A True Story.
“For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that BELIEVETH.” ―Romans 10, 2, 3, 4.
I have been one of the most self-righteous men that ever lived. For years I have groaned under my folly, expecting to find peace by, regulating my life according to the Word of God. I could not but believe the Bible true, which told so plainly the secret evils of my heart. So I sought carefully for all the commandments of the New Testament, but I found no commandments as I understood the word. Oh! yes, I read, “He that hateth his brother is a murderer,” or, “For every idle word which men speak they shall be brought into judgment,” and others of the same character, but they terrified me. I sought quickly to forget them. I read also, “Seek not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink,” but it did not seem to be for me; my daily labor brought in abundantly. I read also, “Sell what ye have, and give to the poor,” and then I wished, “Oh! that I were only rich, that I might sacrifice all.”
Then I found baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and, in my anxiety to do everything, I took them for commandments. But, after doing all, and living an irreproachable church-life, I got no settled peace. The “rejoice evermore” of the Bible was a mockery to me. When I was baptized, I expected some mysterious change, but there was none. I wept at the Lord’s table; but there was no peace. I prayed in secret and in public, often so earnestly that others thought me mighty in prayer; but yet there was no peace. “O Lord!” I cried in my agony, “why hast thou not been plain in Thy Word, that I might know exactly what to do I would run and do it even at the peril of my life.” I now visited the sick, and spent much time in reading the Word of God, and still more time in prayer. I preached too — yes, dear reader, I preached — I pretended to be a bearer of glad tidings, while my own heart writhed in agony. What did I preach? What others had preached to me: “Do thy best, give the glory to God; be a valiant soldier of Jesus Christ, and then He will save thee.” But no peace! no peace!! In spite of all this supposed duty fulfilled, there was no peace!!!
One day I called on a sick man, and quickly introduced the subject of religion, as that was my object in calling. “Ah, sir,” he said, “they used to tell me to do my best, and I tried and tried, until I found there was no best to be reached. When I examined myself, I found I was still the same old sinner. Then I watched my instructors, to see if I could detect in them what I found in myself, and they failed so visibly to live up to what they taught and professed, that I set them all down as hypocrites, and turned infidel. But here, read this;” and he passed to me a Testament, open at Romans 3. I had often read it before; but now the declaration, “There is none righteous — no not one,” was strangely solemn to me. I read on: “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall be no flesh justified in His sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin.... Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” And as I read, the Holy Ghost opened my blinded heart, and I beheld it all. Then and there, in that log cabin, I got what Cornelius got when Peter told him that remission of sins was by believing in Jesus. (Acts 10:4343To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. (Acts 10:43).) But, oh, the shameful pride of the natural heart! I felt like breaking forth in “Glory! glory! to the Son, who has met all the requirements of justice against me, and has given me eternal life by simply believing that ‘it is finished!” Yet I stifled it. What! I, who had been a Church member for years, and a good one too, I acknowledge that I. was then only brought to the knowledge of the truth! It was too humiliating; it is not so now. Jesus, the mighty Saviour, is also a sweet and meek teacher; and when we get Acquainted with Him we him the sweetness of hiding our poor mean self, and showing Him only.
And you, dear reader, where are you? Are you praying, too? Are you seeking after the commandments to do them? Are you proposing to make Jesus your model before you know Him as your Saviour, your peace, your righteousness, your sanctification, your all? You may try and try again; but at last you will look back and say with me, “What a bottomless pit this doing is!”
But I have a brother whom I loved as my own soul. My soul went after him. My treasure was too great to be hoarded. I wrote to him, and told him that I had been blind, but now I saw. I told, him of that than that is called Jesus, of the work which He finished on the cross, and of the wonderful results of simply believing on Him. He replied “that He was in great distress sometimes, and did not know whom to believe. One said, Do this; another said, Do that; and all seemed earnest. It was very puzzling.” I blessed God for this, for it showed that the Holy Ghost was dealing with his soul.
One day he wrote, “All you tell me is true. I have compared it with the Word. One thing only I cannot understand. You say, ‘it is useless to try to better that which cannot be bettered,’ and add, ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh.’ Surely you do not mean to say we must not strive to improve ourselves, else how could the Lord have said, Except your righteousness exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven?”
I prayed to the Lord that He would guide me in my answer, and thought of the joy of being made the instrument in bringing my dear brother to Jesus. I then replied, “Yes, that is just what I meant to say. I meant that it is needless, and even folly, to strive to better what cannot be bettered. ‘Ye must be BORN AGAIN.’ We are completely lost, without hope, desperately wicked. Nor does the Lord anywhere promise, as so many pretend, the strength needed to do anything tards our own salvation; and you have no right to pray for it. You certainly have never understood the words, ‘For by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight,’ or you could not expect ever to accomplish more in that way than the Scribes and Pharisees. The Lord takes them for examples because they were the leaders of the people. You will never be able to accomplish more in that way than they did, pray and strive as you may. Your only hope is in what another, even Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has done for us. This is humiliating, but there is no other way. ‘He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.’ This is the testimony of the whole word. Believe, and you are saved.”
A few days after I received his answer. “Give glory to God, my beloved brother (doubly so now). I see! I see!! Jesus, and Jesus alone, saves me. He is now my all. Since yesterday, it seems, I understand more than half the word which before was all darkness. I received your letter yesterday morning, and, as usual, I read it over and over. I read the passages you mentioned, and they were there. I could not deny it. But I was miserable. I went to my task heartlessly and insensible. Towards evening a gleam of hope reached me. I fell on my knees and prayed, and while there the whole redemption which is through Christ Jesus was opened to me. I desired to see and feel it with such force that my heart might leap for joy, but I only got a deep, solemn, strange peace within. My wonder is that in view of such a salvation I can remain so calm. I almost tremble lest I should lose such a precious rest.”
Yes, glory to Thee, O my God! Glory to Thee for such a salvation. Glory be to Thy name forever that, in Jesus, my brother also is safe. We are safe for evermore!
Dear reader, are you safe? Some will say, “I think so,” when they have undergone some strong emotion or excite Inept. But can you say, “Yes” in the depth of your soul — a quiet, happy, “Yes,” in the presence of Him who has seen you from your first breath, and has known your most secret thoughts, because you know that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin? Alas! how many there are who, in face of the repeated declarations of God’s word that they are not only “condemned already,” but are “dead in sins,” go about to establish their own righteousness. Conscious that they cannot render a perfect obedience even according to their own estimate of it, they make up a code of their own and call it their duty. And in doing what they call their duty they are smoothly, religiously sliding to hell. Reader, have you ceased from your own works and taken the place of “him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly?” Then also do you assuredly know” the blessedness of the man unto whom the Lord imputeth righteousness without works.
L.