Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you
This must be understood consistently with the perfection of God's
immensity and omnipresence: the saints draw nigh to God when they
present their bodies in his sanctuary; when they tread in his
courts, and attend his ordinances; where they always find it good
for them to draw nigh unto him; and blessed is the man that
approaches to him in faith and fear: they draw nigh to him when
they come to the throne of his grace, for grace and mercy to help
them; when they draw near to him in prayer with true hearts, and
lift them up with their hands to God; when in the exercise of
faith and hope they enter within the vail, and come up even to
his seat; and lay hold on him as their covenant God and Father;
and he draws nigh to them by granting them his gracious presence,
by communicating his love to them, by applying the blessings of
his grace, by helping them in times of need and distress, and by
protecting them from their enemies; the contrary to which is
expressed by standing afar off from them. Now this is not to be
understood as if men could first draw nigh to God, before he
draws nigh to them; for as God first loves, so he first moves; he
takes the first step, and, in conversion, turns and draws men to
himself; though this does not respect first conversion, but after
acts in consequence of it; nor is it to be considered as a
condition of the grace and favour of God, in drawing nigh to his
people, but is expressive of what is their duty, and an
encouragement to it:
cleanse [your] hands, ye sinners, and purify [your] hearts,
ye
double minded;
the persons addressed are not the profane men of the world, but
sinners in Zion, formal professors, hypocritical persons; who
speak with a double tongue to men, and who draw nigh to God with
their mouths, but not with their hearts; who halt between two
opinions, and are unstable in all their ways: cleansing of their
hands and hearts denotes the purity of outward conversation, and
of the inward affections; and supposes impurity both of flesh and
spirit, that the body and all its members, the soul and all its
powers and faculties, are unclean; and yet not that men have a
power to cleanse themselves, either from the filth of an external
conversation, or from inward pollution of the heart; though a man
attempts the one, he fails in it; and who can say he has done the
other? ( Job 9:30
Job 9:31 ) (
Proverbs
20:9 ) . This is not to be done by ceremonial ablutions,
moral services, or evangelical ordinances; this is God's work
only, as appears from his promises to cleanse his people from
their sins, by sprinkling clean water upon them; from the end of
Christ's shedding his blood, and the efficacy of it; and from the
prayers of the saints, that God would wash them thoroughly from
their iniquity, and cleanse them from their sin, and create clean
hearts in them: and yet such exhortations are not in vain, since
they may be useful to convince men of their pollution, who are
pure in their own eyes, as these hypocritical, nominal
professors, might be; and to bring them to a sense of their
inability to cleanse themselves, and of the necessity of being
cleansed elsewhere; and to lead them to inquire after the proper
means of cleansing, and so to the fountain of Christ's blood,
which only cleanses from all sin.