Deeply interesting and instructive it is to note the different ways by which souls in whom God's Spirit is working are led into peace and blessing. After being first awakened and groping about in the darkness, or, at best, the twilight of human thoughts and ways, they all sooner or later reach the one and only door into blessing, drawn by God's Spirit to Him who says, "I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture." John 10:99I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. (John 10:9).
Martin Luther, after being awakened to a sense of sin by a terrific thunderstorm, and after long groping about in the darkness of the Roman system, under whose instruction he was painfully and wearily creeping up Pilate's stairs in Rome to obtain absolution, and thus pardon and peace with God, heard suddenly a voice like thunder in his soul that said, "The just shall live by faith." His painful journey was ended; and, unexpectedly, he found himself at the door of faith which God has opened to all poor sinners who know and feel their need.
Another well-known servant of God, who was early brought to feel his need of something for his soul more than the world could supply, had a feeling akin to despair. Then it occurred to him that perhaps, if he could but have the precepts of the Savior continually before his eye, it would be a help to his obedience and a means of salvation. With this intention he got two New Testaments, and cut out from them all the commands and counsels he found. Pasting them on a board, he placed it where he could see it frequently. But he found, alas! that to be reminded of precepts was not to keep them; to know the will of God was not to do it; and to be acquainted with the right way was not to walk in it. Indeed he had set himself a far harder and more hopeless task than even poor Luther, long before him, had done, when he set himself to work at ascending Pilate's stairs in the hope of finding peace and salvation at the top.
Things seemed to grow darker, and all efforts but helped to make matters more hopeless. One day a friend said to him, "If you want to find the knowledge of God, study the Epistle to the Romans; it is there the plan of salvation is made known.”
Acting at once on this suggestion, he thought he would copy out the whole epistle, that he might better master the subject, and become more fully acquainted with the apostle's reasoning. He commenced his task of copying the epistle into a book, and got as far as the eighth chapter. Coming to the eighth verse, he wrote, "So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”
These words stopped him. He said to himself: "What is the use, then, of all my efforts? If a sinner cannot please God, how can I do anything to gain acceptance with Him?”
Suddenly, as with a sunbeam, the thought flashed across his mind: "No I cannot please God, but Jesus Christ has. He is the way! He is the Perfect One; and this is what is meant by those words at the end of every prayer, 'Through Jesus Christ our Lord.' "Yes," said he to himself, "God receives sinners for His sake, and He will receive me.”
Like Luther's "The just shall live by faith," which came as a divine revelation to his soul, delivering him from the burden of his sins, so to this man came, as a divine revelation, the blessed truth, "Through Jesus Christ, God receives sinners." On this his soul rested in undisturbed peace, and this he proclaimed to others until the Lord took him to Himself.
Dear reader have you yet come to the one only door of access to God? Have you yet come to Jesus and laid your burden down at His feet, "who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree"? If you have not yet done this, come to Jesus just now, and just as you are, with all your burden of sin and unrest, and He will receive you, for He says, "He that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.”