IT is amazing how few there are, comparatively speaking, who seem able to grasp the glorious fact that the work which saves is a finished work.
In visiting from house to house in country villages and elsewhere, I am struck with the fact that by far the larger number, of even seriously disposed persons, have never realized the blessings that belong to those who rest in faith on an accomplished redemption.
While walking in the county of Suffolk, inviting the villagers to some open-air gospel services, I met two old women returning home from their work. They each were carrying a bundle on their backs. They were both old, their bent forms and tottering limbs telling of previous hard work and of increasing years.
“I see you are both carrying a burden on your backs; I hope the weight of your sins is gone.”
“No, sir, I wish it was,” was the honest reply.
“You are both old,” said I, “and any day might be called into eternity. What a terrible thing to die unforgiven, and unsaved!”
To this, with downcast eyes, they both assented.
“Where are you coming from?” I asked.
“From our work in the potato-field.”
“Then you have finished your work for today?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, tell me, is the work that saves finished?”
“No, sir, I wish it was,” was the sorrowful reply.
“Ah, my dear old friends, there you are entirely wrong! Thank God, the work that saves is finished, not only for today, but for all eternity! The Lord Jesus Christ died upon the cross for sinners eighteen hundred years ago. It was there He cried those glorious words, —
‘It is finished!’
He has completed the work. He has left nothing for you to do but believe, and thankfully receive from His hands the peace that flows from simple, childlike faith in that finished work.”
The two poor old women listened to the simple gospel tale, and went on their way.
Reader, have you learned that the work which saves is finished?
“But this man [Jesus], after He had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:1212But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; (Hebrews 10:12)). It is by that one sacrifice alone that the believer is perfected, for “by, one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (vs. 14).
“Perfected forever!” Glorious words! The believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is “sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once” (Heb. 10:1010By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:10)), and is “perfected forever. The Jew under Moses’ law, was sanctified, or separated, to God in an external way on the ground of the blood of bulls and goats; but the believer now is sanctified or separated to God on the ground of a sacrifice of infinite value, that of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Oh, how perfect is that one sacrifice of Calvary! And how perfect is the acceptance before God of all who trust it! The believer is perfected now, and perfected forever.
A. H. B.