I have just returned from the thrift store of a large bakery. This store is where the bakery’s day-old bread, hot dog and hamburger buns, cookies, sweet rolls, pies and doughnuts are sold at prices much less than their original price. There is often a “bargain table” where certain items are even cheaper. And sometimes there is a “bonus table” that offers certain items free when you buy over a given dollar amount.
The hamburger buns I wanted did not have a price on them. I carried them to the checkout counter and the cashier told me what the bargain price was. Seeing an opportunity to tell her the news of the love of God in giving the Lord Jesus to die for sinners, I asked, “Do you know what is a better bargain than the price of these buns?”
She replied, “If you could get them free.”
When I asked the cashier if she knew about salvation, the free forgiveness of sins, she said, “I go to church.” My reply to her was that God forgives those who go to church just as freely as He does those who don’t go to church. In the little time it takes to pay for one item it was not possible to tell her that even the worst sinners are also freely forgiven when they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Belonging to a church or going to Sunday school and meeting is not the way sins are forgiven. The Bible says, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:5). It is the work the Lord Jesus did for us on the cross in full payment for our sins that makes it possible for God to forgive big sinners and little sinners. It is only the precious blood of the Lord Jesus that can wash away our sins. “Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood” (Revelation 1:5).
ML-11/16/1997