“IT is only now and then that I can say I am saved,” said a young lady to a friend.
“I think those people who can always say they are saved must be people of a very hopeful turn of mind!”
“Nothing of the kind,” was the reply. “Those who always know they are saved, believe what God’s Word says, and that never changes.”
Yes; such build their hopes of salvation not on the shifting sands of their own fancies and feelings, but on the unchanging Word of God, which tells of the full redemption Christ has accomplished for the sinner, and which assures the believer of his eternal security, for “He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” (Heb. 7:2525Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. (Hebrews 7:25).)
“If I only had some token,” said an anxious soul who was always wanting something more than the Word of God to rest on; “just an inward whisper that Jesus died for me. I should be satisfied.”
A friend replied, “Well, suppose that someday you had this inward whisper. You would be very happy because it had assured you that Jesus died for you. But in a few days the thought might arise, ‘I wonder if that was God’s whisper?’ It may have been Satan’s! Where, then, would be your peace and joy? Gone! because they were not based on the Word of God alone.”
God’s Word says that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” (1 Tim. 1:1515This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. (1 Timothy 1:15).) Without a trace of “inward feelings” that it is for me, I appropriate this for myself. He came to save sinners. I am a sinner, therefore he came to save me. As another has said, “I take the lost sinner’s place, and claim the lost sinner’s Saviour.” And now I may know my sins are not on me, not because I feel them gone, for I do not, but because God says they are laid on Christ. (See Isa. 53:66All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6).)
To have settled peace with God I must see that my efforts, doings, and good works, however pleasing they may be to God afterward, as the fruit of His grace in my soul, have no part whatever in my soul’s salvation, but that He saves me solely on the ground of Christ’s atoning death and blood shedding on my behalf as a sinner.
I am saved by what Christ has done for me, not by what I try to do for Him.
F. A.