It is a dark, foggy night, and a man is groping his way along the wharf of a large port when he takes a wrong turn. Another few moments and he is over the edge! A splash, followed by frantic cries for help. Confused efforts are made to reach him, but it is too dark to see and he cannot be found. Soon the cries are over.
The next day his body is recovered, and he is identified. A very able and skillful man is no more! He was well-known around the docks: He knew ten thousand things about docks and ships and navigation, but the one thing of supreme importance in those critical five minutes he did not know. He did not know how to swim!
None of us know everything! All of us know something. A few of us know a great many things. Some of us know the one thing of supreme importance.
The question is: DO YOU KNOW IT?
To be right with God is the one thing of supreme importance.
It does not matter what you are, if you are not right with God. All knowledge of things that count in this life will count for nothing if you remain in ignorance of this one thing that counts in eternity. The question of questions is: Are you right with God?
God’s Word (the Bible) clearly shows the way.
FIRST: Justification (made righteous) before God cannot be deserved. If a soul be justified at all, it must be by the grace of God, and by that alone.
SECOND: The only means of having justification is through the redemption work accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ when He died on the cross. His atoning death and His resurrection alone can meet the guilt of your sins and put you right with God.
THIRD: You can only be justified before God if and when you believe in Jesus. Then God reckons to your account the value of His Son’s death and you are positively justified.
FOURTH: When you do believe in Jesus and are justified, that great blessing will reach you freely. God justifies not only without charge, but also without grudging.
Trusting in Christ for yourself, definitely accepting Him as your Savior and Lord, you can say, “By faith in Jesus I am right with God.”
By this and this alone you will know the one thing of supreme importance. You may not be great or learned in the wisdom of this life, but you will know how to “swim” when death’s dark waters rise about you. You will be “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus...that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Rom. 3:24, 2624Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: (Romans 3:24)
26To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Romans 3:26)).