PASSING a large building one day in company with a friend, I inquired what sort of institution it might be. “Oh,” he replied, “that is a home for incurables!” “Home.” “Incurables.” How strangely the names contrasted with each other. Could there be any harmony between them? I thought. “Incurables,” those who were beyond the reach of doctors and medicine; hopeless cases, baffling the most eminent scientific skill; whose friends had abandoned all hope respecting them, upon whom the ravages of disease had made fearful inroads, and who were already marked off by grim death as his certain prey. “Incurables,” the very name savors of gloom and hopeless despair, but here was a “home” for such. Kind hearts and liberal hands had provided and furnished a home for these worn-out voyagers over life’s rough sea, where, having run their last little “cruise,” they could quietly wait the ebb of life’s closing tide. “Home,” sweet and hallowed name, connected with all that is bright and pure and happy on the earth! Here was a home for incurables, but could it give back the color to those pallid cheeks, the strength to those feeble and emaciated frames, or recall those once lithe and stalwart forms to their youthful vigor? Ah, no! It could only afford a kindly shelter. It was powerless to arrest the rapid progress of disease, or to stay the onward march of that insidious foe, who was slowly, but surely, completing his deadly work.
Will the reader kindly turn with me to Rom. 3:10 to 23, where we are introduced to another company of “incurables?” The circle is very wide, embracing the entire human family without exception.
Do you see yourself, dear reader, in this picture? “There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God... there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” What a startling, sweeping truth is here conveyed to us, and let us remember it is God who speaks. Had it only been the conclusion of some eminent thinker or learned theologian we might well hesitate to subscribe our “Amen” to this dark description of man’s condition; but it has pleased God, in His wisdom and mercy, to put before us, in plain and unmistakable language, the actual truth respecting us as children of the first Adam, placing all on one common level that He might have mercy upon all. (Rom. 11:32). Yes, the king and the beggar, the prince and the peasant, the peer and the pauper, all nationalities, from every corner of the earth, are here ranged on one platform before God. Have you learned this truth, dear reader? Have you bowed to God’s verdict respecting you? God’s faithful, full-length portrait of man in Romans 3 proves beyond the possibility of a doubt that this earth of ours is peopled with a race of “incurables,” and where, oh, where, will you find a remedy for that which God Himself has pronounced hopeless? Perhaps you think the picture overdrawn, you do not believe the case is quite so desperate. Will you listen to the words of Jesus, “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10). Did you ever think of the immense distance that lies between a lost sinner and a saved soul, although you may see them walking side by side on the street, or dwelling under the same roof? Or have you ever sought to measure the distance your sins have placed you at from a holy, sin-hating God? Shall I tell you the measure? In Psa. 22:1 and Matt. 27:46 we hear the solemn utterance from the lips of God’s blessed Son, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” There alone on the cross He is bearing in His own person the fierce and withering stroke of God’s holy judgment against sin. Jehovah’s rod must descend upon that sinless One in all its unabated weight; and why? In the quiet and solitude of God’s presence have you ever asked yourself the question, Why did God forsake His Son? Oh, sinner, it was that the “way of life” might be opened up for you and for me! And let me tell you that the darkness, the distance, the abandonment, from the depths of which that bitter cry was heard, is the only measure of a sinner’s distance from God. Unsaved one, have you ever gazed upon Him as He hung there suffering for sins not His own? Oh, how earth’s fairest glory pales in the presence of a scene like this, while all the divine glories that shall yet be displayed in that blessed Man of God’s choice find their basis in that wondrous cross, blessed fruit of the Father’s counsels from eternity!
And what does God propose, now that Christ’s atoning work has furnished a righteous ground on which He can consistently act? He proposes to introduce the sinner who believes in Jesus into a new standing and condition, to bring him, in Christ Jesus, into a new creation, where all is of God. (2 Cor. 5:17, 18).
Seeing that God has written death upon the “first man” in the cross of His Son, the one who bows to the truth of God against himself is “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” and is brought to the “Second Man,” the Lord from heaven, the glorified Head of a new race. Dear reader, have you learned these realities for yourself? “God is light.” (1 John 1:5). “God is love.” (1 John 4:8). But the light must first expose, so that a fitting sphere may be found for the love to express itself in all its fullness.
There are many “panaceas” held out to the perishing sons of Adam to arrest the progress and development of “sin’s fatal scourge.” How far have they succeeded? After well-nigh six thousand years’ testing, alas! the trial has only proved the utter worthlessness and inability of every human resource to remedy that on which God has written, Incurable, and man is found today, in spite of all the learning, and polish, and enlightenment of this highly-favoured nineteenth century, morally as far away from God as ever.
Better far, dear reader, for you to learn this now than to learn it in the dark regions of the lost. You may not feel it, but God says it, and your reception or rejection of it will not alter His purposes, either in grace now, or in judgment in the day to come.
Dear unsaved reader of this little paper, whoever you may be, your case is hopeless, the terrible leprosy of sin is swiftly and surely dragging your soul down to the pit of misery and everlasting despair; but God offers you a remedy in the person of His Son, not a temporary home of shelter or relief for that sin-stricken soul of yours, but a positive, present, and eternal cure.
Look away, then, from yourself, your sins, and your sorrows, and from the world with its false remedies, its unsatisfying pleasures, its empty dreams. God offers Christ to you as a Saviour from your sins, and as a present Object for your heart, and with Him He freely gives you “all things.” (Rom. 8:32). And it will take an eternity for you to measure the extent of the “all things!”
Turn your eye in simple faith to Jesus, the sinner’s well-proved Friend, and the full, unlimited, inexhaustible blessings of the gospel of the glory of Christ are made good to you for time and for eternity.
G. F. E.