Two texts, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:3131And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:31)), and “The blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7)), hung upon a cottage wall. The eye of a poor woman, who had entered the cottage, fell upon them. She remarked, “If a big sinner came in here these texts might do him good.” This poor woman is but a type of a class of Bible readers, whose self-complacency is an indication of their being dead in trespasses and sins.
Although the Apostle Paul could say of himself, As touching the righteousness of the law, blameless, “he classed himself among those who were by nature dead in trespasses and sins,” saying, “Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh, and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”
Reader, you are either dead in trespasses and sins, or alive in Christ. Which is it?