I REMEMBER visiting a poor woman dying of a very painful disease. She had passed long years of suffering, and thought that she had suffered and repented enough for God to have mercy upon her.
“What!” said one, “will you dare to bring your suffering and your repentance to a holy God as a ground of acceptance with Him? Has He not declared that without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin; and that ‘the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin?’”
The words were used of God. The poor sufferer’s eyes were opened. She saw that her pain of body had nothing whatever to do with the salvation of her soul, and that her repentance could not possibly make her holy in God’s sight, and that trusting to those things was really despising Christ’s blood.
Sometime after, when calling upon her, I asked her if she was happy in the prospect of death, and of standing before God? “Yes,” she replied, “quite happy.” “And upon what are you resting for salvation?” She replied “The word of God. ‘Whosoever!’ Whosoever means me, and He will not cast me out.” And her last words of all, feebly uttered, were, “No, He’ll never, never leave me.”
Upon what are you resting, dear reader? Is it only upon Christ, or self. What is your ground of confidence before God? M. H.