Seventy-nine-year-old Mrs. Helen Koton was walking into town to buy a few groceries and see some familiar faces. These daily walks were both exercise and pleasure to her, and the road was very familiar. This time she was about midway across a drawbridge that spanned a canal when, to her dismay, the bridge began opening under her feet.
With the bridge opening, she was in a dangerous position. In her advanced age, she could no longer move fast enough to escape, and although she yelled, no one heard. Within a short time the bridge was so sharply tilted that she was beginning to slide. She did the only thing possible to save herself from severe injury or perhaps even death: She wrapped her arms around the steel railings of the bridge and hung on for dear life. Soon the two halves of the bridge were drawn up to a nearly vertical position, and poor Mrs. Koton was dangling forty feet up in the air.
Motorists waiting to cross the bridge spotted the struggling woman, and some of them ran and told the bridge operator. He was appalled at the mistake he had made in raising the bridge with a pedestrian on it, and he lowered it at once. When the bridge came down, people ran out to see if they could help the trapped woman. They found Mrs. Koton “all in one piece,” unhurt except for a few bruises and scratches, but she was badly shaken up.
You want to make sure you are not halfway across a drawbridge, but all the way across, before it begins to rise. Thank God, there is a Savior who doesn’t get you halfway saved from your sins and then leaves you dangling by your own strength and in danger of perishing. When He saves you, He gets you all the way saved.
At the cross He made the one sacrifice for sins that God can accept. That sacrifice, made at Calvary, has infinite worth and merit before God. Because the death of the Lord Jesus means so much to God, He is willing to give all those who believe in the name of His Son the gift of eternal life. “These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name” (John 20:3131But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (John 20:31)).
The moment a sinner sincerely believes on the Lord Jesus, all the infinite worth of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross is applied on their account and they are reckoned as righteous. At that moment of faith they are justified forever. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Salvation, eternal life, righteousness, justification and peace are all things that we desperately need. We need them because our sins have opened up a great gulf between ourselves and God, who is holy. That great gulf will continue for all eternity if we don’t come to the Lord Jesus for salvation.
God in His holiness must see that sin gets its due. Men and women who have loved darkness and sin and never seen their need of God’s salvation will be sent away to a terrible place at death. What a dreadful price they will pay for rejecting the One who came from heaven to save them!
No one needs to end up in that awful place. “The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:1414And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. (1 John 4:14)). He is such a Savior that He can bring even the vilest of sinners safely to God if they repent and turn to Him in faith. He will never leave anyone dangling in jeopardy of falling into hell if they repent and place their faith in Him.
Because of Christ’s death on the cross, God can righteously save every believer. When He saves them, they are not partway saved but all-the-way saved. There are no halfway measures with God. Won’t you believe on Jesus Christ so that you might be completely, totally, absolutely saved?