IT is long since I heard the story of a dying Methodist preacher who, when asked if he were saved, made reply that he was; and, when further asked how his salvation came about, said that God did His part and that he did his. “How much did God do, and how much did you?” was then pertinently demanded. To this the dear old veteran in the wars of the Lord replied, “God saved me while I did all I could to hinder Him.”
He attributed his salvation altogether to God, and frankly admitted that, on his own side, there was only that which hindered His Spirit. Now this may not be correct Arminian doctrine, a school to which our friend belonged, but his spiritual intelligence traversed the dogma of creed, and placed him on the solid ground of sovereign grace.
And, dear reader, it is grace, pure and precious grace, which alone can save the lost and guilty soul of man. We must start on this divine premises; for unless and until the ruin of the soul, as lost and dead in sins, as well as guilty of sins innumerable, is fully owned before God in true repentance, so that grace may meet it, and save it as fully, there can be no settled peace, and no deep or abiding comfort. The more your lost condition is owned, in like proportion will be your sense of peace with God. Certain I am that very much of the superficiality and worldliness of the day, amongst even true believers, is due to the lack of this acknowledgment.
There is not a single redeeming quality; not a spark of love or of life toward God in the heart of man; nothing therein which the Spirit of God can develop and make fit for heaven. Man is utterly depraved in mind and will.
Ah! then he has a will? Certainly! and is therefore a free agent. Nay, though responsible as no other creature is, his agency can only be that of sin and Satan. He sold his freedom in the Garden of Eden, and has been accordingly the slave of Satan ever since. His will is perverted—his heart desperately wicked.
Conscience he has, no doubt, and its activity may render him miserable; but conscience cannot show him the way of salvation, nor can it even justify his actions, though it may possibly excuse them. There is but one word which adequately describes his condition—a terrible word even though monosyllabic; it is the, word “lost!”
Ah! you refer of course to the lapsed masses? Exactly! but let me assure you that the masses are all lapsed. Masses of all kinds, moral and immoral, high and low, rich and poor—all are lapsed and lost! The whole world teems with lapsed masses, for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Solemn fact!
Too sweeping? No! let me sweep on. Let the besom sweep all without discrimination on to this common platform of guilt and ruin. Half measures are false. The bed-rock of total moral and spiritual ruin must be reached; the soul must touch the awful bottom; must learn that sin means more than an accident.
An accident! Ah! look at the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of man, and never call sin an accident. Naught but His blood could cleanse it away or meet the claims of the eternal throne against us. You can never rightly appraise sin in its exceeding sinfulness, in its diabolical malignity, in its essential enmity against God, until you learn the deep meaning of Calvary.
The blood of the cross is the divine answer to guilt, and the blessed fact that Christ was “made sin for us” announces, first, the depth of the lost condition into which we had fallen, and then the completeness of deliverance from it through faith in Him.
Thank God, dear reader, you are not yet damned, not yet in hell. God grant you may never, never be; but if out of Christ, you are lost.
Lost in time, to be what for eternity? What for eternity? Shall it be damned for eternity, or shall it be saved for eternity? Which? You may, even you, may be saved for eternity; “for,” notice, “the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).
There is salvation for the lost, but for none other; and for this simple reason that, in fact, there are none other to save.
Take the ground then, I beg of you, dear friend, of being lost—utterly, hopelessly, and absolutely—so that you may prove God’s saving grace as did the dying Methodist preacher, and then ascribe all the glory of your salvation to God and the Lamb.
J. W. S.