Richard Sibbes: The Transformative Power of Christ's Love

Richard Sibbes: He was a man who clearly enjoyed knowing God and so much so you read his sermons today and his relish is still infectious after all those years. He would speak of the living God as a life-giving warming sun who he said "Delights to spread his beams and his influence in things to make all things fruitful. Such a goodness is in God as is in a fountain or in the breast that loves to ease itself of milk." [00:00:32]

And knowing God to be such an overflowing fountain of goodness made Sibbes a very attractive model of God-likeness for he said "Those who are led by the spirit of God, they have such a diffusive goodness that loves to spread itself, like him." In other words, knowing God's love, Sibbes became loving and his understanding of who God has transformed him into a man, a preacher and, his sermons were recorded, so a writer of really magnetic geniality. [00:01:11]

A phrase Sibbes often repeated in his sermons was "There is more grace in Christ than there is sin in us," and knowing that, he always sought in his preaching to win the hearts of his listeners to Christ. And this, he believed, was the special duty of ministers. Not to perform sacrifice on their behalf, not to take them through some external religion but he said "Ministers woo for Christ. They open up the riches, beauty, honour, all that is lovely in him." [00:03:39]

The result was preaching that was so winsome that struggling believers began to call him the 'honey-mouthed,' the 'sweet dropper,' and, it was said, hardened sinners would deliberately avoid going to his, Sibbes, for fear he would convert them. One listener, Humphrey Mills, records his experience of Sibbes's ministry, and it seems to be have been fairly typical. [00:04:36]

"I was for three years wounded for sins, and under a sense of my corruptions, which were many; and I followed sermons, pursuing the means, I was constant in duties and doing; looking for Heaven that way by doing. And then I was so precise for outward formalities, I censured all to be reprobates, that wore their hair long or not short above their ears; or that wore great ruffs, and gorgets, and fashions, and follies." [00:05:21]

"Yet," Mills said, "I was distracted in my mind, wounded in conscience, I wept often and bitterly, and prayed earnestly, but had no comfort until I heard that sweet saint Doctor Sibbs, by whose means and ministry I was brought to peace and joy in my spirit. His sweet soul-melting Gospel-sermons won my heart and refreshed me much, for by Sibbes I saw I had much of God and was confident in Christ, and could overlook the world my heart now held firm, resolved, my desires now were heaven-ward." [00:06:03]

You see, Christian confidence does not lie in the strength of our faith or performance. No. It lies upon, he said, "The joint agreement of all three persons of the Trinity," that the Father loves and is pleased with the Son, and as the Spirit unites us to the Son, we enjoy the Son's own blessed status before the Father; not some generic, far-off, distant status -- the Son's own status. Because God is a Trinity, Christians can have assurance. [00:10:07]

And then, instead of simply laying moral burdens on weak and struggling Christians, Sibbes sought to show them Christ's attractiveness so that they might actually love Christ from the hearts. From then, he said, the Christian's first task is "To warm ourselves at the fire of his love and mercy." And only when Christians do that, he said, do they actually start to avoid sin heartily. [00:10:49]

In other words, Sibbes believed the solution to sin was not the attempt to live without sin. The solution to sin was the gospel of God's free grace which changes hearts so that we might want Christ and begin to not want sin. As we have found out, eyes opened to Christ, we love him and grow in our distaste for sin, not just knowing it's wrong; feeling it's wrongness. [00:11:42]

In his ministry, Sibbes always sought to get underneath the superficial layer of his listeners' behavior and deal with the desires, the inclinations, the affections, the things that drive behavior, the things that motivate us. For Sibbes, this was no secondary matter. He believed that dealing with heart would preserve one of the profound insights of the Reformation. [00:14:36]

Sibbes wanted to plumb deeper. He knew that those outward acts of sin are simply manifestations of the inner desires of the heart; how you act, even if it shocks you, is simply manifesting what you're like deep down. And simply to change behavior without dealing with the heart would cultivate hypocrisy, the self-righteous cloak for a cold and vicious heart. [00:16:08]

Sibbes once said to one of the great preachers of the next generation, "Young man, if ever you would do good, you must preach the gospel and the free grace of God in Christ Jesus." Sibbes meant that with every fiber of his being, for he saw the free grace of God in Christ Jesus is the means by which the hearts of sinners are first turned to God, and that same message is the means by which we continue to grow in our love for God. [00:22:27]