A CHRISTIAN was visiting a sick person. The nurse had been telling her that she must amend her ways and seek to purify her heart by imitating Christ if she would go to heaven when she died.
“Nurse says I must be like Christ if I would go to heaven.”
“Quite true,” replied the Christian, “you must be like Christ.”
“Then I am lost, I shall never go there,” she cried in despair.
“Stop a minute,” said her visitor, “you cannot go there, if you are depending on your own works to take you, but if you trust in Him who said on the cross, ‘It is finished,’ you may enter heaven by virtue of the perfect work which He accomplished for God’s glory.”
None of us, dear readers, would ever go to heaven if our entrance there depended on our own works. God has said, “Not of works, lest any man should boast.” What a blessed thing it is to find out, like this sick woman, that we are “lost,” for the next step is to find the Saviour who came to “seek and to save that which was lost.” And then we have the bright hope that when He comes to take us home to Himself, “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” But it is all God’s work from beginning to end. “Whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.”
A gentleman scarcely past the prime of life lay on his deathbed. He was known in the neighborhood as an upright, charitable man, benevolent to the poor, full of good works, and outwardly blameless in his conduct. Men spoke well of him, and, perhaps unknown to himself, he rejoiced in it. He was religious too, and looked up to as a church dignitary, but, like Job, he “justified himself rather than God,” and was in the same category as the Pharisees, of whom the Lord said, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.” He was still in this frame of mind when he was taken with what proved to be a fatal illness. But God, who loves to bless even at the eleventh hour, sent a Christian to visit him, one who had known him intimately for years, and who had watched and prayed for his soul. The moment had come at last for a word in season to be spoken, and the Christian did not hesitate to point out to the dying man his real state before God. Day by day he read and prayed with his friend, and God’s Word, “which is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,” pierced even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and discerned the thoughts and intents of the heart. The dying man had to do with God perhaps for the first time in his life, and all things were naked and opened to Him. He learned in His presence that salvation is to “him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly.” He learned how “God can be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus,” whereas “all his righteousnesses were as filthy rags,” and he passed into the presence of the Lord with these words on his lips,
“God has justified me,”
while those who loved him and mourned his loss, yet wept for joy and thanked God for so bright a testimony to His saving grace. The proud man was stripped of his “rags” and clothed in Christ with the robe of righteousness, to shine forever in His likeness and to His glory.
“It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.”
Dear reader, can you say, “God has justified me?” Have you learned, like the two of whom I have told you, that you are lost and that you cannot go to heaven by your own good works?
If not, let their experience be a voice from God to your soul.
C. A. W.