“WHEN I first became anxious about my soul,” said an old man who had spent the best of his days for himself in the pleasures of sin, “I felt how impossible it would be for me to get blessing because of what I deserved. It would, I felt, be something like using a pocket-knife for years, till it was worn nearly down to the haft, and then expecting to get as much for it as for a new one. Indeed, I lie here sometimes and wonder how a sinner like me dare have come to God for salvation after a history like mine. But there, it was all of mercy!” Yes, it is indeed all of mercy, all of grace―grace that reigns through righteousness―on God’s side; while all the misery, all the guilt, is on ours.
“Nothing but sin had I to give,
Nothing but love do I receive.”
And this is the story which every redeemed one has to tell. Spite of our badness, His love drew us―drew us to Himself, and blessed us in a manner worthy of Himself. “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance” (Rom. 2:44Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? (Romans 2:4)).
Here is encouragement for you, dear troubled one. Perhaps you have been almost bordering on despair, because you have nothing wherewith to commend yourself to Him. Be of good comfort, then. He asks for nothing but a broken and contrite heart, a sense of your need of His mercy. All the rest is on His side. He commends His own love to you, and testifies of His own Son, and of His delight in what Jesus accomplished on the cross for your blessing.
GRACE is the word which just suits you. Grace blesses without a meriting cause in the one blessed.
Bring as many charges against yourself as you will, and you only prove thereby that you are a fitting subject for grace. When you come as a broken-down sinner to God, you come to One who has been pleased to reveal Himself as “THE GOD OF ALL GRACE.” The only thing that can possibly shut you out from the provision of grace is the fancied claim on your part of proved merit in the past or promised merit in the future. The one who realizes that he has nothing but ungodliness in the past, and nothing but weakness in view of the future, is just the one for the blessing.
“Nothing but mercy’ll do for me,
Nothing but mercy full and free;
Of sinners chief—What but the blood
Could calm my soul before my God?”