J Julius Wood
Acts 16:31. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt saved.
Sinner, a word of warning and exhortation: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die”. Have you not sinned ten thousand times? Shall you not die then, as the Lord has said? Thus has the Lord said: “The wicked shall be turned into hell”. Have you not done wickedness; and do you think that, in opposition to this word of the Lord, you shall escape the hell here threatened? The hour of death is at hand; are you fully prepared to meet it? The great judgement day will soon be here; can you endure the searching scrutiny of Jehovah Jesus, the God and Saviour, whose offered kindness you have treated with cold indifference, or contemptuous neglect?
They come, they come: death, judgement, eternity. The angel’s hand is uplifted, and he is about to swear concerning you that time shall be no longer. Dare you die, sinner? Dare you lay your body down in the dust and start forth, a disembodied spirit, into the immediate presence of God? You must assuredly do so before many days pass. You cannot by any means avoid it.
Think of your body awakening from the deep slumber of the grave amidst the convulsions of dissolving worlds. Think of rising from the dust of death and opening your eyes on Him whom you now despise, as He comes in all
1Taken, with editing, from The Christian’s Daily Companion. Wood (1800-1877) was at this time minister of New Greyfriars’ church in Edinburgh.
His glory and power as the world’s great Judge. Dare you meet His frown? Can you endure to depart, loaded with His curse, into the blackness of darkness and the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels? Sinner, can you endure these things? Dare you venture to look back on a life devoted to the world, spent in sinning, and forward to the dark gulf which is yawning to receive you? Or, conscious of your sinfulness and danger, are you earnestly and anxiously inquiring about a way of salvation? The Word of God meets your inquiry with this plain declaration, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”.
“The Lord Jesus Christ.” He is the eternal Son of God. He assumed human nature. He was made under the law. In the place of sinners He perfectly obeyed the law and suffered the punishment due to their transgressions. In that finished work of His, He both purchased pardon for fallen man and merited heaven for him. And now He has ascended up on high, leading captivity captive, and He has received gifts for men.
He can forgive all your iniquities, sinner, and His merit can entitle you to heaven. He has the Holy Spirit without measure and so can deliver you from the pollution of sin. You see your heart full of corruption, your life a mass of transgressions, the curse of a holy God resting on you and His consuming wrath overhanging your head. But see in Jesus Christ a deliverer from all. To which of your sins can the merit of His atonement not reach? What stain of corruption is so deeply sunk in your soul that the precious blood of Christ cannot take it out, that the Holy Spirit cannot cleanse it off?
Jesus Christ is indeed an all-sufficient Saviour. It does not matter how bad your case is, how long you have continued in rebellion against God, wedded to the world, the servant of ungodliness; it does not matter how short a time you have on this side of eternity; it does not matter though you have been a sinner against light and love; Jesus Christ can – blessed be God for it – save you from it all. In Him there is mercy enough to reach the vilest of the vile, and sanctifying grace and power enough to cleanse the foulest of the foul and make them glorious in holiness.
I know that convinced sinners and mourning Christians often see, as it were, a great gulf between the Saviour and themselves. They see their own corruption and danger and that Jesus Christ is a great and glorious Saviour, but they can see no connection between Him and them. And they ask, How are we to be benefited by what the Son of God has done?
Is this your case? Do you say, I perceive that I am a ruined sinner deserving hell, and I believe that Christ is what He is represented to be in the Bible; I believe that He has died to atone for sin, that He has obeyed the law of God, that the Holy Spirit is given through Him to renew and sanctify. I believe
what you tell me out of the Word of God, that in Jesus Christ there is laid up everything that a perishing sinner like me needs for salvation. But how am I to obtain an interest in Christ’s salvation? How am I to benefit by what He has done? It is evident that all are not saved by Him. The many souls already in the place of torment, and the many who daily go away to that awful place, bear witness to this. How may a saving connection be established between me, a perishing sinner, and Jesus Christ, the Saviour?
My friend, God Himself, in His Word, gives you an answer: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”. Faith, or believing, connects the sinner savingly with Jesus Christ. God, in the Word, testifies to the sinner certain things about Christ. The Holy Spirit enables the sinner to receive the divine testimony and to rely on Jesus Christ as that testimony sets Him forth. That belief and reliance is saving faith. It makes Christ and the believer one; so that as Christ bears the believer’s sins, the believer is warranted to plead Christ’s righteousness. And through his union with Christ, the believer’s sanctification is accomplished.
Here is the alarmed perishing sinner; there is the mighty, gracious Saviour, most able and willing to save. God in the Word tells the sinner plainly and fully about the Saviour, and with affectionate and solemn earnestness invites the sinner to place confidence in that Saviour. O the dark heart of man that can resist such testimony and decline such an invitation! May the Holy Spirit, the giver of all good gifts and graces, bestow the grace of faith on everyone who is in anxiety about the salvation of his soul, so that being justified by faith, he may have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.