The Danger of Relapse
I. Experience has so often proved that men have not laid fast hold on the grace which they had received, that we may well conceive our Lord to say to each successive congregation who have professed to be His disciples, "Will ye also go away? For eighteen hundred years I have accomplished the work of man's redemption. Your salvation has been purchased, the door of the kingdom of heaven has been set open, but yet, age after age and year after year, men have refused to be saved, and the way to eternal life has been thrown open to thousands in vain. Will ye also go away? Will ye also despise the riches of God's goodness and the precious blood of Christ, which purchased your salvation, and will ye go after your own desires, each man after the idols of his own heart, and be not saved, but lost?"
II. There is always danger in moments of recoil. In things not spiritual, we know that the mind often flies back too vehemently when its work is over, and abandons itself to total idleness. After every effort there is always the notion that we have earned our rest. How easily will the present drive out the past, unless Christ's grace preserve it to us? How readily will the mind turn in other directions, and the sun of our life will be veiled in clouds, so as neither to be seen nor felt? Pray that these clouds may not overshadow Him; pray that Christ may be present with us in our labours of tomorrow, even as He has been present with us here today. For indeed it is our privilege to be with Him ever, and to have Him ever with us; whether we eat or drink, or whatever thing, grave or light, we may be engaged in. There is nothing strange, nothing profane, nothing presumptuous, in praying that Christ may be with us in all those common works which our daily life brings with it. It is the great object of our finding Christ in the Church, it is the greatest object of our receiving the Holy Communion, that we should so find Him everywhere.
T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. v., p. 155.
References: John 6:67-71. R. S. Candlish, The Gospel of Forgiveness,p. 20. John 6:68. G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College,p. 9; Parker, City Temple,vol. iii., p. 25.John 6:69. G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 207.