CO 5:17{"A very severe test!" you say. I cannot help that; I can only tell you exactly what God says. I cannot reverse it, and you cannot alter it. So then, if old things have not passed away in your life, and if you are not a new creature, "born again," altogether different in heart and life and love and aim, you are not "in Christ." And if you are not in Christ, you are out of Christ, outside the only place of safety. "Come thou into the Ark!" It is one of the devices of the destroyer to delude you into fancying that no very decided step is necessary. He is very fond of the word "gradually." You are to become more earnest—gradually. You are to find salvation—gradually.
You are to turn your mind to God—gradually. Did you ever think that God never used this word nor anything like it? Neither the word nor the sense of it occurs anywhere in the whole Bible with reference to salvation. You might have been gradually approaching the Ark, and gradually making up your mind to enter; but unless you took the one step into the Ark, the one step from outside to inside, what would have been your fate when the door was shut?
Complete in Him, our glorious Head,
With Jesus raised from the dead,
And by His mighty Spirit led!
O blessed Lord, is this for me?
Then let my whole life henceforth be
One Allelujah-song to Thee.