It is deeply interesting and instructive to note the different ways by which souls in whom God's Spirit is working are led into peace and blessing. After being first awakened and groping about in the darkness, or at least the twilight, of human thoughts and ways, they all sooner or later reach the one and only door into blessing, drawn by God's Spirit to Him who says, "I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." John 10:99I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. (John 10:9).
Luther, after being awakened to a sense of sin by a terrific thunderstorm, and after long groping about in the darkness of the Roman system under whose instruction he was painfully and wearily creeping up Pilate's stairs in Rome to obtain absolution, and thus pardon and peace with God, heard suddenly a voice like thunder in his soul, that said, "The just shall live by faith." His painful journey was ended, and unexpectedly he found himself at the door of faith which God has opened to all poor sinners who know and feel their need.
Another well-known servant of God, who was early brought to feel his need of something for his soul more than the world could supply, had a feeling akin to despair when it occurred to him that perhaps if he could but have the precepts of the Savior continually before his eye, it would be a help to his obedience and a means of salvation. With this intention, he got two New Testaments and cut out from them all the commands and counsels he found, and pasting them on a board, placed it where he would see it frequently. But he found, alas! that to be reminded of precepts was not to keep them; to know the will of God was not to do it; and to be acquainted with the right way was not to walk in it. Indeed, he had set himself a far harder and more hopeless task than even poor Luther, long before him, had done when he set himself to work at ascending Pilate's stairs in the hope of finding peace and salvation at the top.
Things seemed to grow darker, and all efforts but helped to make matters more hopeless. One day a friend said to him, "If you want to find the knowledge of God, study the epistle to the Romans; it is there the plan of salvation is made known." Acting at once on this suggestion, he thought he would copy out the whole epistle, that he might better master the subject and become more fully acquainted with the Apostle's reasoning. He commenced his task of copying the epistle into a book and got as far as the 8th chapter. Coming to the 8th verse he wrote, "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God."
These words arrested him, and he said to himself, "What is the use then of all my efforts? If a sinner cannot please God, how can I do anything to gain acceptance with Him?"
Then suddenly, as with a sunbeam, the thought flashed across his mind, "No, I cannot please God, but Christ has. He is the way, He is the perfect One, and this is what is meant by those words at the end of every prayer, 'Through Jesus Christ our Lord.' " "Yes," said he to himself, "God receives sinners for His sake, and He will receive me."
Like Luther's "The just shall live by faith," which came as a divine revelation to his soul, delivering him from the burden of his sins, so to him came, as a divine revelation, the blessed truth, "Through Jesus Christ God receives sinners." On this his soul rested in undisturbed peace, and this he proclaimed to others until the Lord took him to Himself.