A man, still young, but upon whom disease, the result of a wicked life, had marked its imprint of shame, was taken to a hospital. The chaplain on his rounds came where he was and noticed his pinched face, a picture of despair.
“What can I do for you, my friend?” said he, taking his hand.
“Ah, sir!” said the sick man, “it is not a question of doing, but of undoing. Oh, if I could but undo what I have done!”
A similar conversation had occurred years before this, during the Civil War. It was on the field of battle, the evening following a bitter fight. A nurse entered a tent where many wounded lay. Bending over one of these she said: “Can I do anything for you?”
The wounded man maintained a gloomy silence, his eyes disclosing the agony he was suffering. At length he said in a hoarse voice: “Do anything for me? Say, can you undo the past, the terrible past? Tell me, can you undo it?”
His face assumed an expression of grief and remorse impossible to describe. “Can you undo, undo, UNDO, the past?”
“How to undo” is the cry of multitudes of souls rent and tormented with remorse.
“My past, my past; oh, deliver me from my past!”
How many people deliberately destroy their own strength—their own health—their own souls! Systematically they seem to pursue a course the end of which is destruction. How many begin life under favorable and promising circumstances but, willfully wayward, in a little time they are miserable wrecks.
How many poor souls have a dark blot on their lives some irreparable act they have committed in a moment of folly or madness some evil deed they would give the world to undo! Without God, man’s heart is continually wicked. He can only work the works of destruction. He is a destroyer of others and of himself.
But man cannot sin with impunity; sooner or later, the law of God asserts its demands. “For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” “The wages of sin is death.”
No, dear unsaved soul, you cannot undo, nor can anyone else, the wicked deeds of the flesh. But listen to God’s “good news.” He sent His own dear Son into this world in the likeness of sinful ‘flesh and for sin, in order to condemn sin in the flesh. Upon Him, the sinless One, has been laid the iniquity of us all. He came to die for the ungodly.
How do you get the benefit of the death of God’s own Son? Just own to Him your utterly ruined state. Accept God’s estimate of you. Believe His Word. Receive His salvation in Christ Jesus who came to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:88He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8)).
Then hear His gentle voice say: “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.”
“I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.”
“Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”