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Do You Know Your Corruption?

Letters of M’Cheyne Part 1 of 6


What does it mean to believe in Jesus? How can I seek and find Him? These crucial questions are pastorally answered in 6 letters that Robert Murray M’Cheyne wrote to a dying lady in his congregation. We will be posting each of these letters individually over the next few months, so we pray that they would be a blessing to you!


Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813 - 1843) was a faithful minister at St Peter's Church in Dundee,

Scotland, from 1836 to 1843. The Lord took him home to glory at the young age of 29 years

old, but his love for Christ continues to encourage many today. These letters are taken from

Andrew Bonar’s great biography of M’Cheyne: The Memoirs and Remains of Robert Murray

M’Cheyne and slightly modernized.


Letters to a Soul Seeking Jesus (1) – Know Your Corruption


According to my promise, I sit down to speak with you a little concerning the great things of an eternal world. God is so kind to give us such an easy way of communicating our thoughts, even at a distance (Imagine how excited M’Cheyne would have been with social media; without minimizing the dangers. Take a minute to give thanks for God’s good gifts of technology while praying to steward our use of them for His glory.)! My only reason for writing to you is, that I may direct your soul to Jesus, the sinner's friend – "This Man receives sinners" (Luke 15:2)! I earnestly long to know that you are truly united to Christ; and then, come life, come death, you will be truly and eternally happy.


Do you think you have been convinced of sin? This is the Holy Spirit's work, and His first work upon the soul (John 16:8; Acts 2:37; 21:29-30). If you did not know that your body was dangerously ill, you would never have sent for your physician. In the same way, you will never go to Christ, the heavenly Physician, unless you feel that your soul is sick even unto death. Dear friend, pray for deep discoveries of your real sinful state by nature and by practice!


The world will say you are innocent and harmless; do not believe them. The world is a liar. Pray that you will see yourself exactly as God sees you; pray to know the worth of your soul. Have you seen yourself vile, as Job saw himself (Job 11:3,5; 13:5,6)? Undone, as Isaiah saw himself (Isa. 6:1,5)? Have you experienced anything like Psalm 51?


I do not want you to fake humility before God, nor to use expressions of self-abhorrence, which you do not feel; but instead pray that the Holy Spirit may let you see the very reality of your natural condition before God! I rarely get more than a glance at the true state of my soul in its naked self. But when I do, then I see that in myself I am wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked (Rev. 3:17). I believe every member of our body has been a servant of sin (Rom. 3:13,18)—throat, tongue, lips, mouth, feet, eyes. Every faculty of our mind is polluted (Gen. 6:5). Besides, you have long neglected the great salvation; you have been resistant and disobedient (Heb. 2:4). Oh, that you were brought to pass a sentence on yourself—guilty of all (Rom 3:20)!


Listen to what a dear believer writes of himself: "My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly indescribable, and swallowing up all thought and imagination, like an infinite flood, or mountains over my head. I do not know how to express better what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite. When I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deep, and yet it seems to me that my conviction of sin is exceedingly small and faint."


Perhaps you will ask, “Why do you wish me to have such a discovery of my lost condition?” I answer, that you may be broken off from all schemes of self-righteousness; that you may never look into your poor guilty soul to recommend you to God; and that you may joyfully accept the Lord Jesus Christ, who obeyed and died for sinners! Oh, that your heart may cleave to Christ! May you forsake all and follow Jesus Christ. Count everything loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. You will never stand righteous before God in yourself. But you are welcome this day to stand righteous before God in Jesus. Pray over Phil. 3:7,9. I will try and pray for you. Grace be with you.


Your friend in Jesus,


Robert Murray M’Cheyne


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