WHETHER you believe it or not, you belong to God. First of all, by creation. He made you. Second, by providential care. He has kept you in life up to this moment. The very air you breathe is His. The sun that shines upon you, the food you eat, belongs to Him. In the third place, He has purchased you by the blood of His own. When Jesus died He paid the purchase-price of the world. He bought the field for the sake of the treasure that was in it. That blessed One, to Whom belong the glories of creation, the goodness of providence, and the matchless love expressed in the price He paid to purchase you, lingers over you in all the grace of redemption. He has bought you to set you free.
Let me tell you how He set a fellow-sinner free. He was a dirty, ragged being, with care written in deep furrows on his brow; the very image of misery. That very morning his employers had dismissed him for intemperance. He was on his way to a drunkard's home, to a pining wife and starving children. He passed a schoolboy beating a dog unmercifully. Another boy, seeing him, said, "Don't do it; it's God's creature!" These words fell upon the poor drunkard's ear. It was a new thought to him. Surely if a dog was God's creature he was. “What! I, a drunkard, a burden to my own family, despised by society, ashamed to look my own children in the face because of the way I have wronged them—I, God's creature! Ah! I remember the days of innocence. I remember when I knelt at my mother's knee and breathed those hallowed words she taught me, ' Our Father.' Now desolate, weighed down, despaired of by friends. Little did I then contemplate what I now am. Alas! I yielded to temptation. By gradual steps I descended Satan's ladder, and what a spectacle I am now! ‘God’s creature!’ I might have been His child. What am I now?”
He looked up. The public-house stood right before him. He must pass it on his way home. Often he had sought to drown his remorse and silence his conscience there, and then staggered home to inflict new miseries on wife and children.
He stopped. There was an inward struggle. The Spirit of God had fastened that child's word about being "God's creature" on his conscience. He hurried by the door, entered his own house a sober man, a convicted man, a deeply penitent man.
His wife had often prayed for him. They were broken-hearted cries. Now the answer had come.
Ruin stared them in the face, her husband had lost his employment, nothing but starvation or the workhouse was before them, but all this was nothing to her. She would have faced that, and far more, for the joy of that moment.
Those tears of her husband, as they coursed down his cheeks, filled her heart with a joy which only those know who have prayed, watched, waited for the salvation of those dear to them.
What a sight for Heaven's joy! A poor drunkard pleading for mercy; a guilty sinner turning to a Savior-God; one of "God's creatures" committing his soul to a faithful Creator.
Not many hours rolled by before prayer gave place to praise, and husband and wife rejoiced together that their eyes had seen God's salvation. They now wept for very joy. "God's creature" was now a new creature in Christ Jesus; old things had passed away and all things become new. Their night of sorrow had been turned into the light and joy of morning.
He had yielded to God's claims. He could now look up into the face of his Savior and say, "Thou hast not only created me, preserved me, purchased me, but Thou hast redeemed me to God by Thy blood.”
I wonder if you can say that? The blood that purchased you is the blood that redeemed you. Perhaps you say, I do not understand the difference. If I bought a slave in a country where men are sold as slaves, that slave would be my absolute property. If he ran away and refused to serve me he would still be my property. He is mine by purchase. In that way you belong to God. The purchase-price is the blood of Christ. You may refuse to own Him as your Master, you may try to escape from Him, but you are still "God's creature," you belong to Him.
Now suppose the slave-owner issues notices and has them placed in every conspicuous place: "All of my slaves who have run away shall have a free pardon and a full redemption granted to them on condition that they come and claim the pardon; they need bring nothing with them; it is a full, free, unconditional pardon.”
Imagine a runaway slave reading that. One of two things will happen. He will either say, “I am quite content where I am, and I don't believe a word my master says "; or else he will go straight off and claim the offered pardon. Now which course are you taking? You might be the biggest blackguard, the worst drunkard, or the most immoral man, yet if you respond to God's gracious invitation you shall swell the ranks of the redeemed. If you doubt my word you just try it for yourself. I came when I felt I was just ready to sink into hell. He remitted all my sins. He will remit yours. It is yours to confess your guilt; it is His to forgive. With the Lord there is mercy, and with him there is plenteous redemption (Ps. 130:7). The precious blood was the infinite cost at which you were purchased; that same precious blood enables God to act as a Redeemer. In breaking off your chains He does so in virtue of the price paid, on the ground of which He can proclaim complete emancipation.
Do you reply, "Your way of putting it makes things so easy to the believer that it will lead people to do what they like"? So it will, in one sense. You are quite right. Some visitors noticed a young girl watch every movement of her master, anticipate every command. She never seemed tired of serving him. They inquired the reason. "I was a slave; my master purchased me and then gave me my redemption. I was free to do what I liked. I am finding my joy in serving the one who has redeemed me." Such in substance, if not in words, was her reply.
Only yield yourself wholly to Christ, the constraint of His love will produce its own results; what you will "like" is to please the One of Whom you can joyfully say, "He loved me and gave Himself for me."
H. N.