“WHENEVER you reach a window, repeat the verse, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,’ and put your own name, ‘Jack,’ in instead of ‘thou.’” Jack was a window-cleaner in a very large English city. In this city evangelistic services were being held, and to the first of them the window-cleaner had been brought by the kindly hand of an earnest Christian neighbor. She longed for his blessing, nor longed in vain. This first meeting over, I descended from the platform in order to help, in some way, any who were troubled enough to seek salvation.
“Will you go and speak to that man who is kitting at the end of the first seat?” said this earnest Christian woman to me. I did so.
“What is your difficulty?” I asked of him. But this was a question he could hardly answer. He felt that he was all wrong―a sinner―a great sinner, but he must do his best to keep the ten commandments. This, he was persuaded, was the only way of peace, I referred him to the gospel he had just heard preached from the platform, and told him that, whilst the law could only give the knowledge of sin and plunge the soul into despair, the gospel makes known God’s salvation as divinely suitable to such as he. I urged him to cease from all attempts to fit himself for God, and to build on the work accomplished at Calvary by our blessed Redeemer; and I quoted for him the passage, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”
All, however, unavailingly. He was so imbued with the idea that the way of blessing was by the law that the gospel had no meaning for him.
The gospel has no meaning for any who are not lost. It is the sick who need the physician, and so, to appreciate the gospel, you must feel your utterly undone and sinful condition before God. That acknowledged, the sweet suitability of the grace of God is seen and prized.
“Oh! to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!”
And the indebtedness is unspeakably blessed. When the debtors owned that they had nothing to pay― what then? Law would, in justice, have condemned them to punishment, but the creditor frankly forgave them. The cross furnishes God’s righteous ground for doing so, and, as a consequence, they loved Him and the greater debtor loved Him the more!
Finding that I could not help the poor fellow into light or peace, I handed him over to a fellow-laborer who, perhaps, might do what I could not. The result, however, was the same, and the man had to go away no further on than when he had come. He was only the more miserable. What a darkening thing is unbelief! Well, the course of meetings ended, but the faith and hope of the Christian woman endured. She still longed for Jack’s blessing.
“Jack,” she said to him one day, “when you are out on your work, and whenever you reach a window, repeat the verse, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou (Jack) shalt be saved,’ and keep on repeating it till you are saved.”
Remember, reader, it is written, “The entrance of thy words giveth light.” It did so in Jack’s case. As he mounted window after window he repeated the verse until, at last, by the grace of God and the life-giving power of the Spirit, the full meaning of the word flashed on his soul. As in his daily calling he was letting the light of day into the window, so now, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ caused the light of heaven to irradiate and set free his darkened soul. “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. 10:44For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. (Romans 10:4)). So learned he that day, and so have learned thousands!
Salvation is in Christ, not in the law, nor in works, nor feelings, but all, and only in Christ. And that “to every one that believeth!” Therefore, dear friend, if you truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have reached the end of the law for righteousness—you are saved. May your life bear a responsive and unwearied testimony.
“When you see you naught can do
To avert the wrath so due;
That “to do” is but “to sin,”
And God’s purpose hindering,
Then, and not till then, you’ll know
What the grace God can bestow.”
J. W. S.