Edward Hoare

“ And His mercy corresponds with His love: it is ‘from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him;’ it is ‘high as the heaven is above the earth;’ and as no astronomer can measure the height of the fixed stars, and as no finite mind can take in the idea of an infinite eternity, so none of us, no, not even the most advanced believer, can fathom the depths or scan the heights of the free, unfettered, everlasting mercy of our God. But as we grow in the knowledge of Him and of ourselves, we shall learn more and more of it. ”

“ But it is not so with sanctification, or holiness. The seat of holiness, or sanctification, is in our own souls. It is not like the name written in the Book of Life which no man can see; for it is the law written by the Holy Ghost upon the fleshy tables of the heart, and therefore within view of conscience. God has placed a conscience within every one of us: an eye that looks inward, and can see all that is passing within the soul. Are there bad acts, bad words, or bad thoughts? Conscience may see them all. Is there a deep desire to walk with God, and do His Will? Conscience discovers it. ”

“ Faith is the act of the soul casting itself on the Covenant, and on the Lord Jesus Christ revealed in Scripture as the Mediator of the Covenant. If you fight your own battle for holiness you may struggle hard, and struggle long, but you are sure to fail. You may try any expedient you please,—rules of life, books of self-examination, anything; but it won’t do. The old sin of your fallen heart will keep cropping up just as strong as ever; and you will find yourself a year hence no nearer to the mark than you are now, for the holiness at which you are aiming is not holiness through faith. ”

“ No: we must have a standard rising high above either consciousness, conscience, or our own light; a standard that never varies; a standard that does not go up and down with our changes of feeling or opinion; a standard as unchanging as the perfect character of God Himself! This is the standard which we find in the Lord Jesus Christ,—in God manifest in the flesh: and what is more, thanks be to God, this is the standard which we shall one day reach! ”

“ There is a great danger of our being partial in our trust: of trusting Him for pardon, but not for holiness. But He teaches us to trust Him equally for both. The promise, ‘I will put my law into their inward parts, and write it in their hearts,’ is just as much a promise of the Covenant as that other promise, ‘I will forgive their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.’ You may therefore trust Him to write His law on your heart just as much as you may trust Him for the forgiveness of your sin. ”

“ If we are conscious of indwelling sin, and find it ready to break out like a fire at any moment, it is not the office of faith to reckon it dead. No, dear brethren: true holiness is a practical change of heart wrought in us by the Holy Ghost, and perceptible; it is a new character wrought in us by a new power, and springing from new principles. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the enjoyment of that blessed union is marred and hindered by any reserve within the soul. But if we are not to rest in it until we are satisfied that our consecration is entire, I see not, for my part, how the heart can ever be at rest unless the conscience is lulled to sleep by shallow and superficial views of sin. ”

“ Every day in the believer’s life brings with it a fresh lesson in mercy, and every prayer that we pray to a reconciled Father should bring home to us with fresh power the deep debt we owe to mercy.
And now you see in a moment how it is that there should be a continued and constantly repeated renewal of self-consecration. Every fresh discovery of mercy should lead at once to fresh surrender. If you are looking on mercy as some distant thing, which you have often heard of and wish to reach, but cannot, I see not, for my part, how it should have any great power over your life ”

“ We look on Him bearing the full penalty of the law, and we know that because He has borne it, the awful curse will never rest on us. We listen to Him crying, ‘It is finished,’ and we know that nothing more can be needed in sacrifice; that the whole redemption as planned in God’s eternal purpose is complete; and that therefore, as He did, so may we commend into a loving Father’s hand all we are, and all we care for, saying, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit, for Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.’ We need no priest’s absolution ”

“ When he was a legalist he had no idea of its exalted standard; but, when God called him, his eyes were opened to behold its perfection. It is a curious fact that those who hope to save themselves by their doings are almost certain to entertain but low and limited notions of the law: they think of it as some low standard within their own reach; so they are always endeavouring to fulfil it, and though always failing, are never really troubled at their failure; but, when God opens their heart, they discover its exalted holiness, and find themselves to be nothing better than dead men before it. ”

“ He may have given us such an insight into His grace that we now love that which we once cared nothing for, and hate that which we once loved: He may have led us to say from the bottom of our hearts, ‘I delight to do Thy will, O my God.’ But our motto must still be, ‘Forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.’ The more we love Christ, the more must we be deeply humbled that we love Him so little ”

“ So our justification through imputed righteousness is a matter of faith: it is a divine act of the hidden mind of God, and perfectly invisible to the eye of man. You cannot see your name in the book of life; you cannot see the counsel of God blotting out your sin because of the finished sacrifice, or accounting you righteous in Christ Jesus even at the very time that you know yourself to be a ruined sinner. ”

“ There cannot be a higher standard, or, to use modern terms, a higher life. It is a life in the very presence of God Himself,—a life in which every step is lightened by the sunbeam of His love. Fellowship, light, love, and joy, abound through the whole of it. The persons possessing it are happy, loving, peaceful believers, rejoicing in the sacred privilege of companionship with God ”

“ Are we, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, at the very time that we can truly say ‘Lord, I am Thine,’ to be prepared to meet the same difficulty? In answer to that question, I have not one moment’s hesitation in replying that we are. I have read and heard that original sin in certain persons is ‘destroyed,’ is ‘dead, though capable of revival;’ is ‘rendered inert,’ and is ‘in suspense;’ but I do not believe one word of it. ”

“ As we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we shall grow also in the deep sense of mercy. His love passeth knowledge, and it will take eternity to learn its fulness. ”

“ I need not say that it is not a sacrifice for the blotting out of sin: it cost more to redeem our souls, so we must let that alone for ever. It is the sacrifice of thanksgiving, corresponding to the meat-offering in the law of types,—the sacrifice of the thankful heart presenting its thank-offering to God. ”

“ According to p. 106this text, it is a living sacrifice that we are called to offer; it is the continued life that we are to surrender. We are not now called to die for Him, as martyrs and many of our missionaries have done, but to live for Him in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call us. The sweet savour that is to rise from our sacrifice is to be the sweet savour of Christian holiness, the holy fragrance of Christian character. ”

“ In purifying the heart He makes use of its powers, and so consecrates them to His most sacred service. For example, there is no greater power in the whole mind of man than love. People will make any sacrifices under the influence of a powerful affection; God therefore takes that faculty of love, and so consecrates it to His own sacred service, that the people of God may say, ‘The love of Christ constraineth us.’ And now you see in a moment the office of faith. How is that love to grow up within the soul if there be no faith preceding it? ”

“ So that when we say, ‘Lord, I am Thine,’ we do not merely refer to some one particular transaction of our own at some one particular time, but we look at the whole counsel and covenant of God,—at the great and perfect work of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost,—before which any feeble effort of our own minds is absolutely nothing ”

“ I have seen God’s work in holiness described as the same as God’s work in the pardon of sin. But there is this essential difference: Forgiveness is an act of God in His own mind alone; holiness is a work of God in the mind of man, controlling and directing all the activities of the mind. Forgiveness is, therefore, altogether external to man, and must be received in trust alone; but holiness is a power and principle of human action, and therefore is developed in human activities. The distinction may be illustrated by repentance and forgiveness. Both are the gifts of our exalted Saviour. ”

“ If we have given ourselves to the Lord, we are no longer our own: ‘Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.’ There is, however, this difference between the Jewish sacrifice and ours. In the case of the ancient sacrifices, when the sacrifice was a living animal, it was always put to death, and part of it burned as a sweet savour unto God: but it is not so with us. ”

“ But still it is growing more and more; for ‘we all,’—not merely special Christians, who have attained what they call ‘the higher life,’—‘beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory.’ Now I believe it is impossible to press this too strongly on all those who desire holiness, for there is a perpetual tendency in every one of us to turn the eye inward on ourselves, instead of keeping it fixed on Him. ”

“ Now, I believe that if, instead of adopting some artificial standard of our own, we aim at the perfection of God’s holiness, as taught in the Word of God and exhibited in the life of the Son of God, we are sure thus painfully to feel the contrast between what we are and what we ought to be. Of course if we measure ourselves by ourselves we may be easily satisfied ”

“ There must not be a veil over it, as there is over the Jews, as you read in verse 15. Every barrier must be removed. The great barrier of the curse is gone, through the blood of atonement; and we must not now set up fresh barriers of our own creation. We must remember the hymn:—
‘Just as I am: Thy love alone
Has broken every barrier down;’
and just as we are,—humbled, unworthy, cold, and unfeeling, but yet admitted into the very presence of the Lord,—we must look with open face at the Son of God Himself ”

“ It is the most sacred privilege that it is possible for a ransomed spirit to enjoy, and nothing but the finished ransom could ever admit us to it. But we must not confound it with the fruit that springs from it, or suppose that to enjoy communion is the same as to be holy. The sap is essential to the life of the tree, but the sap is not the fruit, and there is a great deal of sap in many trees where there is no fruit at all. The fruit is something practical, something contributed, and if it glorifies God, it will be visible to our fellow-men. ”

“ First, that those who are walking in the light have sin in them which needs the cleansing blood. I know very well, and thank God for the blessed assurance that ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace.’ I know, too, that our blessed Saviour is the great deliverer, and that He will so surely and so effectually save His people from their sins, that every one of them, without a single exception, will finally be presented without a single spot, or stain, before His throne. ”

“ That sin is not sin till we discern it. So that ‘to-morrow I may discern evil in things in which to-day I am living without condemnation.’ Sin is the transgression of the law, and what will be wrong to-morrow is wrong to-day, whatever we may think of it. If the conscience is so deadened, or seared, or perverted, that it does not perceive sin, that deadness of conscience does not take away the sinfulness of sin, but only adds the sin of not feeling sin to the sin of committing it. ”

“ You are not condemned to toil on in a condition of disheartening hopelessness; but you may enter on each day of your life in the happy and peaceful assurance, not that you are perfect, but that you have perpetually at hand a loving Lord fully able by His own omnipotence to overcome in you your besetting sin. So you may go up from the wilderness leaning on the Beloved, and by God’s grace may walk with Him to victory. Past failures must teach you your own most terrible corruption ”

“ This morning, therefore, if God permit, we will endeavour to study what it is in the Saviour that can give us a peaceful, thankful joy, at the very time that we feel most profoundly humbled before the holiness of God. ”

“ In Christ Jesus we are not driven by a slave master, and compelled by the lash into obedience. We ‘love the law,’ because we ‘love the Lord.’ We find His will, and His word, to be dearer unto us than thousands of gold and silver; and we experience the blessedness described by our blessed Saviour when He said, ‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.’
(3.) But all this while he was painfully conscious that he was infinitely below its standard. ”