THE expression of God's own heart, whether in Creation bounty or redemption glory, is freely. He wishes you, the lost sinner now reading these lines, to know and believe what is in His heart toward you; and so He points you to an empty grave and an occupied throne as the eternal proof that He loves you, and is for you.
Think not lightly of that victorious Saviour who sits at His right hand; for a few brief hours of pleasure here, and then the place that once knew you will know you no more:— "
After the joys of earth,
After its songs of mirth,
After its hours of light,
After its dreams so bright,
What then?
Oh! then, the judgment throne,
Oh! then, the last hope gone
Then all the woes that dwell,
In an eternal hell.”
If this be your future, and it must, and surely will be, should you die in your sins, unconverted and unsaved, let me beseech you, ere it be too late, to ponder well God's message of love to your soul conveyed in His own word freely.
In Earth's once fair creation, as it came fresh from the hands of God, that little word first tells us how great was God's love to His creature. Having put him into the place of highest privilege, as lord of all, He tells out His love to Adam in these gracious words, “Of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.".
But that little word was despised, and Satan's lie being believed, God's freely was only turned by His disobedient creature into a means of self-aggrandizement, and sin came in to mar a scene that otherwise teemed with the lavish display of God's royal bounty.
When sin came into God's garden, man must needs leave it, and his whole history from that day to this has been, alas, but one long continued course of guilt and sin, and distance from God.
Yet, spite of this, God's heart towards man has not changed, and so we find that even to guilty Israel, after all their terrible departure in heart and ways from Him, and notwithstanding all His gracious dealings with them by lawgiver, prophet, priest, and king; yet, though they had given Him up, served false gods, and ruined themselves by their sins, He still sends a message after them by the mouth of His servant Hosea: "I will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely.”
Not even this wondrous grace, however, produced any effect on that rebellious people, for when the Christ of God, their true Messiah came, stooping down in His lowly grace to bear their guilt and. sin, we know how they received Him: “He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Nor did man's cruel hatred and malice stop here, for Gentile as well as Jew joined hand and heart, and voice and will, to crucify the Lord of glory.
Preferring a robber to God's well-beloved Son, man consummated his sin at the cross; but the more sin abounded, so much the more did God's free grace abound, and from the pierced side of that murdered man flowed forth to a guilty world, the cleansing stream of life and peace.
"The very spear that pierced His side
Drew forth the blood to save.”
Thus, even the murder of Jesus, instead of changing the deep love of the heart of God, served only to bring out the rich streams of His heavenly mercy in the gift of His only Son.
That Son had trodden this ruined earth with but one object, and that was to glorify. His Father, and seek to win back the confidence of poor lost man. His ear was ever open to human sorrow, His hand was ever ready to heal, to bless, to save. Man had no excuse, then, to be at a distance from God, for all who chose could come to Jesus without reserve.
He received all sinners. He cast out none, as the poor ruined one in Simon's house discovered when, weeping tears of true repentance at His blessed feet, she heard from His own lips the sweet music of those heavenly words: “Thy sins are forgiven.”
How strange was that scene to the proud heart of the Pharisee, who understood not, neither did he care for God's freely.
"A certain creditor," said Jesus to Simon,” had two debtors, the one owed him five hundred pence, and the other fifty, and when they had nothing to pay, he frankly (freely) forgave them both." That was God's gospel then—it is God's gospel still. “Nothing to pay," because the debt has been paid by another, and a risen Christ in glory is God's receipt in full for all demands. "Nothing to do," because all has been done, once for all, by that same Jesus whose last words to a lost world were, "It is finished." "Nothing to give," but simply to receive from God's own hand His free salvation now, as you read these lines, "He freely forgave them both." Whichever you may be—the five-hundred or the fifty pence debtor,
"If you own, with repentance, you've nothing to pay,
He will frankly and freely forgive.”
Before, however, God could righteously bestow this free salvation upon you, another must take your place-suffer in your stead, and make atonement for your sins. No help could come from man, nor salvation be found in any child of Adam. There was but One in heaven or earth could save, and in order that you might be saved, Christ must needs die and rise again. This (through grace) is an accomplished fact and He who has sat for more than 1,800 years upon the throne of God now sends you a message from the glory, and declares it too, on the authority of the written word, that every believer is even now “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Mark that word freely. It is God that justifies: but when He justifies, He justifies freely the poor trembling sinner who believes in Jesus. “What shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”
And now, dear reader, this free love, this free forgiveness, this free justification, are all freely offered you to-day. Will you now accept God's free gift to you in Jesus?
Heaven itself declares that all is done that had to be done. Christ has glorified God on the earth, and finished the work that the Father gave Him to do.
Can you doubt it, when heaven or hell hangs upon your answer? A risen Christ Himself speaks to you, “To him that is athirst will I give of the fountain of the water of life freely." Yes, Jesus loves to give, and He gives freely. Listen once again, for still a closing message comes to you from those courts of heavenly glory! What exquisite words they are, breathing the very heart of God, and fragrant with the unchanging love of that once crucified, but now living and exalted Saviour, " Let him that is athirst come; and whosoever will let him take the water of life freely." He gives it freely: because He loves to do so, you have but to take it freely from His own loving hands, and your parched soul shall never thirst again, for (says the Saviour Himself), " Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him, shall be in him, a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.”
Will you take that living water now? tomorrow may be too late; oh! then, drink, drink freely now, lest, refusing such love and such mercy, you thirst forever in the depths of an endless hell.
One word in conclusion. God said to man in innocence, "You may freely eat," to rebellious Israel, "I will love them freely," and, on the ground of accomplished redemption, He is now willing and waiting to "freely forgive" those who have "nothing to pay." Christ Himself has paid that mighty debt, and every believing sinner is now “justified freely by God's grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." More than this, with Jesus, God freely gives us all things, and to every soul that has taken freely from that loving Saviour's hand the water of life, He says, "freely ye have received, freely give.”
S. T.