I came to the book wanting to learn more about counseling souls. I feel like I have. What has always been particularly hard for me is dealing with those who want to be saved and in some form or fashion are in no small amount of agitation in seeking salvation. They read their bible, and pray, and ask for salvation, and yet are not saved, and they know it and become miserable. In churches with an easy gospel this probably wouldn't be too hard to side step, just tell the person that if they are sincere and pray this prayer then they are definitely saved, but that can't be done if your really wanting to help people. That usually causes a lot of problems.
Spencer's counsel was not always the same. He seemed very gifted in discerning what the person really needed to hear. Also what dictated his responses was what he felt the Holy Spirit was already using to bring that person properly to conviction and to Christ. If he could tell that the Spirit was convincing them of something in particular, he too then would put his finger on that point and speak the same thing and usually end the conversation there, leaving them to deal with that truth.
What did come up repeatedly though, was this issue of someone seeking salvation and being miserable in not finding it after many attempts. In a sketch titled "I Can't Repent" Spencer tells of one man who with much brokenness and frustration kept crying out "I can't repent!" What this man meant was not that he didn't want to repent, he meant, "I'm trying to repent and be saved, but I'm unable" and Spencer quickly points out that in saying this he is also in effect saying that God is the one who is holding him back from salvation, as if God has not really made the way open for sinners to come to Christ.
This is the hard part, I think. How do you tell someone that God is true though every man be a liar? How do you get that across in a way that's helpful. Surely you don't console the person in their subtle accusations against God that he is not good, not helpful, and standing far off as if with his arms crossed. Follow their interchange:
Spencer: "Other people have turned to God, and you ought to. But your mind has seized on the idea of your trying and your trouble, and you make an excuse and a self-righteousness of them."The man needed to hear these things. After Spencer quoted several verses to him about the need for the divine aid of the Holy Spirit in coming to God. He told the man that rather than seeing God as not helping him, God was actually calling and drawing him by the Spirit, but that he was looking to his own efforts to justify him and by doing so rejecting the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was the only hope for this man to be led to Christ as the ground of justification.
Troubled Man: "Do you think I am self-righteous?"
Spencer: "I know you are; that is your grand difficulty. You have been trying to save yourself; you are trying now. When you tried to repent, your heart aimed after repentance as something to recommend you to God, and constitute a reason why he should forgive and save you. It was just an operation of a self-righteous spirit. ... It is evident that you are trying to be righteous before God, through your pain and your attempted penitence. And if you should find any peace of mind in that way, it would only be a deception, not an item of religion in it. ... You ought to cry, like Peter sinking in the waves, 'Lord, save me!' But instead of this, you are just looking to yourself, striving to find something, or make something in your own heart, which shall recommend you to God. And in this miserable way you are making salvation a far more difficult matter than God has made it. You have forgotten the free grace of the gospel, the full atonement of Jesus Christ, by the sacrifice of himself."
(What an important point. Let us not treat our act of seeking the Lord as a ground by which God will accept us. Christ is the only ground, repentance and faith are only our acting of casting all else away and clinging to the ground. Don't cling to the act of clinging. Don't seek an experience as if the experience is what saves you.)
Troubled Man: "But, I can't repent and come to Christ of myself."
Spencer: "I certainly never said you could, and never wished you to think you could. In my opinion God does not wish you to think so. And if you have found out that you cannot repent of yourself, aside from divine aid, I am glad of it--you have found out and important truth."
(Earlier he said "Other people have turned to God, and you ought to" to show the man the foolishness of his excuse for not repenting. But he now proceeds to drive home the fact that, while we are unable to repent because of our own stubbornness and sinfulness, we are to seek the aid of the Holy Spirit. He goes on to quote several scriptures on needing the aid of God's Spirit to come to salvation.)
Not long afterward (less than 6 months) the man was converted and thanked Spencer for all that he said. He said that all of his affections had got him virtually nowhere, but by seeing his utter dependence on God and inability to make himself better, he was caused to look to Christ in a manner of simple faith.
How much do we need to employ wisdom in talking with those (whom we love) who are yet outside of Christ. Just because someone is in some form or fashion anxious and seeking God doesn't mean they are on the right track. We may often need to point them more truly on toward the mercy of God in Christ. The way is indeed open for all sinners. Let God be found true and every man a liar.
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In short:
- God has made the way of salvation open in Christ.
- To come to Christ you need the help of the Holy Spirit to draw and regenerate.
- Men, apart from the Holy Spirit, try to make their coming to Christ the a means for commending themselves to God. They exalt an experience or act of repentance.
- Any time you move away from "simple faith," you are in danger of taking your eyes off of Christ and the cross.
