Chapter 17: Sanctification by Faith in human nature. It exhibits his disinterestedness. The way Satan prevailed against our first parents was by leading them to doubt God's disinterestedness. The gospel demonstrates the truth, and corrects this lie.
The law represents God as the inexorable enemy of the sinner, as securing happiness to all who perfectly obey, but thundering down wrath on all who disobey. The gospel reveals new features in God's character, not known before. Doubtless the gospel increases the love of all holy beings, and gives greater joy to the angels in heaven, greatly increasing their love, and confidence, and admiration, when they see God's amazing pity and forbearance towards the guilty. The law drove the devils to hell, and it drove Adam and Eve from Paradise. But when the blessed spirits see the same holy God waiting on rebels, nay opening his own bosom, and giving his beloved Son for them, and taking such unwearied pains for thousands of years to save sinners, do you think it has no influence in strengthening the motives in their minds to obedience and love?
The devil, who is a purely selfish being, is always accusing others of being selfish. He accused Job of this: "Doth Job fear God for naught?" He accused God to our first parents, of being selfish, and that the only reason for his forbidding them to eat of the tree of knowledge was the fear that they might come to know as much as himself. The gospel shows what
God is. If he were selfish, he would not take such pains to save those whom he might, with perfect ease, crush to hell. Nothing is so calculated to make selfish persons ashamed of their selfishness, as to see disinterested benevolence in others. Hence the wicked are always trying to appear disinterested. Let the selfish individual who has any heart, see true benevolence in others, and it is like coals of fire on his head. The wise men understood this, when he said, "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink; for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." Nothing is so calculated to cut down an enemy, and win him over, and make him a friend.
This is what the gospel does to sinners. It shows that notwithstanding all that they have done to God, God still exercises toward them disinterested love. When he sees God stooping from heaven to save him, and understands that it is indeed true, oh, how it melts and breaks down the heart, strikes a death-blow to selfishness, and wins him over to unbounded confidence and holy love. God has so constituted the mind, that it must necessarily do homage to virtue. It must do this, as long as it retains the powers of moral agency. This is as true in hell as in heaven. The devil feels this. When an individual sees that God has no interested motives to condemn him, when he sees that God offers salvation as a mere gratuity, through faith, he cannot but feel admiration of God's benevolence. His selfishness is crushed, the law has done its work, he sees that all his selfish endeavors have done no good; and the next step is for his heart to go out in disinterested love.
Suppose a man was under sentence of death for rebel lion, and had tried many expedients to recommend himself to the government, but failed, because they were all hollow hearted