While passing along a country lane, on my way to visit a sick man, I overtook an old countryman, to whom I offered a tract, at the same time asking him if he knew the gospel.
“Well, sir,” he replied, “I believe it’s the word of Jesus Christ.”
“Quite so,” said I, “but can you tell me what it contains?”
“I am very glad, sir, to listen to any one as can tell me about it.”
“Well, listen,” I replied, “and I will endeavor to do so.”
“It tells us that the blessed God loved poor undone sinners, that He sent His dear Son to die for such that Jesus, upon the cross at Calvary, bore the sinner’s sins, was judged in the sinner’s stead, finished the mighty work to God’s entire satisfaction, was taken down from the cross and buried, but that God raised Him from the dead and set him at His own right hand in glory; and He now sends a message to you and to me, telling of forgiveness of sins and eternal life to be had through simply taking Him at His word about this precious work of His Son. Now, have you eternal life?” I inquired.
“I can’t say as I have, sir, but I believe in Jesus Christ, I do trust Him, and I try to go on as well as I can.”
“But Jesus died for sinners; listen, ‘God so loved the world’―Do you belong to the world?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, ‘that whosoever’―Does that include you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“‘Believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ John says in his epistle, write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His Name sake;’ and, again, he says afterward, ‘These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life.’ Now, my dear friend, don’t you see the, difference between your trying to go on well, to, improve yourself for God, and God loving you when nothing but a sinner, and Jesus dying for you when nothing but a sinner? Do you know that you are by nature a lost sinner, that there is not a particle of goodness in you?”
“I don’t know about that, sir, I hope to get on and be better.”
“But if you get better you won’t want Christ. He died for the ungodly; your only title to the Saviour is that you are a ruined sinner.”
“Well, I do feel that I want something new in me.”
“Yes, that’s just what you do want; you need to be born again, to have a new nature, and them there will be new fruits. All the cultivation in the world won’t make a crab tree produce sweet apples, unless a sweet graft is grafted on it; so with all your trying you’ll never get any fruit, from your ruined nature acceptable to God. The only way you can have this new nature is by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you remember about the Israelites being bitten by fiery serpents, and God telling Moses to make a brazen serpent and set it on a pole, and that every bitten one who looked on it should live?’ They did not get better and then look, but the moment they looked they were healed. Now, you must look away from yourself, all ruined by sin, to Christ―you can have eternal life by just believing on Him. You cannot go to heaven without it. The Lord said to Nicodemus, who was a most religious man, and who had every opportunity for serving God according to the law, that except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Your old nature hates what God loves, and loves what God hates; so that if it were possible for you to go into heaven in your natural condition you would very soon want to get out again. At the cross God judged the old nature in the person of Christ, the sinner’s substitute, and now bestows a totally new nature on everyone who believes on His Son.”
“Well, sir, when I was laid aside some time ago through illness, I pondered a good deal, and I read in the Testament about a certain man having a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and coming for three years to seek fruit from but he found none; and how his vine dresser asked for it to be spared another year so that he might dig about it and dung it, and then if it didn’t bear fruit it was to be cut down. Now I think that fig tree is me, and that the Lord has been seeking fruit but has never got any.”
“Just so; that is what I have been trying to show you. Now look in the 8th chapter of Romans, and you will there read that the carnal mind is enmity against God, and that they who are in the flesh cannot please God. The mistake you have been making is that you have supposed that the old nature had to be improved, that salvation was to be obtained that way, instead of bowing to God’s word, which says you are lost, guilty, ungodly, and without strength. You have unknowingly been trying to shut yourself out from Christ; for if you had any goodness belonging to you Christ would not be wanted, at all, events not as a Saviour. God’s word. says that He died for the ungodly.”
“But I think if I was pretty right today I might be wrong tomorrow; I know I’ve got sin in me.”
“Yes; but God not only gives a new nature, but He gives also the Holy Ghost to dwell in the believer to enable him to carry out the desires of that nature, and so bring forth the good fruits. The old nature still remains in the believer, but he has to treat it as a judged thing, and God’s Spirit helps him to keep it from acting. But what gives me confidence is that I know Jesus did a perfect work for me on the cross 1800 years, ago, and that no alteration in my feelings can ever alter that work, nothing can undo what He did. It is looking outside of myself that gives me settled peace. Now, do take God at His word, own that you are nothing but a sinner, but tell. Him that Jesus died for sinners.”
“Thank you, sir, thank you; I am so much obliged for what you have been telling me.”
And we parted.
Dear, anxious reader, it is for you I write. Have the difficulties of the subject of this paper, been in anywise similar to your own? Have you, in common with him, been expecting to get salvation and peace with God, as the results of your works? No wonder, then, that you are still unhappy. You have been looking long enough into the gloomy regions of your own heart, let me beseech you to look out―out to Christ. Will you still refuse to believe the good news that there is nothing to do but to take God at His word? He says that “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life” (John 3:3636He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36)).
If you really do believe on the Son you have everlasting life; then why doubt it? Oh, what a, sight! Jesus, the spotless one, hanging on the Cross, meeting wrath for you―the waves of God’s judgment rolling over Him there. He cried out, “It is finished,” and gave up the ghost. Oh, what a sight! Jesus risen from among the dead, and seated at the right hand of the majesty on high! (Heb. 1:33Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; (Hebrews 1:3).) The glory of God shining in His blessed face, once marred and wounded!)
Dear reader, He is on high without thy sins; take one look at Him bowing beneath them on Calvary’s cross―bend thy ear to catch that cry that rings through the darkness, “It is finished;” and then with joyful eyes follow Him up to the highest point in the universe, the throne of God, and know that He sits there the accepted One—that He lives to die no more. With thine eye on Him doubts will vanish, difficulties flee away; and thou wilt be able to say, Himself bare my sins in His own body on the tree. Thou wilt then be able to walk through this world seeking to glorify Him, anticipating that blissful moment, fast hastening, when He will descend into the air to call us away from this scene to meet Him, and be with Him, and like Him, forever.
“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and Our Saviour Jesus Christ ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2:11-1411For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, 12Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; 13Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; 14Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. (Titus 2:11‑14)).
“I change, He changes not;
My Christ can never die:
His love, not mine, the resting place,
His truth, not mine, the tie.”
T.T.E