We live in a fallen world. Without exception, we as individuals are all sinners. By nature, we are spiritually corrupt, enemies to God and condemned to endless punishment in a lost eternity.
It was to such a world that Christ came. And it was to such sinners that Christ sent out His disciples with the gospel, when He told them that “remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem”. They were to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation: that a Saviour had been provided for guilty, lost sinners. They were to make it known that, because this Saviour had died as the substitute for sinners, “whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. If those who heard the gospel would believe, their sins would be forgiven, they would have God’s care and protection throughout the rest of their lives on earth, they would be delivered from a lost eternity and at last brought safely to heaven. Not even in the midst of the solemn proceedings of the last judgement will any of their sins be brought up against them. For every one who believes in Christ, there is complete salvation, for “He is able . . . to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him”.
When Paul and Silas were imprisoned in the Greek city of Philippi, and all the doors of the jail were opened at midnight as a result of the earthquake, they came face to face with the jailor as he was about to commit suicide. He had a vitally-important question to ask them: “What must I do to be saved?” And they had a trustworthy, straightforward answer to give him. They pointed him to this Saviour whom God had appointed for sinners, not just for Jews but also for Gentiles – for sinners throughout the world. So when they told the jailor, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” they were saying in effect, This is the Saviour whom God has appointed for you in particular, in whom you are to trust.
In doing so, they were not taking to do with the man’s election; they were not telling him that they knew he was among those for whom Christ had died. And Paul in particular did not speak as he did because of some special knowledge he had as an inspired apostle. They were, as divinely-
commissioned ambassadors, pointing the jailor to Christ as the Saviour who was being brought near to him, in God’s kindness, that night in Philippi – and brought near to him so that he might believe on Him.
And that is the way the gospel is presented to us. We are to take seriously the fact that Christ has been appointed as a Saviour – for sinners. All who, in God’s providence, are brought in contact with the gospel are under a responsibility to believe in Christ; they have no right to reject the salvation that is set before them. Sinners do not believe in Christ because they have some knowledge that they are elect or that Christ has died for them; they believe because they are sinners, to whom Christ is freely offered in the gospel – as Paul and Silas set Him before the jailor as the Saviour in whom he was to believe.
Yet the doctrine of election has posed great difficulties for individuals who, conscious of their sin, are confronted with the invitations of the gospel. Ebenezer Erskine refers to such difficulties: “The sinner is ready to be scared from taking hold of God’s covenant and His faithfulness engaged therein on the account of the decrees of God. O, will the sinner say, it is true, if I were among the number of the elect, I might meddle1 with God’s covenant. But, alas, I think I am none of these, and therefore I need not think of taking hold of Christ by virtue of His covenant.”
“But, sinners,” Erskine goes on, making clear their responsibility, “let me tell you that ‘secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children’. Let God’s decrees alone; you have no more business with them in the matter of believing than you have to trouble yourself with what they are doing in Mexico or Peru. Meddle with the things that are revealed, for these are the things that belong to us and to our children. Now, what are the things that are revealed? Christ is revealed, the covenant and the promises are revealed as the ground of faith; the command of God enjoining you to believe is revealed; God’s good will to man upon earth is revealed. These are the things that belong to you, and therefore meddle with these. And let not the devil and your own ill heart together brangle [confuse] and confound you by telling you that you do not know if you are elected, for that moment you come within the bow of God’s covenant you may know your election, and that God hath loved you with an everlasting love; and no other way can you possibly know it.”2
Erskine further emphasises the responsibility of sinners to believe in Christ when he considers the objection: “I am afraid that it would be presumption for me to claim a God in Christ for my God”. Indeed, what he lays stress on
1Probably in the original sense of the word: to concern oneself with.
2Works, Free Presbyterian Publications edition, vol 1, page 383, in a sermon on Rev 4:3.
in his response is the sinfulness of unbelief: “It is so far from being presumption that not to know and acknowledge Him, and to trust in Him as God and as thy own God, is rebellion against the authority of the great God interposed in the very first command of the moral law. And till thou take Him as thy God in Christ, thou art living in open rebellion against the authority of heaven. And wilt thou adventure to be a rebel against God to avoid the danger of presumption, and so dash upon the thick bosses of heaven’s buckler? O that I could persuade you to obey the first command of the moral law, as it stands in a subserviency to the covenant of grace, contained in the preface to the Ten Commandments, which teaches us to believe that He is the Lord our God and Redeemer, upon the ground of His own faithfulness pledged in these words, ‘I am the Lord thy God’.”3
Let us remember that the Saviour whom God has provided is one who exactly meets our needs as guilty, polluted sinners. He is a perfect Saviour, perfectly suitable to be a Mediator, for He is both God and man. In the words of Job, He is One who “can lay His hand upon us both” – on both God and sinful human beings. We are therefore to see Him as suitable for us as individuals; we are not merely to see Him as suitable for others but are believably to say, He is absolutely suitable for me, for that is the testimony of the Word of God. Whether individual sinners will believe in Christ or not – and it is also the teaching of Scripture that those who were elected to salvation will believe, while those who were not elected will never believe – yet it remains true that He is a suitable Saviour for each of them.
No one need to point to particular sins as a reason for staying away from Christ; no one need to point to the length of time they have gone on in sin as a reason for not believing now. Christ has been appointed a Saviour to rescue sinners of every kind and, whatever our past has been, we are under obligation to receive the salvation provided in Him. That obligation, as Erskine has pointed out, is involved in the First Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me”. To reject Christ, and salvation through Him, is to despise God’s appointment of Him in the matter. To believe in Him is to submit to God in the matter of Christ’s appointment.
That is what the Philippian jailor was brought to: he believed; he trusted in Christ for the salvation of his guilty, polluted soul; he submitted to the appointment made, from all eternity, of Christ as a Saviour for sinners of every kind, throughout the world. And, because of that appointment, Christ is saying to us as individuals: “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else”. We have no right to refuse. Our duty is to believe, without delay.
3Works, Free Presbyterian Publications edition, vol 1, page 376.