Dear Friends,
Most of us, no doubt, have some recollections of a particular minister or preacher that we may have heard on a good number of occasions, and who has used the same telling expression, or the same telling phrase in one of his prayers or sermons. I personally am thinking of a well-known preacher on the other side of the Irish sea who almost invariably concludes his gospel meetings with one short brief prayer: "Lord – Save – Sinners!" That's all! No high-flying flights of oratory, or cleverly construed benedictions. Just three words: "Lord – Save – Sinners!"
And yet, my friends, in that short closing prayer, are we not launched right into what must surely be one of the most vital lessons that the Church of Christ in our day is going to have to learn? What is the Church anyway, but a society of sinners saved by grace. And what is the work of that society of saved sinners, but to see others saved and brought into the place of redemption. This is fundamental. And yet, how much we seem to have forgotten that basic aspect of our churches' lives and have now begun to act and to think in what can only really be described as a very disturbing and unscriptural manner.
Church "A" has just lost their minister who had done a good work there and had built up the numbers attending on the means of grace from week to week. Church "B" along the road is almost gleefully rubbing its hands in anticipation that some of the "folk" from church "A" may become a little discontented with not having any "minister" of their own and begin coming along to them on a Lord's Day evening. Or, on the other hand, when church "A" does finally get settled with a minister again, some of the folk may not take to his preaching, the way they did to their "old" minister, and may feel inclined to shift their camp.
How pathetic! How unhealthy! How absolutely out of keeping with our Lord's command to go out into all the world and preach the gospel. The picture is such a pitiful one that it hardly bears illustrating; but, if you like, it's like a dozen fishermen all flogging away at the one wee ever-decreasing pool where one poor old salmon has already been trapped, while the river bubbles with fresh-run fish straight from the sea. To put it another way, we're all fishing in the "inside" of the boat! We're so busy trying to cast our nets into the "hold" of the boat to "recatch" what has already been "caught" that we have failed to remember that the world swims on, getting bigger and ever more Godless, while the churches get smaller and every more lifeless.
Sinners saved! that's the direction in which we must learn again to cast our nets. Real live sinners, bristling with their sin and their rebellion against their God in heaven and, then, brought under the conviction of their sin by the Holy Spirit of God through the witness and testimony of the Church of Christ and added to that Church to take their place in telling "others also." This will be life from the dead, my friends. "catch-'em-alive-o!" as the old saying used to go. "Bring them in, from the fields of sin," according to the gospel hymn-writer. And it's good advice, for sinners who have been brought to see their sin and the worth of their salvation in Christ are the stuff that the church of Christ is made of.
You see, to desire an increase in our churches today from much of what is termed "evangelical" is but to desire a possible increase in our frustrations and invite on our heads a whole set of problems that we could well do without. Scanty prayer meetings, lack of willing workers in the spiritual endeavours of the church, worldly maxims and ideals in the conducting of the church's business. These are the accepted features in much of what proffers to be evangelical Christianity today and the results of half-a-century plus of "decisionist" evangelism where neither a true work of repentance from sin, nor a true work of faith in the heart was looked for, nor called for. Let us be perfectly frank: to throw our net into such a pool as that my result in our haling to the shore more than we bargained for.
Time to turn our eyes towards the world, my friends, and seek an influx of that which is the true growth of the church – sinners saved. The ranks are thinning, and, as time has shown, many of those who appeared to enlist in the cause of Christ have since proved themselves to be "none of His," – probable because they were never rightly warned about the rigours of the battle, anyway. But, look! There is nation upon nation of rebel subjects who have never yet bowed to the majesty of our God and King. What splendid warriors many of them would make if the King would but touch their hearts with the Sceptre of His power. Time to go forth, then, and lay His claims at their feet. If God will but show them their sin and rebellion against Himself and turn them in repentance through the ministry of His church on earth, what worthy subjects they will make. Whatever the King has declared must be done, out of gratitude to the God of their salvation, they will do it. Well might we all pray: "Lord – Save – Sinners!"
Sincerely
W. J. Seaton
