Spirit Jesus

Faith Illustrated

“With all our preaching, I am afraid that we too much omit the simple explanation of the essential act in salvation. I have feared that the anxious enquirer might visit many of our churches and chapels, month after month, and yet he would not get a clear idea of what he must do to be saved. He would come away with an indistinct notion that he was to believe; but what he was to believe, he would not know. He would, perhaps, obtain some glimmering of the fact that he must be saved through the merits of Christ, but how those merits can become available to him, he would still be left to guess. I know at least that this was my case–that when sincere and axious to do or be anythihng which might save my soul, I was utterly in the dark as to the way in which my salvation might be rendered thoroughly secure. Now, this morning, I hope I shall be able to put it into such a light that he who runs may read, and that the wayfaring man, though a fool, may not err therein.

The apostle says, he committed himself into the hands of Christ. His soul with all its eternal interests; his soul with all of its sins, with all its hopes, and all its fears, he had put into the hands of Christ, as the grandest and most precious deposit which man could ever make. He had taken himself just as he was, and had surrendered himself to Christ, saying–”Lord save me, for I cannot save myself; I give myself up to thee, freely relying upon thy power, and believing in thy love. I give my soul up to thee to be washed, cleansed, saved and preserved, and at last brought home to heaven.”

This act of committing himself to Christ was the first act which ever brought real comfort to his spirit; it was the act which he must continue to perform whenever he would escape from a painful sense of sin; the act with which he must enter heaven itself, if he would die in peace and see God’s face with acceptance. He must still continue to commit himself into the keeping of Christ.”

“….You cannot be saved, if you have one hand on self and the other hand on Christ. Let go, sinner; renounce all dependence in anything thou canst do. Cease to be thine own keeper, give up the futile attempt to be thy own Savior, and then thou wilt have taken the first step to heaven. There are but two–the first is out of self; the next is, into Christ. When Christ is thy all, then thou art safe!”

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