A PIOUS sailor was once heard explaining to a shipmate the nature of faith. Among other things, he said, “Mark you, it isn’t breaking off swearing and the like; it isn’t reading the Bible, nor praying, nor being good―it is none of these; for even if they answer for the time to come, there is still the old score. And how are you to get over that? It is not anything you have done or can do; it is taking hold of what Jesus did for you, and expecting the pardon and salvation of your soul, because Christ let the ‘waves and billows’ go over Him on Calvary. This is believing.”
Oh that every professed gospel preacher throughout the world might be brought to tell out the gospel as simply as this sailor told it to his shipmate! It is Christ and His precious shed blood, Christ and the glorious work He finished, that is the substance and center of all true gospel testimony. We do not occupy a drowning man with the hand that seizes the life-buoy, but draw his attention to the buoy itself thrown out to save him.
It is a living and glory-crowned Saviour that is the theme of the gospel. The Spirit delights to bear witness to Him. He tells me of the power of that love which brought Him down beneath the dark billows of judgment for my sins; of God’s satisfaction in His suffering work, told out by the place He now occupies, the crowns which adorn Him, the glories which cover Him.
He fills my ears with the tale of His praises, and my trembling heart with the story of His love, until my lips are constrained to say, “Lord, if I dare not trust my own heart, I cannot help trusting Thine. Thou art above and beyond suspicion. Thy love is a proved love―deeply, fully proved―and it needs no effort to trust a proved friend. Thyself all clean, all worthy, Thou hast died for me a sinner.”
It is thus that a weary, sin-sick heart is taught to trust the Saviour. And though the gospel fully recognizes all the badness that God has found in the sinner, yet the burden of that heaven-sent story is the goodness and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the sent One of the Father, the gift of God. It is “the gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ,” and it is what God has to say about Him that you are asked to believe.
Oh that some reader of these pages might be brought, in absolute distrust and abhorrence of self, to have faith in Him and in His precious blood!
He alone can save you. He alone is worthy. May your heart exclaim with David, “This is all my salvation, and all my desire,” and may you be able “To tell to sinners round What a blest Saviour you have found,”
and to begin at once to do it.