Extract
from "Excellency
of the Gospel above the Law" by Richard Sibbes.
Richard
Sibbes (1577-1635),
or the “heavenly” Dr Sibbes, was an Anglican
preacher from England who was famous for his sermons, in which he showed the
riches of the promises of God, urging sinners to come to Christ and bringing
great comfort to the hearts of many believers. His sermons are full of
Scriptural assurances for the weary or wounded Christian, pointing him to
Christ crucified for healing and rest. Dr Sibbes
was a Puritan and believed that the church in England, as elsewhere, needs
visiting and purging by God whenever it has become defiled.
What
is the way, after we have had boldness and sweet familiarity with God, and
it hath been interrupted by sin? how shall we recover ourselves?
Surely,
to apprehend our sins to be pardonable in Christ, and that God is an
everlasting Father, and that the covenant of grace is everlasting, and that
there is mercy in
Israel
for this thing; and the conceit [conception]
of mercy must work our hearts to grief and shame. That is certain; for mark
in the gospel, ‘Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden,’
Mat. xi. 28. He calls us when we find our consciences afflicted and
tormented. ‘He came to save that which was lost,’ Mat. xviii. 11. By the
blessed power of the Spirit, the blood of Christ is as a fountain ‘for
Judah
and
Jerusalem
to wash in,’ Zech. xiii. 1, and the ‘blood of Christ purgeth us from
sin,’ 1 John i. 7; and Christ bids us for daily trespasses ask pardon,
Mat. vi. 12. Daily therefore conceive goodness in God still, an everlasting
current of mercy; and this must work upon us grief and shame, and recover
and strengthen our faith again. For God’s children, after breaches, arise
the stronger rather than ever they were before. But this only by the way. We
see here how God’s glorious grace is conveyed to us, and what is wrought
in us to apprehend it, a spiritual eye to see it, in the glass of the
gospel, and ‘with open face we behold it,’ we may go boldly to the
throne of grace.
Reference
“The
Works of Richard Sibbes,” published by Banner of Truth, 1979. Vol. iv, p.
254.
