Last month we considered the question, “Where are we today?” A brief glance at the moral and spiritual condition of, particularly, Western nations led to the conclusion that God is leaving this generation to itself to a greater extent than has been the case for a long time. Yet Scripture teaches us that God can do wonderful things, by bringing multitudes of sinners to Himself, enabling them to believe in Jesus Christ as the Saviour that God has appointed. And He can bring the various countries in this world, in the West and elsewhere, to acknowledge God’s authority in their legislation and in the outward lives of their peoples.
But there is another question that each of us should consider carefully and prayerfully. It is, Where am I spiritually today, as an individual? As 2023 comes to an end and a new year begins, we should be particularly conscious that time is passing. And as we get older, we no doubt feel that time is passing very quickly. We may put it another way: the amount of time left to us in this world is becoming less, and perhaps there is very, very little time left. This should make us seriously consider the further question, Am I ready to leave this world, to pass into eternity? These questions suggest others, such as, Have I turned from my sins? Have I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ? Have I begun to live a godly life? On the answer to these questions hangs the reliability of our hope for a blessed eternity, for unless we have faith, unless we have repented, and unless we live a life which reflects a new nature wrought by the Holy Spirit, we are not on the way to heaven but are continuing onwards to a lost eternity.
Surely these thoughts should focus our minds on making the best use of the short time we have left to prepare for the great eternity. It should be clear to us that great urgency is called for and real earnestness. The issues are so serious. How can we compare the blessedness of heaven and the sheer awfulness of hell in view of the enormous difference between them?
From exile in Aberdeen, Samuel Rutherford wrote with total seriousness about these matters to one William Semple, who lived in Renfrewshire: “My earnest desire to you is that ye would, in the fear of God, compare your inch
and handbreadth of time with vast eternity, and your thoughts of this now fair, blooming and green world with the thoughts which ye will have of it” after death. “If ye do so, I know then that your light of this world’s vanity will be more clear than now it is; and I am persuaded ye will then think that men’s labours for this clay idol [the body] are to be laughed at.”
But Rutherford laid even more stress on the incomparable glory and desirability of Christ, the One through whom salvation is to be found: “Therefore, come near, and take a view of that transparent beauty that is in Christ, which would busy the love of ten thousand millions of worlds and angels, and hold them all at work. Surely I am grieved that men will not spend their whole love upon that royal and princely Well-beloved, that high and lofty One; for it is cursed love that runneth another way than upon Him. As for myself, if I had ten lands and ten souls, O how glad would I be if He would break in upon me and take possession of them all!”1
Rutherford was someone who understood that all need a fundamental change of heart and life. He understood the Apostle James’ counsel: “Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (Jas 1:22). He, like all who are on the way to heaven, had not only heard the command to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that they might be saved, but he had also obeyed that call; he had actually believed on the one and only Saviour of lost sinners, and he went on trusting in Him.
But we must be clear that the doing called for is not to be the foundation of our salvation. If anyone ever sought to earn salvation, it was surely Martin Luther. Caught in a terrible thunderstorm as a young man, he fell to the ground and cried out for help to Anna, a Roman Catholic “saint”, promising to become a monk. He kept his vow. He longed for peace with God and did all he could to find it through good works. For instance, he kept the rules of the monastery with great care. Yet he had to learn that it is “not by works of righteousness which we have done” that salvation is to be found. And he did learn that lesson; he discovered that it is “according to [God’s] mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Tts 3:5), so that the sinner is made able and willing to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Luther needed such a severe experience of conviction of the complete insufficiency of all human righteousness, so that he might be prepared to challenge the works-righteousness being propagated by the Church of Rome, and become a prominent leader of the Reformation movement.
And we should ask ourselves: Have I learned these lessons – that we cannot save ourselves, that salvation is a divine work, given freely for the sake of Christ, who died for sinners, so that they might be accepted for the sake
1Andrew A Bonar (ed), Letters of Samuel Rutherford, Banner of Truth reprint, 1984, p 436.
of His finished work, which provided a perfect righteousness for even the chief of sinners. That was what Luther learned when, through the Spirit’s enlightening power, he began to realise that his doing could not save him; it was stained by sin. Light came into his soul through the words of Romans 1:17: “The just shall live by faith” – not by our own works, which we might foolishly hope will earn us salvation, but by a God-given faith. On the other hand, we must be clear that, following conversion, there must be good works, which will serve to demonstrate the genuineness of conversion, but do not earn salvation.
Yet do we have a God-given faith? Are we trusting in Christ, and in Christ alone, for salvation – content that “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12)? There is no other saviour, but Christ is a complete Saviour, appointed by God the Father as altogether suitable for sinners in their need, whatever their past life has been, for He is able to save to the uttermost.
Again, to help us understand where we stand spiritually, we should ask ourselves, What are our deepest desires? Balaam might have thought he had a good desire when he expressed the wish, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!” (Num 23:10). But what was missing from his words was a desire to be righteous now, to live the life of the righteous from now on until it would please God to take him from this world. The desire of those who are on their way to heaven is to find Christ now, to trust in Him now, to be given a new heart now, to live to God’s glory now – rather than to receive these blessings at the very last moment of life. They are still on their way to a lost eternity who want to continue in a worldly way of life until, so to speak, they are within an inch of death.
Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Mt 5:3). And to be poor in spirit distinguishes God’s children from those who are not. They do not look to themselves as the source of grace and salvation; they do not have such riches from themselves. Because of their spiritual poverty, they know they must look elsewhere – to God, for the sake of Christ. Paul encouraged the Philippians believers: “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:19). Blessed then are those who, out of a sense of their spiritual need, look away from themselves to the source of all spiritual blessings, to Christ, who assures them that “theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. They will have all the blessings of the kingdom that God sees fit to give them here, and they will have a place in heaven at last.
Let us then seek to answer these vital questions for ourselves: Where am I spiritually today? Am I trusting in Christ alone for salvation? Am I on the way to heaven, or am I still on the way to a lost eternity?