NOTHING can be more plain than the simple testimony of Scripture, that the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished the work of salvation on the cross. Yet, in the face of the gracious facts of the gospel, how painful it is to hear souls, who, in reality, have a desire to be saved, saying, “We must endeavor to do our utmost if we would be saved!”
We find on almost every page of the New Testament the distinct and simple conditions which the blessed God has set before the sinner, and apart from those conditions there is no possible way or means of obtaining peace with God. Salvation is of the Lord — absolutely of the Lord — hence it necessarily amounts to this, that in order to secure it, obedience to the conditions laid down in the gospel becomes every poor needy sinner.
It often happens that when a soul is awakened to the facts of its lost condition before God, and of having to meet God, and when the yearning inquiry is raised in the heart, as it was in that of the Philippian jailor, “What must I no to be saved?” that immediately the thoughts are directed inward instead of to the Saviour. It is vainly supposed that power exists in self to do some extraordinary work or works by way of atoning for a past life of alienation from God. Now, to our beloved reader in such a case, we would say by the word of God, that what you are vainly seeking to do, and what you are vainly hoping to get, by resolutions, works, prayers, and tears, the Lord Jesus Christ, eighteen hundred years ago, accomplished by His death upon the cross. Yes, and His work redounds to the eternal glory of the blessed God, as well as abounds to the blessing of poor lost sinners. There is none other ground for obtaining pardon and peace than this of which you may have heard a thousand times, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners;” for “there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.”
How great is the delusion by which the great enemy of the truth fills the heart and mind of awakened souls, by insinuating the lie that there exists ability in man for him to atone for his sins to God. Beloved reader, hear the word of the gospel which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of the apostle Paul spoke to the Galatians of old: “I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” Such a doctrine, so common to the human heart, is in the face of the testimony of the gospel an utter error, for all men have been declared to be sinners by God, and (both Jews and Gentiles) under the power of sin. But blessed be the fact, that when all had been declared “without strength,” then, too, it was said, “Christ died for the ungodly.” Like the impotent man of whom we read in the third chapter of the Acts, we have been without strength from our very birth, absolutely incapable of delivering ourselves from ourselves, and thus we ever must have rained, but for the blessed Son of God, who died for us and rose again. He has gloriously finished the work which He came to do, and His own words which He uttered upon the cross bear witness to the fact — “It is finished.”
“Weary, working, plodding one,
Wherefore toil ye so?
Cease your doing; all was done
Long, long ago.”
It is the happy privilege of every believe to look by faith straight up to the glory of God, and behold Christ Jesus “crowned with glory and Honor,” glorified above, Himself in heaven the eternal witness that the work was finished on earth. Yes, God raised Him from the dead, thereby declaring His unbounded satisfaction in the work of His Son. Now “we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and Honor.” (Heb. 2:99But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. (Hebrews 2:9).) Happy is that man who can thus look up and behold in the person of Christ the “same Jesus” who finished the work of salvation at Calvary, and by virtue of whose work it is said by the Holy Ghost to every believing sinner, “Your sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” (Heb. 8:1212For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. (Hebrews 8:12).) W. M.