The one true God is a speaking God. He communicates with the creatures He has made, in a way that is both accurate and clear. These days, His message is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, but in earlier times, He would sometimes actually speak from heaven, in an audible voice speaking understandable words. On one occasion, when Jesus was praying in the hearing of a crowd of people, God the Father replied to His prayer directly. Jesus said, “Father, glorify thy name,” and the Father replied, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” It was unmistakeable. But plenty of the bystanders misheard and mistook. “The people therefore that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered; others said, An angel spoke to him” (John 12:28–29). What could possibly explain the confusion? The words were audible, the message was clear, yet somehow they couldn’t figure out what they’d even heard. Samuel Rutherford used this incident to make the point that we hear what we want to hear. When our wills are antagonistic to God, even our senses are biased away from perceiving God’s message to us. The opinions we form, which we like to think are rational and evidence-based, are shaped in advance by our wishful inclinations, and these, unless grace changes us, are wishes to be left to carry on without anything to do with God at all. In the following updated extract, Rutherford shows how the human tendency to dismiss the gospel as incomprehensible and irrelevant is not because of any defect in the gospel or God’s communication of it, but because of our sinful desire not to be bothered by it.

The people had various opinions about the Father’s answer from heaven. Some said it was thunder. Doesn’t any ignoramus and the most simple idiot know thunder when he hears it?! This shows us how ignorant we are of God, and of the gospel way. Consider what was this voice of God from heaven to Christ. It was the gospel, and it was a clear expression of the communion between Christ and his Father. But what God means is unknown to us. Some say that the gospel is a thunder, and a work of nature, a mere imagination and a dream. Yet these are all false, and they do not agree one with another.

The gospel is the will of God from heaven, yet it is a riddle, a parable not understood (Matt. 13:14; 1 Cor. 14:21; Isa. 29:11–12). “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:18).

Without grace, they don’t understand the gospel

The understanding is a dark lantern, which has some light inside it, but sends out none at all to apprehend things any distance away [a dark lantern was a hand-held lantern which had a shutter to stop its light shining out]. As the will is iron-hard against heaven, so it is soft as wax to receive the impressions of the flesh, if Christ does not draw aside the curtain of the flesh to let you see the glory of the gospel. Otherwise, God speaks, and Samuel says, “Eli, here I am; you called me.” To the woman of Samaria, Jacob was greater than Christ, and Jacob’s well was as good as the water of life.

Just like the communion between Christ the Son and the Father, the communion between Christ and the soul is a roll of thunder, a work of nature, or anything at all to the natural man. God speaking to the heart is a mystery to him. The Jews say among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52). With great difficulty, according to their imagination of a bodily eating. Esteeming Christ more highly than other beloveds is a mystery even to the saints, to the extent that they are natural. It’s a strange question for professors of the gospel to ask, “What more is in Christ than in other well-beloveds?” yet that is what they say in Canticles 5:9.

The natural understanding is the most whorish thing in the world. There is a wide variety of imaginary gods. “According to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Judah” (Jer. 2:29). “They have made them molten images of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding” (Hos. 13:2). Even in the search for truth, the understanding is a rash, precipitate, and unquiet thing. Like a silkworm, it first makes a work of many threads, and then lies fettered and entangled in what came out of its own bowels. The mind spins and weaves lies out of itself, and fancies and dreams, and then expends itself on these, and so creates its own chains and fetters.

But in the matters of God, the mind runs mad, here, there and anywhere. In gospel knowledge it turns frantic, and when it comes to move and act within the sphere of supernatural truths, it only laughs and messes around till it comes out again. If Christ preached is foolishness, then Christ Himself must be a fool, even to the Greeks, the most excellent intellects in the world (1 Cor. 1:22–23). The gospel can only come within the brain of a natural man as a notional fancy, a chimera (1 Cor. 2:14). Indeed, when the greatest intellects came to natural theology, the borders of divine truth, to look on the outside of divinity and contemplate and behold God in His works, they didn’t know what to make of Him (Rom. 1:23). Some thought God to be a dainty bird of paradise. No, said other great thinkers, He is a four-footed beast. No, said others, He is a creeping thing. The most eminent of them, even head of learning among them, said He was a corruptible man.

They turned futile, foggy, reasonless, and stark nothing in their finer discourses and reasonings, in weighing and balancing things. The frame of the heart of man is only evil (Gen. 6:5). I know their imaginations, says the Lord, like the imaginings of the potter designing his earthen pots, that be in the heart, mind, and head of men. Many vain patterns are in our heads, just as there is a variety of pots, bottles, and earthen vessels in the potter’s house, but they are evil, wicked, and only evil from the womb. But especially, how many devices and new patterns of religions and gods are in the heart of men? How many sundry opinions of Christ are in people’s brains? Some said he was John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremiah (Matt. 16:14).

Without grace, they don’t like the gospel

The love and affections are most whorish, light, and wanton. No one god is the natural man’s God. It may be maintained that an unrenewed man does not have one predominant sin, but, indefinitely, sin is his king; and however many sins he has, that’s how many kings (Rom. 5:14; Rom. 6.7–12).

It’s true, pride, covetousness, or some particular sins may come to the throne by turns, as either complexion, strength of corrupt nature, or times bear sway. As Satan is not divided against Satan, so no natural man will be a martyr for a false god, or a predominant lust, in opposition to another known false god, though all may oppose the gospel. The Lord complains of the heart “that playeth the harlot with many lovers” (Jer. 3:1). Heaven and saving grace are indivisible. No one is half in heaven, half in hell. Almost a Christian is no Christian. When Adam fell from the one God, he fell into many inventions, not just one (Eccles. 7:29).

Without grace, they always choose the wrong interpretation

People think that the supernatural ways of God are just a rumble of thunder in the air, which is a most natural work, merely the ebbing and flowing of the spirit in either natural joy or melancholy, naturally following the complexion of the body. It is grace that puts a right sense on the works of God, as on the Word of God. We are no less heterodox in mis-interpreting the works of God than in putting false and unsound senses on the Word of God. When emerods plague the Philistines, they wonder whether it was chance, or the God of Israel. Moses works miracles, the magicians work miracles, and the Egyptians doubt whether their false god, or the living God that made the heaven and the earth, has wrought the miracles.

When God and nature both work, the natural man, or even saints, to the extent that they are still natural, betake themselves to the nearest god. Sickness comes, and the natural man says, “Neglect of the body, health, the moon, humours, the air, cold weather did it.” He doesn’t look to God. And the believer, guilty of a breach of the sixth commandment in neglecting second causes and in needless hurting the body, doesn’t look at this at all, but foists it all on God working only in a spiritual dispensation. He considers only the dispensation in God, not sin in himself.

Or, mercies grow invisibly, and we don’t see them. We are ready to sleep when mercies are offered. When Christ knocks in love, we are in bed (Cant. 5). Judgements speak in the dark, but we don’t hear. To hear the Lord’s rods, and who hath appointed it, is what the man of wisdom does (Mic. 6:9). There is an orthodox wisdom and will, just as there is an orthodox faith. The will, as well as the mind, can frame syllogisms; every unrenewed man has a faith of his own in the bottom of his will. Some are willingly ignorant (2 Pet. 3); some through deceit refuse to know the Lord (Jer. 9); whereas lusts put out reason, and take the chair. Lust hath powerful logic against Christ; a fleshly mind, vainly puffed up, is a badge of bastard intelligence, which out-reasons all the gospel. O but grace is quick-eyed, sharp, and a clever thing, to see God veiled under the curtain of flesh; to see Christ and heaven through words, and the gospel pregnant with so great a salvation.

The truth about Christ is a blessing

Little wonder that there are divisions about Christ. Some regard the Lord speaking from heaven as thunder; others, as an angel. Christ is the most disputed thing in the world. There are five religions (Matt. 16:13–14), and a range of opinions about Christ. The scribes and Pharisees had many different opinions, and only one in ten of them is the right way. Many said Christ is a prophet (John 7:40); others said this is the Christ (v.41); others no because Christ wouldn’t come out of Galilee (v.41), and there was a division among them (v.43). Christ is for a sign that shall be spoken against (Luke 2:34). Amongst Christs sufferings was that He sustained the contradiction of sinners (Heb. 12:3.) There is only one heaven, and one way to heaven; and there is only one hell, but there are thousands of ways to hell. From one point to another, you can draw only one straight line; but you may draw ten thousand crooked and circular lines. The truth is one, and very narrow; the lie is broad, and very fertile.

It’s a blessed thing to find the wisdom to hit on Christ, and adhere to Him. There are some gamblers and cheats who lie in wait to deceive the simple (Eph. 4:14). They roll the dice for heaven, and they can roll you anything on the dice, whether one, or seven. Resign yourselves therefore, in this plethora of false religions, to Christ, to be led to heaven.

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Heaven is very far away, and the way there is strewn with difficulties, even before we factor in our own lack of stamina and various disabilities. Will we ever make it to the finishing line in the Christian race? The Epistle to the Hebrews provides some good advice. In the following updated extract from a sermon preached by Samuel Rutherford in preparation for the communion at Kirkcudbright in 1634, Rutherford discusses what we must do, and how it’s possible for us to persevere, and win the prize of glory.

“Let us run the race.” But how shall we run? “So run that ye may obtain.” Many run in hope of heaven and get hell in the end. But hear what the Spirit of God says: “Lay aside every weight,” every clog.

Lay aside every weight

What is the weight? The world, the love of riches and honour, and lusts. He speaks to us as to people having their backs burdened with clay, or clogged with heavy lumps of earth and great bunches of the world’s glory. For that matter, a number of devils of pride, lust, and covetousness hang on us. “Give them a shake,” says He, “Down with them! Let the ground bear them all!”

What then shall we do to be quit of these weights?

Watch your feet

The world is a foul way, like deep, watery new-tilled ground, where pound weights hang to the traveller’s heel and hold him back, and as he shakes off one, another comes on, so that he cannot go fast on his way.

The affections are the feet of the soul. Take heed to your feet, and come off the deep wet land. Use the world as if you used it not. There is a dry way to heaven! Hold off the deep way, and be content with food and raiment. Go the way that Christ and the saints went before you, who scarce ever wet their feet. Indeed, Jesus was never wet-shod in the world. He had so good mind of His errand and His home that the world got no room in His heart.

They who will not keep this clean dry causeway, it is no marvel to see them get stuck in the miry world, be drowned and never make it home. It is with many, as was said, “Their adulteries lie between their breasts” (Hos. 2:2) Is it any wonder to see such heavy-headed dolts get the maul in this race, like stiff horses unfit for a journey? And how can they so much as trot? They only walk in a circle!

Watch your conscience

Satan and the world will give you foul play. They will stick out their feet before you and make you fall. But don’t worry about that. Get up again!

But please beware of sore falls — sins against the conscience, light, and love. For the conscience is like an earthen vessel. If you break it you won’t be able to mend it again. Some in their race gave their conscience such a blow that they break their legs, and are never fit for the race again. Whatever you do, keep the conscience whole.

Keep going

Cast off all things that make you heavy. Make yourself light, so that you may be nimble, and skip and spur away. Run, run! Don’t look behind you. Remember Lot’s wife. Although you are like to burst, don’t tarry. You will mend of a sweat and a heat. God has a napkin to rub the sweat off you, and He has a chair and a cushion for you for when the race is ended, and He will lay your head in His bosom. Put in a bit of effort in the daytime, for I promise you, you’ll get rest at evening.

Lay aside the sin that so easily besets us

“Cast off the sin that doth so easily beset us,” or goes round about us. This is the body of sin that remains in our nature. The apostle speaks of it as if someone had us clasped in his arms, for original sin has us in fetters as captives.

It is a thing we cannot get away from, go where we please. It is like a ghost, ever in our eye — behind us, pulling us back; before us, standing in our way; at our right hand, hindering us to hear, pray, believe, repent, hope, etc. It is like the wind in our face, or in the face of a weak traveller, blowing him some steps back where he goes one forward. It is as a man going round about us. It is in the mind, darkening the judgment; in the will, throwing it the contrary way. God bids us walk in the lowest room, down in the affections; but we do the contrary.

And this sin, as woodbind goes about a tree, wraps about us in every good way. It is a serpent biting our heel, and cries, “A lion in the way!” When God draws, sin holds under — at meat, drink, and sleep. It is a joker — it promises us much, but gives us the wind, and yet we believe it.

How can we do this?

But here a question may be asked. How does the apostle bid us shake off this sin which dwells in us so long as we live? It is death and the kirkyard that make us quit of this sin. How then we can shake it off?

By grace

The dominion of it we break by grace. Every grieving heart we have for this indwelling sin breaks a bone of old Adam, gives his back a crack and makes him cry. As we repent and advance in holiness, we break a leg or an arm of this sin. The root of it, God only, in death, can pluck out. Yet we must be hacking and cutting the branches and roots of it, else we cannot make progress in our race. We must not take this defiling sin forward with us in our race. We must leave it where we start, and deliver it over to Christ, that He may put it on His cross and nail it to His gallows.

By regeneration

The apostle speaks of sin as of a thing going round about us like a stone wall in our very way to heaven. Until, by regeneration, Christ make a gap in the wall that we may pass over, there is no possibility of going one foot.

And even when the wall is broken we shall see this sin hanging on our legs and arms. This sin keeps a lodge by the gate for Satan, and is a common robber, who slays many by the way.

Some it tricks out of the way, and lulls asleep in security, like a drunken traveller who sleeps in a moor till the sun be down, then wakes from his sleep and cries.

Others it blinds, such as Paul while he was still a Pharisee, and papists, and chases them a wrong way — to hell instead of heaven — when they make a fashion of repentance, to slay their sins, and go again to their old pass. Such are those who, with willingness, walk softly, and go to sin again.

Run the race

Now he sets down the exhortation, “Let us run the race.” This is more than to walk and step at our own leisure. “Running” shows there is a set time, which will run out, a short day, and that the way is long, and we have much to do to get sin slain. And, therefore, we must get underway with speed, and run fast.

In Matthew 11, the kingdom of heaven is said to be taken with violence. Luke 13:24 tells us, “Strive to enter in.” The word is, “Fight, and throng in by force.” When God, by faith, lets a man see heaven, he resolves that in he must be, come what will. “Reaching forth unto those things that are before, I press forward toward the mark” (Phil. 3:13–14). The word is, “I follow after, I reach out my hand.” The apostle means he ran so that his head and chest pressed forward before his feet, and his two arms reached out to catch hold of Christ. He chases Christ and heaven, so to speak, and they seem to run away from him, and he follows. So should we do. Then chase on! The prize seems to flee from us, but it cannot flee further than to heaven’s gates, and there we will get a hold of it.

But how will they do who say, “Easy does it! Slow and steady wins the race. What’s the need of all this fuss, all these prayers, all this flocking to communions? I’ll be in heaven as soon as the best of you!”

Don’t deceive yourselves, loiterers and drowsy persons, who don’t go one mile of twenty in a year — you who walk in a circle round and round, from pride to lust, from lust to drunkenness, from that to covetousness, and from that to pride again, like as if you were in a fairies’ dance, and don’t run at all! Can you get to heaven lying on your back? “The good lucky old religion made a sonsy world,” they say. Yet they use religion like a post-horse — as one wears out of fashion they take another.

Looking to Jesus

“But what good will looking to Jesus do us?” Very much. He is the captain of our salvation, “the author and finisher of our faith.” For Christ is all. He draws with His Spirit, and He leads us through the mire, and goes before us.

And we have this advantage, that when we faint, He looks back over His shoulder with a smile, takes us by the hand, and says, “Fear not, little flock …” (Luke 12:32), “Yet a little while, and I am with you” (John 15). Just as a loving guide says to the tired man, “We only have a little water or two to pass through, and see there is only that one hill between us and the town, we’re very near.”

Jesus Himself took the castle of heaven first. It cost Him blood to get in and break open the doors. Now He stands in the entrance and cries, “Come in! I have broken the gate, I have won the city. Don’t be afraid!” That’s why He is called a “fore-runner,” because He went before to open the doors and the gates, and take the stones out of the way, and says, “Step forward, my brethren, don’t be frightened.” So then, when we run, we are not to lean to our own strength, for fear we get a fall.

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From time to time we need to stop and take stock of who our Lord and Saviour is. Whenever else we might do this, one opportunity is at a communion, when we remember the Lord’s death and look forward to His return. Samuel Rutherford reflected on the description of Jesus Christ given in Revelation 19:12, “he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.” Christ is knowable only to the extent that He reveals Himself, and even then, while we know truly, we can never know Him completely. In the following excerpt from a communion sermon on this text, Rutherford points to three ways that Christ Jesus is beyond our knowledge.

“He had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.” What nameless king is this? What? Is Christ unbaptised, that He lacks a name? Is there no one who knows His name? “What is His name, and what is His son’s name, if thou canst tell?” (Prov. 30:4). “He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation?” (Isa. 53:8). Here is a strange thing! The angel says, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus Christ.” Nay, but His name is Himself, and His nature, and so He is an infinite God. None knows infinite Christ but Himself. Aye, surely Christ is an unknown person; though each one has “Christ Jesus” in their mouth, yet they know not what they are saying.

There are three mysteries in Christ that we cannot perfectly ken in this life, nor understand.

One mystery

The infinite wisdom, mercy, goodness, love, and grace in Christ. This the angels delight to look into and wonder at. Come near Christ here, and you will never see the bottom of Him. You have seen mercy, much mercy — there is yet more behind. One has seen much of Him, another more; the angels, who are sharp in sight, have yet seen more. Nay, but there is infinite more behind. You will as soon take the sea in the hollow of your hand, and bind the wind in your cloak, as take Him up. You must even stand still here and wonder, and cry out, “O! great Jesus, who will or can fathom Thee out?”

Another mystery

The work of Christ’s incarnation. O! what a depth is in it! God and dust married together! How blood remains in a personal union with God! How the finite manhood subsists in His infinite personality! And how the Godhead in the Second person, and not in the First or Third, assumed our nature, and yet but one Godhead in all the Three! How the Godhead stood under the manhood that was stricken, and the Godhead as a back-friend [supporter] held Him up, and yet the Godhead did not suffer! How Jesus man died, and Jesus God lived, and remained in death God and man!

A third mystery

And the third mystery is the name which Jesus has gotten by His rising from the dead, and how the manhood is advanced. Christ kens all these full well; He can read His own name. We may speak of learning which measures the earth, numbers the stars, and learns their motion. That is deep knowledge. But God help you to come here, and see this unknown name, JESUS, and find it out if you can. I believe you cannot.

Now ask yourselves, Where will you set Christ? Where will you get a seat, a throne, a chair for Him? He cannot be set too high. Nay, if there were ten thousand times ten thousand heavens, and each to be above another, and Christ to be set in the highest of them all, yet He would be too low. Alas! He is too little thought of! He is like the field where the pearl is — people go over it, and tread on the grass that grows above it, and yet they do not ken it. They tramp on this pearl, and yet they do not know what they are doing. Fie! fie! earthly person that you are! Will you put a cow or a sheep in your affection beyond thy salvation? For shame for evermore, that people set their lusts above Him! And O, for shame! that you should set your new-come-over [recent upstart] lord, Wilful-will, above the old eternal Lord, the Ancient of days, Jesus Christ! O! how Christ is put out of His place! O, let us long for glory, that place where we will read His name clearly, and see Him face to face. How strange, that we do not long to be in heaven, to see this comely glorious one (if I may so speak), a darling indeed, and to be God’s bairns in heaven! Then the curtain will be drawn back from the ark, and we will come and look into it, and see our fill of Christ there.

Our honourable Lord

Believer, before I go any further, I tell you that you don’t need to think shame of your master. Saul went to the devil in the night (1 Sam. 28:8), but the one who serves Christ may not think shame of his master — he may think it an honour to go to Him in bright daylight.

He is more than double a king. For as He is God essential with the Father and Holy Spirit, He is an honourable Lord. All the kingdoms of the earth are His; all the crowns in the world (of Britain, France, Spain, Israel and Judah, and keep counting), they are all Christ’s as God Creator. “By Him kings reign and princes decree justice” (Prov. 8:15). All the kings of the earth have their being from Christ. He is appointed of the Father “King upon the holy hill of Zion” (Psalm 2:6). “Kings shall fall down before Him, all nations shall serve Him” (Psa. 72:11). By His rising from the dead, He has gotten a name far above every name; so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. “The Lord at thy right hand, shall strike through kings in the day of His wrath” (Psalm 110:5).

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The Christian walk is characterised by newness of life and closeness to the Lord. Yet as time goes by, those who are in the way can grow conscious of distance from the Lord as well as a degree of lifelessness and lack of energy for the journey. At significant milestones, it can help to refocus on our priorities and remind ourselves of the things that will assist our progress and reduce hindrances. Samuel Rutherford is a pilgrim who shared what he himself had learned on the way to help those coming behind to make better progress. The following updated excerpt comes from a recently published book called Daily Walking With God. It was originally titled “Some Helps for a More Exact and Close Walking with God.”

Set aside time for the Word and prayer

Give some hours of the day, maybe more, maybe less, to read God’s Word, and to pray. Prefer these activities to the greatest affairs and employments of your calling, even if you spend the shortest time in them. Let the firstfruits of your morning thoughts smell of such religious duties, excluding all else till they have taken possession.

Have occasional spiritual thoughts during work

In the midst of worldly employments let there be some thoughts of sin, judgment, death, eternity, and God’s free love, with a word or two of prayer to God.

Avoid discouragement in prayer

Do not grudge it even if you come away from prayer without sense, or downcast, or a sense of guiltiness. Instead let this sharpen your appetite for another hearing, and do not rest on what you have already done.

Keep the whole Lord’s day holy

Spend the Lord’s day from morning till night always in private or public worship, even taking account of the smallest thoughts, as this day is set apart from the rest of the days of the week for the Lord’s worship only, as not being lawful to have our own thoughts

Avoid idle thoughts

Observe and avoid wandering and idle thoughts, as they are the harbingers of unsavoury speech, and ushers to profane actions.

Avoid wandering thoughts in prayer

Beware of wandering of heart in private and public prayer to God. In private, make your heart go along with your tongue, and in public have hearty joining, as if you felt the present necessity pressing you to it. Also join in praises with a feeling heart, proceeding from a principle of love, to exalt His glory.

Avoid all known sin

Eschew all revealed sins and whatever things are against the conscience, as most dangerous preparatives to hardness of heart. Always be governed by your conscience, rather than conscience being governed by you.

Have integrity in dealings with others

In dealing with others, whether in agreements or business, have a regard for sincerity, and make conscience of idle words and lying. Let us behave in such a way that they shall speak honourably of our sweet Master, and not in any way that would damage our profession. The life we live should correspond to the outward show, so that not only in appearance but in reality we may be true Christians.

Spend time in spiritual company

Frequent most the company of those with whom the soul may be most benefited. Develop all conversations in a way that contributes to spiritual usefulness, striving to edify one another in mutual confidences, cherishing heavenly thoughts, and sympathizing with the sufferings of our mother the church. In all your prayers hold up her (the church’s) condition to the Lord, and the condition of one another.

Avoid godless company

Eschew the company of the profane and “those who are without,” unless it is for the purpose of bringing them into the knowledge of Christ, by convincing their judgments. In no wise abstain from challenging their erroneous vices, as choosing rather to incur their wrath than to let God’s glory suffer in the least measure. Better to suffer in vindicating His cause than to be guilty by participating in sin that dishonours Him, for what you suffer in that, you suffer as a member of Christ.

Meditate frequently on the Word

Do not content yourself with morning and evening reading of God’s Word and sacrifices of prayer. Rather, whatever you read or hear, digest it by meditation, and turn it over in praises oft-times a day, as occasion offers, not sparing your most important activities.

Keep daily accounts

Every night call your thoughts, words and actions to a strict account. See where you have omitted, gone back, stood still, or come short. With sorrow, promise and purpose to amend what has been amiss. Let this possess your night dreams, and then awaken with a desire to pray and praise.

Submit to God in affliction

In afflictions or crosses, whether on body or mind or friends, often practice submission by acknowledging that nothing happens by accident, but by an overruling providence. Gather sweetness out of the bitterest portions, as things that serve to make you more heavenward, and do not drag Christ’s cross, but bear it cheerfully.

Avoid hatred even towards enemies

Keep well clear of vehemence, envy, hatred, desire of revenge, even against those who persecute the truth; for we often mix our zeal with our wildfire. Maintain charitable thoughts of those that are without, not being a slave of your passions, but commanding them, and let them express themselves most against your own corruption.

Daily examine your growth in grace

Daily assess your growth in grace. If you do not see it grow daily perceptibly, yet by testing you must find imperceptible growth [over time], otherwise doubt yourself. For as standing water goes bad, so grace not growing must decay, and then you would come short of your mark.

Suppress idle thoughts

When idle thoughts enter your heart, suppress them quickly, for they are like the thief that will open the door to the rest to break in till they become the strong man, and then act in a way which cannot be so easily resisted. It is best to smother them in the birth before they come to infancy, and far more before they come to such full strength that they can hardly be rooted up.

Be consistent in resolutions

Do not content yourself with flashes of good resolutions, before or after the sacrament, or in the heat of public or private ordinances, which are suddenly choked. These are like the seed among the corn, which spend their life in their birth. On the other hand, do not be discouraged with the clouds of God’s absence. Rather judge for yourself what occasions it, still waiting patiently, not idly, under the cloud, till He break forth with the beams of His countenance to enlighten your deserted (but not rejected) condition.

Daily examine every thought

What if, if it were possible, you were to write every thought of the day, both good and bad, and, in order to make more conscience of them, you were to summon them before thee at night to be censured according to their demerits, persuading yourself to be so strictly examined before God’s tribunal in the day of the Lord?

Deny self in order to be Christ’s

Do not let idol-self have such a reigning power in you, but rather dismiss it in disgrace, so that Christ may take possession. To be less your own is to be more His. This will oblige you to be more painstaking about mortifying your sin and putting on the new man.

Resist doubts and unbelief

Strive against doubting. If you lack feeling of faith, complain bitterly for the lack of it, and seek out where the sin that hinders it is lurking. Use all means by which you can get the Lord’s countenance, and no less to entertain it.

This updated excerpt is taken from the book titled Daily Walking With God, by Samuel Rutherford, published by Reformation Press (2022).

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In a recent study of what people in the UK think about Jesus, it was found that following a conversation with a practicing Christian, around a third of non-Christians said they wanted to know more about Jesus, felt more positive towards Jesus, and were open to an encounter with Jesus. This seems to reflect a growing openness towards hearing about Jesus from Christians compared to previous findings, perhaps reflecting the upheavals and uncertainties of the last couple of years. So what would we most of all want our non-Christian friends to know about Jesus? Samuel Rutherford had no doubts about the attractiveness of Jesus to sinners, even people who thought they had no use for Him in their lives. In the following updated extract, Rutherford describes some of the wonder of Jesus as the Saviour. More than bare facts and doctrines, Rutherford is gripped with the beauty and loveliness of Christ, the eternal Son of God. Jesus has such a powerful magnetic influence that once He gives someone a glimpse of Himself, they can’t help but be drawn to Him for salvation. What then are some of these glimpses we want people to see?

Jesus Christ has a unique aptitude for drawing sinners to Himself.

Jesus is the Redeemer

The Father is not the Redeemer, nor is the Holy Spirit, but Jesus Christ is in person the Lord Redeemer. In the deep of God’s wisdom, the Son was thought fittest to make sons (Gal. 4:4). As Lord Saviour, Christ is a fit person to rescue captives, and to draw them into the state of sonship. I do not say this in a way that excludes the other two persons of the Trinity, for the Father draws sinners to the Son (John 6:44), and the Spirit of grace is a special agent in the work of conversion. But Christ is personally the one who draws sinners, and God works all plans He designed in heaven by Christ. It is Christ who brings many sons to glory (Heb. 2:10).

Jesus is the Mediator

Christ’s role is to be a congregating and uniting Mediator (Col. 1:20). He reunites heaven and earth. He is our peace (Eph. 2:14), the Shepherd who gathers in one the sons of God (John 11:52). By the merit of His blood He makes sinners legally one with God. He is Emmanuel, God with us. We were banished out of paradise, but the Son was sent out to bring in the out-law sons.

Jesus embodies God’s mercy to sinners

In Christ, God has laid down (so to speak) His compassion, mercy, and gentleness to sinners. In His person and work, Christ has taken away infinite wrath, and satisfied divine justice. God nowhere has so much mercy, graciousness, kindness, tender compassion to sinners and such a sea of love, as in the Lord Jesus. O but He is a most lovely, desirable, compassionate God in Christ!

The sinner finds all that God can have in him, or do for saving, in the Mediator Christ. Nothing can come out of God to the sinner, except through Christ. There is no golden pipe, no channel but this. All God, and whole God, is in Christ, and all God as communicable to the creature. If only God was seen in His lovelyness, His beauty would be strong ropes to draw hell itself up to heaven. Love, grace, mercy, are uniting attributes in God, attributes which solder or fuse things permanently together. These essential attributes that are in one person of the Trinity are in all three persons of the Trinity, yet the mediatorial manifestation of love, grace, and free mercy is only in the Son. Christ is the treasury, store-house, and repository of the free goodness and mercy of the Godhead. As the sea is a congregation of waters, so Christ is a confluence of these lovely and attractive attributes that are in the Godhead.

Jesus reflects God’s beauty to sinners

Christ is the face of God (2 Cor. 4:6). The beauty and loveliness of the person, and much of their majesty and glory, is in the face. So the beauty and majesty and glory of God is manifested in Christ. He is the brightness of the Father’s glory (Heb. 1:3); the Father is as it were all sun, Christ the Son is the substantial rays, light-shining, the eternal and essential radiating of this sun of glory. The sun’s glory is manifested to the world in the light and beams that it sends out to the world, and if the sun kept its beams within itself, we would see nothing of its beauty and glory. No man or angel could see anything of God, if He had not had a consubstantial Son, begotten of himself by an eternal generation. But Christ is the beams, and the splendour, and the shining (but the consubstantial shining) of the Father. As God incarate Christ reveals the excellency, glory, and beauty of God.

Christ is the drawing loveliness of God. If you see a creature’s beauty, or a man’s face, you see the creature itself and the man himself. That’s what Christ says to Philip (John 14:9). “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. I am as like the Father, as God is like Himself; there is a perfect, indivisible, essential unity between the Father and me. I and the Father are one; one very God; He the begetter, I the begotten.”

So you see that God has pledged all His beauty, His loveliness, and His attractive virtue in Christ, the lodestone of heaven. Wisdom is a fair, lovely, and alluring beauty. Well, Christ is the essential wisdom of God. If ever your eyes once fastened on that dainty lovely thing Christ, that eternal, infinite flower and lily that sprang out of the essence and beautiful nature of God, with eternal, infinite greenness, beauty, fragrance, vigour, life, never to fade, that essential wisdom and substantial Word – if ever your eyes once fell on Him in a vision of glory, it would be un-possible to take your eyes off Him again! Such attractive rays and visual lines of lovely beauty and glory would come from His face to your eyes, and such darts of love into your understanding, heart, and affection, that you would be captivated by His glory for ever and ever.

Jesus came as close as He possibly could to sinners

Then there is so much warmness of heart, and such a fire of love, such a stock of free grace, so wide, so tender, so large a heart of mercy and compassion toward sinners, that He had to put Himself into such a posture of mercy that would most conveniently allow Him to get a strong pull of sinners to draw them – a large and wide handful, His arms full of sinners.

How? He had to be a man for us, to get all the organs of lovely drawing sinners to Him. He got Himself a human heart to love humans, human bowels to compassionate humans, human hands to touch the leper’s skin, a human mouth and tongue to pray for humans, to preach to humans, and in our nature to publish the everlasting gospel, human legs to be the good shepherd to walk over mountain and wilderness to seek and to save lost sheep; a human soul to sigh and groan for humans; human eyes to weep for sinners.

To lay down His life for His poor friends, He became a created clay-tent of free grace, a shop and a warehouse of compassion towards us. He borrowed the womb of a sinner to be born, He sucked the breasts of a woman who needed a Saviour, He ate and drank with sinners and publicans, He came to seek and to save lost sinners, He was numbered with sinners, He died between two sinners, He made His grave with sinners, He borrowed a sinner’s tomb to be buried in.

And now He keeps up the old relationship with sinners, even now that He is in heaven. Honour has not changed Him, He has not forgotten His old friends. “For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). In heaven Christ cannot now sigh, but He can feel sighing, He cannot weep, but He has a man’s heart to compassionate our weeping, in such a way as is suitable to His glorified condition. The head is in heaven, but He has left His heart in earth with sinners: that Comforter, His Holy Spirit, who He has sent to abide with us.

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Many Christians feel uncomfortable witnessing to unconverted friends and neighbours. Among the various possible reasons for this can sometimes be a nagging feeling that non-Christians would have a point if they were put off by how inadequate existing Christians are, and how unappealing organised religion often is. But what the unconverted person is missing out on is not so much to do with Christians or the church, but the wonderful Saviour and His amazing salvation. In the following shortened and updated extract, Samuel Rutherford lists a number of ways in which the unconverted should find Christ Jesus attractive. Perhaps if believers themselves were more struck with the loveliness of Christ and more convinced about the benefits of Christ’s salvation, it would come more easily to speak to others about Him.

The Lord Jesus Christ draws you to come to Him with various kinds of reasons to persuade you. One reason is the pleasure and enjoyment you can have from the beauty that is in God.

God is beautiful

What then is the beauty of God? I conceive it to be the loveliness of His nature, and all infinite perfections, as this loveliness offers itself to His own understanding and the understanding of humans and angels. David makes this his one desirable thing, ‘That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and enquire in his temple’ (Psalm 27:4).

The Lord is beautiful because infiniteness, and sweetness of order, is spread throughout His nature and attributes. Nothing can be added to Him, nothing taken from Him; and He is not all mercy only, but infinitely just. So then one attribute does not overtop, out-border or limit another, which would deface His beauty.

And what is beautiful must be natural, and truly and really there. Borrowed colours, and painted embellishments, are not beauty. The Lord, in all His perfections, is truly what He seems to be.

This is why the perfect blessedness of heaven is described as seeing God face to face (Rev. 22:4; Matt. 18:10). God does not have a face; but to see God’s face, is to behold God’s blessed nature (as far as the creature can see God). We see God’s face when we behold Him at close range – not by hearsay, but directly. Let us imagine that millions of suns were all amassed in one: this sun would far excel the sense of seeing in everyone who has ever lived. Now imagine that the Lord created an understanding faculty, millions of degrees more vigorous and apprehensive than if all who have ever been created were consolidated in one. Yet even this understanding could not see God’s transcendent and superexcellent beauty! There would remain unseen treasures of loveliness never seen. In fact, it involves an eternal contradiction, that the creature can see to the bottom of the Creator.

God’s beauty is in Christ

But all this beauty of God is held out to us in Christ! He is fairer than the sons of men (Psa. 45:2), handsome with a double excellency. ‘Behold thou art fair, my Beloved, yea pleasant,’ lovely, delightful, most acceptable (Cant. 1:16.) He is white and ruddy (Cant. 5:10.). His countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars (v. 15). His countenance is as when the sun shineth in its full strength (Rev. 1:16). All the beauty of God is put forth in Christ. Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty (Isa. 33:17). Christ is the brightness of His Father’s glory (Heb. 1:3). The light of the sun in the air is the ‘accidental’ reflection of the sun’s beams; but Christ is the substantial reflection of the Father’s light and glory, for He is God equal with the Father, and the same God.

God’s beauty is worth seeing

This beauty is outstanding to human and angel observers. Angels are said to have eyes within and without, in front and behind (Rev. 4:6), to behold the beauty of the Lord; and their eyes are absorbed always in beholding His face. They stoop down, as if looking into a dark and veiled thing, with the head bent and the neck outstretched, with great attention of mind. Angels are not nosey, but this exceeding great beauty they must see. They cannot get their eyes pulled off Jesus Christ.

Communion with God is beautiful

We have communion with God in Jesus Christ, when we love Jesus and Jesus shows us that He loves us. There is a beautiful sweetness in being conscious of the love of Christ, which delights all the spiritual senses.

1. The smell of Christ’s spikenard, His myrrh, aloes, and cassia. His ivory chambers smell of heaven. The ointment of His garments brings God to the sense. (Psa. 45:8; Cant. 1:13)

2. To the sight, Christ is a delightful thing: to behold God in Christ, is a changing, transforming sight. (2 Cor. 3:18; Eph. 1:17; Matt. 16:17; 1 John 2:27.) To see the King in His beauty is a thing full of ravishing delight.

3. It captivates the spiritual sense of hearing. The spouse is so taken with the sweetness of Christ’s tongue that, for joy, she can only speak broken and imperfect words. ‘The voice of my Beloved!’ is not a perfect sentence, but for joy she can speak no more (Cant. 2:8). It is the voice of joy and gladness, that with the very sound can heal broken bones (Psa. 51:8). O if you heard Christ speak! Christ’s piping the joyful gospel tidings should make us dance (Matt. 11:7). Christ harping and singing sinners with joyful promises, out of hell to heaven, must have a drawing sweetness to move stones, if the sinner has ears to hear! And what warmth of love must it bring, when Christ is heard say words of comfort (Isa. 54:11; Isa. 40:1).

4. Christ is sweet to the spiritual taste. ‘I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet in my mouth’ (Cant. 2:3; also Psa. 34:8). The wine, the milk, the honey, and the fatted calf, are all but shadows to Christ’s excellent gospel dainties.

5. The sense of touch, which is the most spiritual, is the heavenly feelings, sense, and experience of God’s consolations; and this sense is fed with the kisses of Christ’s mouth (Cant. 1:3), and with the hid manna, the white stone, the new name.

Joy in God is beautiful

Joy is a drawing delight, and in His face there is fulness of joy (Psa. 16:11). Look, however far God’s face casts down from heaven sparkles of joy on us, as far goes our joy; and we are said, in believing, 1 Pet. 1:8. to rejoice with joy unspeakable, and glorious.

The abundance in God is beautiful

‘They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink the rivers of thy pleasures’ (Psa. 36:7). Should not this draw people to Christ? There must be abundance of pleasures where there is a river of pleasures (as in Psa. 46:4). What a sea of seas must God Himself be! His full and bright face, His white throne, His harpers and the heavenly troops that surround the throne, the Lamb, the heaven of heavens itself, the tree of life, eternally green, eternally at once both adorned with soul-delighting blossoms and loaded with twelve manner of fruit every month; peace of conscience from the sense of reconciliation, the first fruits of Emanuel’s land, that lies beyond time and death! This must all be above expression.

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