Experience Nurtures Hope
“Experience worketh hope.”—Rom. 5:4
We are ever to consider the gospel as a proclamation of grace to rebels, a declaration of mercy to the profligate and abandoned, glad tidings of salvation to lost, desperate, hopeless sinners. It finds the soul destitute of any one encouraging symptom; it brings all hope and encouragement with it. When the gospel becomes the power of God to salvation to any sinner, it works a mighty change in his state and practice. In the sweet experience, proof, or trial of this, the soul is comforted. Hope concerning his state is confirmed. Experience worketh hope of one’s own interest in Jesus, and salvation by him. It works not by legal terrors and dreadful horrors, as in the case of Judas; nor by exciting the animal passions to a flash of joy, as the stony ground hearers were affected by the word. But it powerfully enlightens the soul to see the evil of sin, and the infinite preciousness of the Lord Jesus, so as to lothe and detest the former, and cleave to and trust alone in the latter.
Hence Jesus becomes the tried stone, the sure foundation of the soul. Upon his finished work, all hope, in time and for eternity, is laid. All other foundations are rejected as sandy, all other hopes as vain. Faith in God’s word, relying on his promises in Christ, begets resignation to his will, and patience under his dispensations, being assured that ‘all things work together for good to them who love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.’ Rom. 8:28
We first experience his power in effectual calling, and then his love in keeping us close to himself, and obedient to his will. So we enjoy peace from him, and our hearts are cheerfully devoted to him. But how oft doth the believing soul find coolness of affection, heaviness of heart, and inward dejection. Doth not this destroy his hope? No: even this experience, sad as it seems, worketh hope. Hereby pride and self-confidence are slain, sin embittered, and the soul humbled at the feet of Jesus, with Thou, even thou alone art my hope—I dare not trust in any other—my soul shall make her boast of thee, and of thee only.
We have the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves: and the more we live upon and trust in the Lord, we shall find hope spring up, love flourish, and holi ness abound. Praised be the Lord our God, who is the God of hope, and who fills us with joy and peace in believing, that we may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. Rom. 15:13
Long did my Lord in patience wait
Till I returned to him;
Let patience prove thy tried word,
And all my hopes confirm.
William Mason (1719-1791) was a High-Calvinist author. For many years he served as a Justice of the Peace, and in 1783 was appointed a Magistrate. He served as editor of the Gospel Magazine before and after the editorship of Augustus Toplady. He is best known for a morning and evening devotional entitled, “A Spiritual Treasury For The Children Of God.”
