A man said to me not long ago, “Do you think there is any justice in my being condemned because a man sinned six thousand years ago? I don’t believe a word of it!” Now, let me say, there will be no one lost on account of Adam’s sin. But I hear someone say, “That’s a plain contradiction. You have said we should be, and now you tell us we shall not be.”
Let me see if I can illustrate it. Suppose I am dying of some terrible disease, and I am given up by the physicians, who say I must die. But there comes a man whom I have known for years, and he says, “You are a dying man!”
I say to him, “I know it; I don’t need anyone to tell me that.”
He says to me, “But there is a remedy.”
I say, “I don’t believe there’s any remedy. I have tried all the leading physicians, and they say there is no hope.”
“I tell you there is a remedy!” says he. “Twenty years ago I was as far gone with that disease as you are now, and I was given up by all the physicians to die; but I took that medicine (and he holds it out to me), and it cured me. Listen now—there is the medicine. It shall not cost you a penny. Just take it, and you will get well.”
But I do not take it, though I have every reason to believe the man is speaking the truth. I shall die, but not because there is no cure. It is because I spurn the remedy. And if men die eternally it will not be God’s fault, not because they are sinners, but because they have despised the remedy—they have rejected the Saviour. (Heb. 2:33How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; (Hebrews 2:3).)