I HAVE no time for religion.
Indeed! Then have you no time for salvation?
Is there any difference?
Certainly there is.
Well, I have always thought that they were just the same; different words expressing the same meaning.
Not at all. Religion is an obedience to certain rules which should bind the observer always. Salvation is a gift, and is received in a moment.
A ship is foundering ten miles from shore. All hands are at work pumping out the water; they work well and most energetically, but without success. She is sinking.
People on shore see her distress and dispatch a lifeboat, which, in due time, reaches the fated vessel.
Now, what is the use of the lifeboat?
Its use? Why, that those on board the ship should step into her and be pulled to shore.
Quite so. Then what would you suggest to that hard-wrought man at the pump who has no time for anything but to attend most religiously to his pumping?
Oh! I would cry to him to drop the pump-handle and jump into the boat.
Very good; and how long would that take? Just a moment or two.
And then he would be safe?
Well, yes, so long as the boat did not founder too.
Of course; but the jump into the boat would be his salvation?
Yes!
To pump on the sinking ship may illustrate religion; to rest securely in the boat, salvation. If asked to lend a hand at an oar on the lifeboat, the rescued man would doubtless gladly respond and do his very best; but rowing in the lifeboat and working at the pumps of a foundering ship are very different things.
This is what might be called “dead works,” that would illustrate the injunction to “work out your own salvation”―a work into which heart and soul would be flung as the result of life and confidence and hope.
Hence the vast difference between religion and salvation; though the saved man will be religious― that is, he will gladly carry out the rules and wishes of his Saviour.
I remember a gay young fellow saying to me that he had tried to be religious for three days, and then gave it up in disgust. I congratulated him on his persevering for so long, to which he replied, in great surprise, “But are you not religious?”
Well, I had been converted to God for several years at that time, and had proved the comfort of the lifeboat and the peace of salvation. I had lost the bondage of religion in the holy liberty of grace. I had got to know that “Thy service is perfect freedom,” but such service flows from life and is thus natural, as contrasted with legality and slavery.
“I had just enough religion to make me miserable,” said a man before he knew peace with God. After that he became free and happy and useful.
Did you ever notice a precious statement in John 8:3636If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. (John 8:36)― “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed”?
Ponder it, my reader! Such true freedom gives great deliverance to the burdened soul. It is wonderful freedom; it is given by the Son of God; it is therefore the liberty of a son and not the bondage of a slave; it lasts forever; it is divine.
Call it religion if you please; it is one for which there is not time enough! Days, weeks, months, and years are all too short for such a joy―indeed,
“It seems as if eternal days
Were far too short to sing His praise.”
J. W. S.