“GOD is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” He is INFINITELY, ETERNALLY HOLY, so that no sin can ever enter His presence. He is, likewise, INFINITELY, ETERNALLY RIGHTEOUS, and “can by no means clear the guilty.” “The soul that sinneth, it shall die,” is the divine decree, and, “after death, the judgment.” No power in heaven, earth, or hell can reverse this. It must be faced. Philosophy may suggest, and infidelity may. argue, but God’s unerring word must abide. “The word of the Lord endureth forever.”
Now, it is when the light of God’s holy Word is brought to bear in living power. upon the conscience that the sorrow of soul is known, Which has been so vividly depicted by John Bunyan, in the following terms: —
“I saw a man clothed with rags standing in a certain place with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a burden upon his back. I looked and saw him open the book and read therein, and as he read he wept and trembled, and, not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, What shall I do?... I perceive by the book in my hand that I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment... I fear that this burden that is upon my back will sink me lower than the grave.”
An important moment it is, indeed, when such a cry as this is elicited from a soul.
What a wonderful DAY was that day of Pentecost, when “pricked in heart” through the preaching of the apostle Peter, the cry was drawn from conscience-stricken souls, “Men and brethren, What shall we do?” It was a wonderful day, for we read that “there were added that day about three thousand souls, who continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.”
And, what a glorious NOON was that when, arrested on the road to Damascus, on his murderous mission, by a light brighter than the mid-day sun, Saul of Tarsus, “trembling and astonished,” inquired of the risen Jesus, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?”
Again, what a never-to-be-forgotten NIGHT was that when the jailer of Philippi sought, with trembling, from the prisoners Paul and Silas, an answer to his question, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” These very men he had previously “thrust into the inner prison,” but now he “brought” them “out, and washed their stripes.”
“To be saved,” there is nothing to do, for God, who is infinitely, eternally holy, and infinitely, eternally righteous, is likewise INFINITELY, ETERNALLY MERCIFUL, and He so loved this world of sinners, that He gave His only begotten Son, who, “being found in fashion as a man,” went to the cross, and “ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.”
No mere creature could have done this. None but He, Who (equal with the Father as touching His Godhead) “took upon Himself the form of a servant,” could have accomplished it; for none but He, that blessed God-man, was able to so fully estimate the extent of the Divine requirements, as to be able to say, “Lo, I come to do Thy will.”
And He did that will, for, bearing the sinner’s sins “in His own body on the tree,” Christ died for the ungodly “He is now in glory, having been” raised again for our justification,” and such is the completeness of the Redeemer’s work, that God now declares, concerning those who believe in Jesus, that “all that believe are justified from all things,” and He further says, “Their sins and iniquities will I remember NO MORE.”
Reader, “understandest thou what thou readest?” for, it is written, “He that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it, which also heareth fruit.”
“So near, so VERY NEAR to God,
I could not nearer be,
For, in the person of His Son,
I am as near as He.”
“The Lord is risen indeed,” and this is proof that the Divine claim in regard to sin has been met, and that, too, according to God’s estimate, not man’s. So that now, in reply to the earnest inquiry, “What must I do to be saved?” we can point with uplifted hand to Him whom God hath made “both Lord and Christ,” and say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” for “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
N. L. N.