Clement Bailhache - Sermons - Selected from the Papers of the Late Rev. Clement Bailhache

This is Scripture, and we must not dare to trifle with it. These declarations can have but one meaning. Christ has suffered in our stead the penalty we had all deserved, that we might receive, for His sake, that eternal life and blessedness which He only had deserved . On this point all the types and teachings of both Testaments speak with one voice.

There are, no doubt, in this substitution of the innocent for the guilty, some difficulties for human reason. But we have to do with the Bible. It meets conscience; and reason must bend in submission before a grace the deeper meaning of which it does not see. Observe, however, that according to the Scripture representation, the substitution was divinely appointed, and the Substitute Himself was a willing victim. We accept the doctrine, (1) Partly in virtue of human need. Conscience points to the necessity of a satisfaction. (2) Partly in virtue of the peace and the joy to which faith in the doctrine gives rise. – “Scripture always lays stress upon the Saviour’s humiliation and bitter sufferings. We are not said to be redeemed by His incarnation, by His birth, by His miracles, by His doctrine, not even by His agony in the garden, though all these were necessary to the ransom; but by His blood.” On this ground of the Atonement, the first part of salvation – forgiveness – is secured.

II. Man needs also to be redeemed from sin. This need, like the former, he is unable to meet of himself, but God meets it on his behalf. How? By putting into the heart a fertile germ of holiness.

Freedom from condemnation and regeneration are indissolubly connected together in God’s idea of salvation, and He achieves both by the work of Christ His Son. This redemption from the love, and consequently from the power of sin, is accomplished by Him on a principle which is divinely simple and efficacious; a principle which lies at the root of the theory of evangelical sanctification. This principle is the love which He excites in us by the manifestation of His own love to us. Thus the Apostle John writes: “Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him” (1 John iii. 6). “He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love” (1 John iv. 8). To love God, and, under the constraining influence of love, to serve Him, we have need to know and to realise how great is the love of God to us.

Now this Divine love has been revealed to the world through the medium of that same Saviour, who by His sacrificial death has opened up the way for our pardon and our restoration to the Divine favour. The Son of God came into the world to reveal the heart of the Father. What greater gift could God have bestowed than that of His Divine Son? What greater proof of love could He have exhibited than that which this greatest of all possible gifts presents? “God so loved.” And Christ has perfectly performed His mission. His whole ministry was a declaration of the Divine love. Of that love His death on the cross was the sublimest expression. We learn therefrom not only that God manifests to us His mercy, but also at what cost . Our debt must be paid; and as we are bankrupt, He pays it on our behalf. And who is our Substitute? Not a man, not an angel, not any creature; but the Divine Son, “by whom God made the worlds and upholds them by the word of His power,” “who is the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person” – it was He who “by Himself purged our sins.” Such is the love of God. We cannot fathom it, for it is Divine; but in proportion as we are enabled to “know” it, we say “We love Him because He first loved us;” “We are bought with a price: we are not our own.” And we say our devout “Amen!” when the chiefest Apostle of mercy says to us: “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

This Divine love, however, wonderful as it is, is offered to unsusceptible hearts. Hence the necessity – hence also the gift – of the Holy Spirit, through whom God strives with man. The Holy Spirit is the gift of Christ; and He convinces the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He takes of the things of Christ, and shows them unto us.

See, then, the completeness of the Divine plan of salvation. To undeserving hearts God offers His love in Christ; to unsusceptible hearts He explains and commends it by His Spirit.

III. The only remaining question is as to our own part in the great plan of mercy. Because we are intelligent and moral creatures, God does not save us without our own concurrence. To every one who desires to receive this twofold gift – the gift of pardon and of sanctification – a certain disposition is necessary. That disposition is in the Scriptures called “faith.” Faith is the divinely-appointed condition of salvation. The terms are simple, but they are indispensable. Scripture, in every part, recognises and imposes them. From the earliest times they have been complied with, as in the sacrifices of Abel, Noah, and Abraham. It was this same principle of faith that gave validity to the worship under the Mosaic dispensation. So the Lord Jesus Christ, who healed men’s physical diseases as types of the diseases of the soul, always demanded faith as the condition of His working. As it was with Christ, so it was with His apostles. Thus Paul said to the Philippian jailer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” All this shows to us that whilst, on the one hand, we are saved by grace; on the other, we have no participation in the grace which saves, except by the exercise of our own faith in the Saviour.

What is this faith? It may be considered in its principle, and in its application.

In its principle, it is a general conviction that the Bible is the Word of God, and that what He says therein should receive our assent; or, in other words, should be accepted by us as true . In its application, it is the belief of God’s Word as it respects ourselves . It is this which Paul commends to the Philippian jailer. When a man, under the burden of his sin, says, “I am lost; I cannot save myself; save me, Lord!” we have an illustration of this applied faith – a sense of personal misery, a sense of personal helplessness, a sense of a Saviour willing to save him personally, and a direct appeal to that Saviour for salvation. From the moment of such a prayer, there is not a single promise of Scripture that such a man may not make his own. A promised pardon, a promised Spirit, a promised heaven – all are his! The essence of the faith is in the conviction which expresses itself thus: “Jesus Christ is not only able and willing to be the Saviour of all men, but He is my Saviour.” Such a faith brings Christ and the soul together in precisely those relations in which He is the Saviour, and in which the soul is saved.

But how is this faith obtained? Must not God give it? Yes. So Paul, writing to the Philippians, tells them it was “given” to them “to believe in Christ.” Must we, then, listlessly wait until it comes to us? No. Paul again says to these same Philippians, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” The reconciliation of these two truths into one theory may be difficult, but in practice it is easy enough. We recognise them both when we ask for faith. For to ask is to recognise our need of that for which we ask; it is also to recognise the fact that we do not possess it of ourselves; and it is also to seek and to act. Ask, then, for faith, and God will say: “Wilt thou be made whole?” Will you – not as a vague desire, but as the most earnest determination of your heart and will? Ask for faith; God will grant it. Ask largely; you cannot ask too much. And even if you sigh over the weakness of desire, press the old and never-failing prayer: “Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief.”