatchet, ‘Alas, master, it is bor­rowed?’ nay, not only borrowed, but thou canst not use it without his skill and strength that lends it thee.  O beware of this; let not those vain thoughts lodge in thee, lest thou enter into temptation.  It is a breach a whole troop of sins may enter at, yea, will, except speedily filled up.

1. It will make thee soon grow loose and negli­gent in thy duty.  It is sense of insufficiency [that] keeps a soul at work, to pray and hear—as want in the house and hutch holds up the market; no man comes thither to buy what he hath at home.  ‘Up,’ saith Jacob, ‘go down to Egypt for corn, that we live and not die.’  Thus saith the needy Christian, ‘Up, soul, to thy God; thy faith is weak; thy patience al­most spent; ply thee to the throne of grace; go with thy homer to the ordinances, and get some supplies.’ Now a soul conceited of his store, hath another song, ‘Soul, take thine ease, thou art richly laid in for many days.  Let the doubting soul pray, thy faith is string; let the weak lie at the breast, thou art well grown up.’  Nay, it is well if it goes not further—to a despising of ordinances, except they have some more courtly fare than ordinary.  Such a pass were the Corinthians come to, ‘Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us,’ I Cor. 4:8.  I pray observe how he lays the accent on the particle now—now ye are rich, as if he had said, I knew the time [when] if Paul had come to town, and news spread abroad in the city that Paul was to preach, you would have flocked to hear him, and blessed God for the season; but then you were poor and empty, now ye are full, you have got to a higher attainment—Paul is a plain fellow now, he may carry his cheer to a hungry people if he will; we are well a paid [satisfied].  And when once the heart is come to this, it is easy to judge what will follow.
2. This trusting to the strength of grace will make the soul bold and venturous.  The humble Christian is the wary Christian.  He knows his weak­ness, and this makes him afraid.  ‘I have a weak head,’ saith he, ‘I may soon be disputed into an error and heresy, and therefore I dare not come where such stuff is broached, lest my weak head should be intoxi­cated.’  The confident man will sip of every cup, he fears none, no, he is established in the truth—a whole team of heretics shall not draw him aside.  ‘I have a vain light heart,’ saith the humble soul—‘I dare not come among wicked debauched company, lest I should at last bring the naughty man home with me.’ But one, trusting to the strength of his grace, dares to venture into the devil’s quarters.  Thus Peter [ven­tured] into the route of Christ’s enemies, and how he came off, you know.  There his faith had been slain on the place, had not Christ sounded a retreat, by the seasonable look of love he gave him.  Indeed I have read of some bragging philosophers, who did not think it enough to be temperate, except they had the object of intemperance present, and therefore they would go into taverns and whore-houses, as if they meant to beat the devil on his own ground.  But the Christian knows an enemy nearer than so—which they were ignorant of—and that he need not go over his own threshold to challenge the devil.  He hath lust in his bosom, that will be hard enough for him all his days, without giving it the vantage-ground.  Christian, I know no sin, but thou mayest be left to commit it, except one.  It was a bold speech of him —and yet a good man, as I have heard—‘If Clapham die of the plague, say Clapham had no faith;’ and this made him boldly go among the infected.  If a Chris­tian, thou shalt not die of spiritual plagues—yet such may have the plague-sores of gross sins running on them for a time; and is not his sad enough? therefore walk humbly with thy God.
3. This high conceit of the strength of thy grace will make thee cruel and churlish to thy weak breth­ren in their infirmities—a sin that least becomes a saint.  ‘If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meek­ness,’ Gal. 6:1. But how shall a soul get such a meek spirit?  It follows—‘Considering thyself, lest thou al­so be tempted.’  What makes men hard to the poor? they think they shall never be so themselves.  Why are many so sharp in their censures, but because they trust too much to their grace, as if they could never fall?  O you are in the body, and the body of sin in you, therefore fear.  Bernard used to say, when he heard any scandalous sin of a professor,‘He fell to-day, I may stumble tomorrow.’