HAVING served his time and retired from the Army, X. went to live in a parish not far from his birthplace. Knowing him pretty well, I dropped in at times to see him, and on one visit found him attentively reading his Bible. As I entered he looked up and said, “Oh, is it you? I did not think you were so near me! It is time I was thinking where I am going, so I have been learning the twenty-fifth Psalm — a very fine prayer. Was it not David’s?” I replied that it was.
“Did not David know,” he continued, “that his sins had been forgiven? Oh, I thought if I could only get that prayer off by heart, so as to say it night and morning, I too might know what salvation is.” “I am very thankful I came in,” answered I, “for if you prayed the whole one hundred and fifty Psalms that would not save you.”
“Well, well,” he said, in amazement, “do you tell me so? Why, I thought praying a very good thing.”
“So it is, very, but praying or saying prayers is not the way to be saved. Have you never heard what the Lord Jesus did, how He died and shed His precious blood for sinners? If you could save yourself by prayers, you would not need the Atonement of Christ, and God would not say, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’ He would say something like this: ‘Pray and thou shalt be saved.’ But you will not find such a saying anywhere in the Bible.”
To this he promptly replied: “Well, I did not think of that.”
“Is it not plain,” I continued, “that if God could have saved sinners by their prayers, He never would have given up His loved Son to suffer death? But prayers could never put away sin; nothing but the death of Christ could do that, and so the sinless Son of God died in the place of sinners, in your room and stead and in mine. Thus was salvation finished by Christ, and today, believing on Him, you may be saved! Pardon and salvation may be yours before you close your eyes in sleep this night.”
He brightened up at this, and said “Ah, salvation is what I want! I’d give the world if I could but get it.” “You may have salvation,” I replied, “entirely without giving, doing, or praying. It may be yours this day — this moment! If you only cast yourself, as a perishing sinner, upon the crucified Redeemer, you are saved.”
Looking most earnestly at me, he said: “Sir, I shall be forever obliged to you if you will give me a text to prove that.” “Yes,” I answered, “here it is,” and opening his Bible, pointed to John 3:18: “He that believeth on Him is not judged.” “The moment a sinner hides his guilty soul in Christ, that moment God’s promise is fulfilled: he is not condemned.”
“Well,” he replied, “I do believe on Christ, but could not say that I am pardoned.”
“But see,” I pointed out, “the words spoken by Christ on the Cross. ‘It is finished,’ would not be true if a work, a prayer, or even a tear, were required to be added to it. ‘It is finished’ does not mean that Christ has done the chief part, and left the rest, however trifling, for you to add to it. No! ‘It is finished’ means that the Saviour has done the whole; that all a sinner has to do to be at peace with God, is to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as his Sin-bearer and Surety, and to believe that He has borne the curse for you, and wrought Out, on your behalf, a full salvation. Because it is already finished, the promise says: He that believeth on Him is not judged.’”
Looking up at me with delight, he exclaimed: “Sir, I see it! I see it as plainly as I see the sun in the sky!”
“What do you see?” asked I. “I see I am a pardoned man.”
“Why, I thought you could not be pardoned until you had prayed the twenty-fifth Psalm?”
“Ah, sir,” he answered, with a smile, “I thought that once, but don’t think it now. Does not this verse say, ‘He that believeth on Him is not condemned’?”
“But stop,” I said, “this is not all. Read the thirty-sixth verse, and you will see that if you really believe, you are saved.” He-then read the words, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.”
“Has it,” I pointed out. “The verse says the believer has it, not that he will get it at some future day; has it at once and forever, from the moment he trusts wholly in the Redeemer for salvation.” With a pleased smile he exclaimed: “Sir, I see it! I see it plain.”
“What do you see?”
“I see,” said he, calmly and firmly, “that I am a saved man! Does not the text say, ‘Hath everlasting life’? — not will get it, but that he has it. It was God surely Who sent you to tell me all this today.”
“Please turn,” said I, “to the fifth of John, and the twenty-fourth verse, where you will find more for your comfort.” So he turned to the passage, and read aloud: “He that heareth My word, and believeth Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment; but is passed from death unto life.”
“Think of these words, ‘Shall not come into judgment; but is passed from death unto life — eternal life’: so the real believer can never again come under the general condemnation, can never pass back again from life unto death. This is why the Apostle Paul could write: ‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus’ (Rom. 8:1). The Lord Jesus Himself told Martha, ‘Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die’ (John 11:26). And now what He said to her He says to you, ‘Believest thou this?’”
“To be sure,” he said, unhesitatingly, “I believe it. Is it not the Word of God? And why should I doubt it? I am just as if I was on a rock.”
“Then you are not afraid to die?”
“No! Why should I be? My sin is pardoned, and I know it. Oh! I am just as if I was on a rock!”
O. L.