SOME little time ago I fell into conversation with an old farmer about the things of God, and spoke of having everlasting life in Christ.
“Ah, well!” said my companion, “I am one of those people who do not believe in the assurance of faith.”
“Assurance of faith” I repeated. “I confess I do not quite understand what you mean. Would you make it a little more clear to me?”
“Well,” said he, “people did not speak in that way when I was a young man; but I hear young men and women nowadays say they know they are saved. Now, to my mind, it is presumption. They must wait till their deathbed, or until the day of judgment, before they can know that.”
“Ah!” I answered, “now I think I understand you. I suppose, if I were to tell you that I know I am saved by Christ, you would say, ‘I don’t believe you’?”
“Yes,” said he, “that is what I mean.”
“Let me see,” said I, apparently changing the subject, “one day last week was rent day, was it not? Did you pay your rent?”
“Oh, yes,” was his prompt and evidently proud reply, “I have paid my rent.”
“Now, if I were to say to you, ‘I don’t believe you have paid your rent,’ what would you say?”
“I can prove it,” he answered, sharply; “I have got the receipt with my landlord’s name upon the stamp, my good man.”
“But what if I still should tell you I don’t believe you have paid it?”
“Well,” said he, in a tone of indignation, while taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, “you say you don’t believe I have paid my rent. Do you see that key, sir? It unlocks the desk in which I keep all my receipts, and if you come to my house I will unlock my desk, and take out the receipt, and let you see it, with the landlord’s name upon it. You say you doubt my word, indeed! Do you think I care for you, or for anybody else?” and as he spoke he grew quite excited and snapped his fingers in the air. Then, changing his tone, he added contemptuously: “If all the people in the world said they did not believe I had paid my rent, it would not cause me to sleep a bit the less soundly tonight, for I know I have paid it, and I hold the receipt for the money.”
“Now don’t be angry,” said I; “you will understand my meaning presently. Do you see this book?” and I took my Bible from my pocket.
“Oh, yes,” said he, quickly: “it is the Bible. I know it all through, from beginning to end.”
“But do you believe it all? Do you believe these verses: ‘There is none righteous: no, not one’; ‘There is none that seeketh after God’; ‘They are all gone out of the way’; ‘All we, like sheep, have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own way’? Do you believe all this? You trust the word of your landlord―a mortal man, like yourself. Do you believe God?”
“Oh, yes,” said he, “I believe all you quote from Scripture. I have never doubted it from my childhood.”
I repeated the words, “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”; and then asked my friend, “Do you believe this ? Do you believe that you yourself are lost, and need a Saviour?”
“I know,” he said, “that Christ died for sinners.”
“Then,” I asked, “did He die for you? Let me ask you to read this verse aloud to us slowly.”
The old man wondered, and, as he said, “felt strange” as I handed him my open Bible, and pointed to the sixteenth verse of the third of John; but he put on his glasses, and read the verse slowly—very slowly: “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
“Tell me,” I said, “who loved the world?”
“It was God,” was the quick and unhesitating reply, and I saw the countenance of the old gentleman gradually lighting up.
“Then,” I asked, “what did God love?”
“The world.”
“The whole of it?”
“It says so.”
“Then we in the world form a part of the world which God so loved. But what did God do, because of His love to the world?”
“He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
“What is the meaning of ‘whosoever’?” “Why,” he answered, “anyone, to be sure.” “Now, may I ask you to read the last verse of the third of John?”
The eyes of the old man filled with tears as he read these words of the living God, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” “Read it again,” I said. He did so. Then, turning to him, I continued―
“You told me just now that if I said I was saved you would not believe me. Do you think I care what a man says? No! If all the people in the world said they did not believe I was saved, it would be enough for me to know that God says I am saved. It will not cause me to sleep a bit the less soundly because a man doubts me. God says I am saved.”
The old man grasped my hand, saying, “I am glad I met you; I never saw things before as I see them now. I shall never again speak as I did. God and His word are enough.” He shook me heartily by the hand, and wished me goodbye, saying, “We shall meet again; if not on earth, up there,” pointing to heaven.
Can you, my reader, “read your title clear to mansions in the skies”? Can you look back to Calvary, where Christ suffered and died, and say, with full assurance of faith, “The Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me?”