IT was at the close of a meeting in a town hall in the Midland counties that I saw a respectable woman dressed in deep mourning; she was the wife of a farmer in the neighborhood of the town hall. I was standing at the door of the hall speaking to one and another as they passed out, when, as she was passing out, I spoke a few words to her about her soul’s eternal welfare. For some time she was too much overcome with emotion to reply, and when she did speak, it was to ask me if she could see me alone on the morrow. The morrow arrived, and we met, when I soon discovered that she was a soul with whom the spirit of God had long been dealing. I found that He whom God had exalted to be a Prince and a Savior for to give repentance and forgiveness of sins, had graciously given her repentance; but as yet she was a stranger to the gift of forgiveness. She assured me that she was a lost and guilty sinner, deserving nothing less than death, judgment, and the lake of fire; but I found that she was waiting to know she was forgiven, until she felt it.
Opening my Bible at the seventh chapter of Luke’s gospel, I read that lovely story of grace, beginning at the thirty-sixth verse, and finishing at the fiftieth verse. When it was read through, I drew the dear woman’s attention to the forty-seventh verse, “I SAY unto thee, Her sins, which are many, ARE FORGIVEN.” I asked her to place her finger upon the two words “are many,” and tell me if she could look up into the face of the blessed Jesus, who uttered those two words, and honestly say that they were true of her sins?
Placing her finger upon the two words “are many,” she said they were too true of her sins. I then asked her if she believed her sins were many because she felt they were many, or because Jesus said that they were many. She replied that she knew that they were many, that she felt that they were many; but that she believed that they were many because Jesus said so. I then asked her to move her finger to the next two words, “ARE FORGIVEN,” and to tell me that if she believed the first two words “are many,” spoken by Jesus, were true about her sins, why should she not believe that the second two words “are forgiven,” spoken by the same precious lips about her forgiveness, were equally true and worthy of being believed? She moved her finger on to the second two words, “are forgiven,” and looking up by faith into the face of Jesus, told Him she believed Him, and thanked Him for the good news.
It is some years since the blessed Savior-God gave this dear woman the knowledge of the forgiveness of all her sins, since which time she has gone on her way rejoicing, having taken her place at the Lord’s Table as a forgiven, saved, happy, and worshipping child of God, and member of Christ’s body. And if you met her today, and were to ask her how she knew that her sins were forgiven, she would reply, “I knew they were many, not because I felt it, but because Jesus told me they were; and I know that they are all forgiven, not because I feel it, BUT BECAUSE JESUS SAYS so.”
And now, dear, anxious, troubled soul, you have had your finger long enough on the two words “are many,” but look at the two following words “are forgiven,” and at once believingly and adoringly “move your finger.”