Rejecting pig food and being a slave! What kind of a nonsense title to an article is that, you may ask. Well, stay with me for a bit.
In their book A Puritan Theology – Doctrine for Life, Joel Beeke and Mark Jones have a chapter called The Puritans on Coming to Christ. This section aptly begins with a quote from Puritan Thomas Boston, “His heart is open to you, his arms stretched wide.”
The entire chapter is a discussion of the views of the Calvinistic Puritans regarding the nuts and bolts of coming to Christ. Sub titles include The Universal Invitation to Come to Christ; The Divine Impetus for Coming to Christ and Human Impediments in Coming to Christ.
The section is full of gems. For example the authors write:
We must look to Christ. We must turn to Christ. We must come to Christ, to receive from His hand alone the gospel bounty of forgiveness of sins and everlasting life.
Faith surrenders to the gospel and falls into the outstretched arms of Christ. Faith looks away from self to Christ, moved entirely by grace. Faith renounces the soul’s poverty in favor of Christ’s riches. Faith flees from the soul’s guilt to Christ as reconciler, from the soul’s bondage to Christ as liberator. Faith confesses with Augustus Toplady (1740-1778):
Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress;
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
The Conclusion of the chapter bears the odd title: Reject the World’s Pig Food and Be Christ’s Willing Slave. It contains two helpful illustrations.
The first one is the story of preacher Rowland Hill (1744-1833) who had been experiencing a low point in his ministry. At one point he noticed pigs being led to the slaughterhouse by a pig farmer. Hill enquired of the farmer as to how he was able to lead the pigs to their deaths. The farmer responded that he dropped a few crumbs of pig feed as he walked along. The lesson being that the pigs were led to slaughter for a handful of crumbs!
At this point Beeke and Jones cite Charles Spurgeon: “Unbelief will destroy the best of us. Faith will save the worst of us.”
The second illustration is that of a wealthy Englishman who had traveled to California in the 1850s. He stopped in New Orleans on the way home and happened across a beautiful young African woman being sold in a slave market. When he overheard what two men were intending to do to the woman if they could buy her, he joined in the bidding, and offered twice the price.
After the Englishman bought the woman, she spat in his face three times. She spat at him even after he handed her the freedom papers. When she finally realized he’d paid more than anyone else in order to buy her freedom, she wept at his feet asking him if she could be his slave forever.
Beeke and Jones note that this is pure Puritan teaching on Christ’s dealing with sinners. Here’s my paraphrase:
Christ will not cast out those who go to Him. He has purchased them with the price of His own blood. Only He can free them from bondage to sin and death. Only Christ can lead them to eternal life. Moreover, He makes them willing and ready to live unto Him as servants, now and forever.
The lesson is to shun the crumbs this world will offer you. They will lead you to death. Go to Jesus for your eternal freedom.
See also Slave by John MacArthur – Book Review
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