“I urge you,” wrote an eminent author (6) to a dying man, “I urge you to cast yourself at once, in the simplest faith, upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. All your true preparation for death is entirely out of yourself, and in the Lord Jesus. Washed in His blood, and clothed upon with His righteousness, you may appear before God divinely, fully, freely, and for ever accepted. The salvation of the chief of sinners is all prepared, finished, and complete in Christ, (Eph 1:6; Col 2:10). Again, I repeat, your eye of faith must now be directed entirely out of and from yourself to JESUS. Beware of looking for any preparation to meet death in yourself. It is all in Christ. God does not accept you on the ground of a broken heart—or a clean heart—or a praying heart—or a believing heart. He accepts you wholly and entirely on the ground of the ATONEMENT of His blessed Son. Cast yourself, in childlike faith, upon that atonement—‘Christ dying for the ungodly,’ (Rom 5:6)—and you are saved! Justification is a poor, law-condemned, self-condemned, self-destroyed sinner, wrapping himself by faith in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘which is unto all, and upon all them that believe,’ (Rom 3:22). He, then, is justified, and is prepared to die, and he only, who casts from him the garment of his own righteousness, and runs into this blessed ‘City of Refuge’—the Lord Jesus—and hides himself there from the ‘revenger of blood,’ exclaiming, in the language of triumphant faith, ‘There is NOW NO CONDEMNATION to them that are in Christ Jesus,’ (Rom 8:1). Look to Jesus, then, for a contrite heart—look to Jesus for a clean heart—look to Jesus for a believing heart—look to Jesus for a loving heart—and Jesus will give you all.

“One faith’s touch of Christ, and one divine touch from Christ, will save the vilest sinner. Oh, the dimmest, most distant glance of faith, turning its languid eye upon Christ, will heal and save the soul. God is prepared to accept you in His blessed Son, and for His sake He will cast all your sins behind His back, and take you to glory when you die. Never was Jesus known to reject a poor sinner that came to Him empty and with ‘nothing to pay.’ God will glorify His free grace in your salvation, and will therefore save you, just as you are, ‘without money and without price,’ (Isa 55:1). I close with Paul’s reply to the anxious jailer, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,’ (Acts 16:31). No matter what you have been, or what you are, plunge into the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness,’ (Zech 8:1), and you shall be clean, ‘washed whiter than snow,’ (Psa 51:7). Heed no suggestion of Satan, or of unbelief. Cast yourself at the feet of Jesus, and if you perish, perish there! Oh no! perish you never will, for He hath said, ‘Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out,’ (John 6:37). ‘Come unto ME,’ (Matt 11:28), is His blessed invitation; let your reply be, ‘Lord, I come! I come! I come! I entwine my feeble, trembling arms of faith around Thy cross, around Thyself, and if I die, I will die, cleaving, clinging, looking unto Thee!’ So act and believe, and you need not fear to die. Looking at the Savior in the face, you can look at death in the face, exclaiming with good old Simeon, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,’ (Luke 2:29). May we, through rich, free, and sovereign grace, meet in heaven, and unite together in exclaiming, ‘Worthy is the Lamb; for He was slain for us!’” (Rev 5:12).

“How glorious is THY NAME,

Through all the ransom’d host,

O WORTHY LAMB, who came,

To seek and save the lost!

“Thou art, beyond compare,

Most precious in our sight!

Than sons of men more fair,

And infinite in might!

“Thy perfect work divine,

Makes us for ever blest;

Here truth and mercy shine,

And men with God do rest.”

Dear Reader,—As I am anxious that the one grand theme—salvation through the bloodshedding of Jesus alone—should be set before you in a variety of aspects, that, if you miss it in one, you may realize it in another, I would now present it as a gift of grace. “For by grace are ye saved,” (Eph 2:8). “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,” (Rom 6:23). “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” (John 3:16). “Here,” says one of the English Reformers, “God, who is infinite and unspeakable, gives after such a manner as passeth all things. For that which He gives He gives not as the wages of desert, but of mere love. This sort of giving, which has its spring in love, makes this gift more excellent and precious. And the words of Christ are plain that God loveth us. And as God, the Giver, is exceedingly great, so is the gift that He giveth, which is His only Son. Let us understand that God is not said to be angry with the world, but to love it in that He gave His Son for it. God is merciful to us and loveth us, and of very love gave His Son unto us, that we should not perish, but have everlasting life. And as God giveth by love and mercy, so do we take and receive by faith and not otherwise. Faith only—that is, trust in the mercy and grace of God—is the very hand by which we take this gift. This gift is given to make us safe from death and sin. And it is bestowed upon the world, and the world signifies all mankind. Why shouldest thou not suffer thyself to be of this name, seeing that Christ with plain words saith, that God gave not His Son only for Mary, Peter, and Paul, but for the world, that all should receive Him that are the sons of men? Then if thou or I should receive Him as if He did not appertain to us, truly it would consequently follow that Christ’s words are not true, whereas He saith He was given and delivered for the world. Wherefore hereof appears that the contrary thereto is most assuredly true, that this gift belongs as well unto thee as to Peter and Paul, forasmuch as thou also art a man as they were, and a portion of the world…

“Whatsoever I am, God is not to be taken as unfaithful to His promise. I am a portion of the world; wherefore if I take not this gift as mine, I make God untrue. But thou wilt say, ‘Why does He not shew this to me alone? Then I would believe and think surely that it appertained to me.’ But it is for a great consideration that God speaks here so generally, to the intent, verily, that no man should think that he is excluded from this promise and gift. He that excludes himself must give an account why he does so. ‘I will not judge them,’ saith He, ‘but they shall be judged of their own mouth’...We are saved, then, only by the mercy of God, and we obtain this grace only by faith, without virtue, without merits, and without works. For the whole matter, that is necessary to the getting of everlasting life and remission of sins, is altogether and fully comprehended in the love and mercy of God through Christ.”7

“Blessed be God our God!

Who gave for us His well-beloved Son,

His gift of gifts, all other gifts in one.

Blessed be God our God!

“He spared not His Son!

‘Tis this that silences each rising fear,

‘Tis this that bids the hard thought disappear;

He spared not His Son!”

“I must say,” wrote Dr Chalmers in a letter to a friend, “that I never had so close and satisfactory a view of the gospel salvation as when I have been led to contemplate it in the light of a simple offer on the one side, and a simple acceptance on the other. It is just saying to one and all of us, ‘There is forgiveness through the blood of my Son: take it;’— and whoever believes the reality of the offer takes it. It is not in any shape the reward of our own services;...it is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is not given because you are worthy to receive it, but because it is a gift worthy of our kind and reconciled Father to bestow. We are apt to stagger at the greatness of the unmerited offer, and cannot attach faith to it till we have made up some title of our own. This leads to two mischievous consequences. It keeps alive the presumption of one class of Christians, who will still be thinking that it is something in themselves and of themselves which confers upon them a right to salvation, and it confirms the melancholy of another class, who look into their own hearts and their own lives, and find that they cannot make out a shadow of a title to the divine favor. The error of both lies in their looking to themselves when they should be looking to the Savior ‘Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’

“The Son of man was so lifted up that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life, (John 3:14,15). It is your part simply to lay hold of the proffered boon. You are invited to do so; you are entreated to do so; nay, what is more, you are commanded to do so. It is true you are unworthy, and without holiness no man can see God; but be not afraid, only believe! You cannot get holiness of yourself, but Christ has undertaken to provide it for you. It is one of those spiritual blessings of which He has the dispensation, and which He has promised to all who believe in Him. God has promised that with His Son He will freely give you all things, (Rom 8:32),—that He will walk in you, and dwell in you, (2 Cor 6:16),—that He will purify your heart by faith, (Acts 15:9),—that He will put His law in your heart, and write it in your mind, (Heb 8:10).

“If I were to come as an accredited agent from the upper sanctuary, with a letter of invitation to you, with your name and address on it, you would not doubt your warrant to accept it. Well, here is the Bible, your invitation to come to Christ. It does not bear your name and address, but it says ‘Whosoever’—that takes you in; it says ‘all’—that takes you in; it says if ‘any’—that takes you in. What can be surer or freer than that?”

“We glory,” says old Traill of London, “in any name of reproach of Christ that is cast upon us for asserting the absolute boundless freedom of the grace of God, which excludes all merit, and everything like it; the absoluteness of the covenant of grace, for the covenant of redemption was plainly and strictly a conditional one and the noblest of all conditions was in it. The Son of God’s taking on Him man’s nature, and offering it in sacrifice, was the strict condition of all the glory and reward promised to Christ and His seed, (Isa 53:10,11), wherein all things are freely promised, and that faith that is required for sealing a man’s interest in the covenant is promised in it, and wrought by the grace of it, (Eph 2:8). That faith at first is wrought by, and acts upon, a full and absolute offer of Christ, and of all His fulness; an offer that hath no condition in it, but that native one to all offers, acceptance: and in the very act of this acceptance, the acceptor doth expressly disclaim all things in himself, but sinfulness and misery.

“That faith in Jesus Christ doth justify (although, by the way, it is to be noted that it is never written in the Word that faith justifieth actively, but always passively, that a man is justified by faith, and that God justifieth men by and through faith, yet admitting the phrase) only as a mere instrument, receiving that imputed righteousness of Christ for which we are justified; and that this faith, in the office of justification, is neither condition, nor qualification, nor our gospel righteousness, but in its very act a renouncing of all such pretenses.

“We proclaim the market of grace to be free, (Isa 4:1-3). It is Christ’s last offer and lowest, (Rev 22:17). If there be any price or money spoken of, it is no price, no money. And where such are the terms and conditions, if we be forced to call them so, we must say, that they look more like a renouncing, than a boasting of any qualifications or conditions. Surely the terms of the gospel bargain are: God’s free giving, and our free taking and receiving.”

It is quite natural for us, born as we are, under the law, and brought up under the restraining influences of religion and civilization, to suppose that we can be saved only by conforming to certain rules and implementing certain conditions. It is difficult to lay aside the performing of all duties as a means of being accepted graciously by God, and to submit to be sought and saved simply as lost sinners, by a loving Redeemer, who delivers us from guilt, corruption, and perdition, “without money and without price,” (Isa 55:1).

An eminent writer of last century says truly:—“The gospel is much clouded by legal terms, conditions, and qualifications. If my doctrine were: Upon condition that you did so and so—that you believe, and repent, and mourn, and pray, and obey, and the like—then you shall have the favor. of God—I dare not for my life say that is the gospel. But the gospel I desire to preach to you is: Will you have a Christ to work faith, repentance, love, and all good in you, and to stand between you and the sword of Divine wrath? Here there is no room for you to object that you are not qualified, because you are such a hardened, unhumbled, blind, and stupid wretch. For the question is not: Will you remove these evils, and then come to Christ? but, Will you have a Christ to remove them for you? It is because you are plagued with these diseases that I call you to come to the Physician that He may heal them. Are you guilty? I offer Him unto you for righteousness. Are you polluted? I offer Him unto you for sanctification. Are you miserable and forlorn? I offer Him as made of God unto you complete redemption. Are you hardhearted? I offer Him in that promise, ‘I will take away the heart of stone,’ (Ezek 36:26). Are you content that He break your hard heart? Come, then, and put your hard heart into His hand.”

“I’ve found the pearl of greatest price!

My heart doth sing for joy;

And sing I must, A Christ I have!

Oh what a Christ have I!

“My Christ He is the Lord of lords,

He is the King of kings;

He is the Sun of Righteousness,

With healing in His wings.

“My Christ He is the Tree of Life,

Which in God’s garden grows;

Whose fruits do feed, whose leaves do heal;

My Christ is Sharon’s Rose.

“Christ is my meat, Christ is my drink,

My medicine and my health;

My peace, my strength, my joy,

My crown, my glory, and my wealth.”

When you, who are anxious about your soul, are hearing much prayer offered by Christians for the Holy Spirit, you may conclude that the first thing you also have to do is to pray for the Holy Spirit; but Jesus Himself sets you right in this matter when He says, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent,” (John 6:29). If you desire to do this at the throne of grace, by all means repair thither, but do not go to it to do anything else at present. Believers in Jesus pray “in the Holy Ghost” (Jude 20) that He may revive the work of God in themselves and in their fellow-believers,—lead awakened souls to Jesus,—and convince sinners of their wickedness and unbelief; but as your only foundation for peace, pardon, purity, and glory, is to be found in the bloodshedding of Jesus, your more immediate occupation is to “behold the Lamb of God,” (John 1:29). No doubt, the quickening presence of the Holy Spirit is most essential to your seeing Jesus to the saving of your soul, and you should by all means expect His gracious presence to be vouchsafed as you contemplate the crucified Redeemer; but it is unscriptural to seek the sanctification of your heart through the Spirit before the justification of your person through Christ, and it is equally unscriptural to mix the two, and depend partly on the one and partly on the other; for Jesus, and Jesus only, is the object on which your anxious eyes must rest for peace with God and a change of heart. “It is Christ that died,” (Rom 8:34); and the Spirit’s office is to direct you to Him who said on Calvary, “It is finished” (John 19:30). It is nowhere written in Scripture: The work of God’s Holy Spirit cleanseth us from sin; but it is written that “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin,” (1 John 1:7). What you are called upon, then, more especially to do, is to receive Jesus as your Redeemer, that you may “have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace,” (Eph 1:7); for it is written, “As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name, (John 1:12).

We are not required to be prepared as sons, and then come and be accepted of God; be justified, and have our sins pardoned through JESUS; but we are instructed to come to Jesus in order to our being justified freely by His grace, and made sons through living union with Him who is the eternal Son of God. We are justified freely as sinners and being thus accepted in the Beloved, we become sons of God, and have the nature, experience, and walk of His children. Awakened sinner! begin at the beginning of the alphabet of salvation, by looking upon Him who was pierced on Calvary’s cross for our sins—look to the Lamb of God, and keep continually looking unto Jesus, and not at your repentings, resolutions, reformation, praying, reading, hearing, or anything of yours as forming any reason why you should be accepted, pardoned, and saved—and you will soon find peace, and take your place among them that “worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh,” (Phil 3:3).

I do not know a more striking illustration of salvation by the blood of Jesus alone, than that which is furnished by the sprinkling of the blood of the Passover lamb on the homes of the Israelites, on the eve of their redemption from the bondage of Egypt. The blood on the lintel secured Israel’s peace.

There was nothing more required in order to enjoy settled peace, in reference to the destroying angel, than the application of “the blood of sprinkling.” God did not add anything to the blood, because nothing more was necessary to obtain salvation from the sword of judgment. He did not say, “When I see the blood and the unleavened bread or bitter herbs, I will pass over.” By no means. These things had their proper place, and their proper value; but they never could be regarded as the ground of peace in the presence of God.

“It is most needful to be simple and clear as to what it is which constitutes the groundwork of peace. So many things are mixed up with the work of Christ, that souls are plunged in darkness and uncertainty as to their acceptance. They know that there is no other way of being saved but by the blood of Christ; but the devils know this, and it avails them nought. What is needed is to know that we are saved—absolutely, perfectly, eternally saved. There is no such thing as being partly saved and partly lost; partly justified and partly guilty; partly alive and partly dead, partly born of God and partly not. There are but the two states, and we must be in either the one or the other.

“The Israelite was not partly sheltered by the blood, and partly exposed to the sword of the destroyer. He knew he was safe. He did not hope so. He was not praying to be so. He was perfectly safe. And why? Because God hath said, ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over you,’ (Exod 12:13). He simply rested upon God’s testimony about the shed blood. He set to his seal that God was true. He believed that God meant what He said, and that gave him peace. He was able to take his place at the paschal-feast in confidence, quietness, and assurance, knowing that the destroyer could not touch him, when a spotless victim had died in his stead.

“If an Israelite had been asked as to his enjoyment of peace, Would he have said, ‘I know there is no other way of escape but by the blood of the lamb; and I know it is a divinely perfect way; and, moreover, I know that that blood has been shed and sprinkled on my door-post; but somehow, I do not feel quite comfortable. I am not quite sure if I am safe. I fear I do not value the blood as I ought, nor love the God of my fathers as I ought?’ Would such have been his answer? Assuredly not. And yet hundreds of professing Christians speak thus, when asked if they have peace. They put their thoughts about the blood in place of the blood itself, and thus, in result, make salvation as much dependent upon themselves as if they were to be saved by works.

“Now, the Israelite was saved by the blood alone, and not by his thoughts about it. His thoughts might be deep or they might be shallow; but, deep or shallow, they had nothing to do with his safety. He was not saved by his thoughts or feelings, but by the blood. God did not say, ‘When you see the blood, I will pass over you.’ No; but, ‘When I see the blood.’ What gave an Israelite peace was the fact that Jehovah’s eye rested on the blood. This tranquilized his heart. The blood was outside, and the Israelite inside, so that he could not possibly see it; but God saw it, and that was quite enough.

“The application of this to the question of a sinner’s peace is very plain. Christ, having shed His blood as a perfect atonement for sin, has taken it into the presence of God and sprinkled it there; and God’s testimony assures the believer that everything is settled on his behalf. All the claims of justice have been fully answered, sin has been perfectly put away, so that the full tide of redeeming love may roll down from the heart of God, along the channel which the sacrifice of Christ has opened for it.

“To this truth the Holy Ghost bears witness. He ever sets forth the fact of God’s estimate of the blood of Christ. He points the sinner’s eye to the accomplished work of the cross. He declares that all is done; that sin has been put far away, and righteousness brought nigh—so nigh, that it is ‘to all them that believe,’ (Rom 3:22). Believe what? Believe what God says, because He says it, not because they feel it.

“Now, we are constantly prone to look at something in ourselves as necessary to form the ground of peace. We are apt to regard the work of the Spirit in us rather than the work of Christ for us, as the foundation of our peace. This is a mistake. We know that the operations of the Spirit of God have their proper place in Christianity; but His work is never set forth as that on which our peace depends. The Holy Ghost did not make peace; but Christ did: the Holy Ghost is not said to be our peace; but Christ is. God did not send ‘preaching peace’ by the Holy Ghost, but ‘by Jesus Christ,’ (Acts 10:36; Eph 2:14,17; Col 1:20).

“The Holy Ghost reveals Christ; He makes us to know, enjoy, and feed upon Christ. He bears witness to Christ, takes of the things of Christ, and shews them unto us. He is the power of communion, the seal, the witness, the earnest, the unction. In short, His operations are essential. Without Him, we can neither see, hear, know, feel, experience, enjoy nor exhibit aught of Christ. This is plain, and is understood and admitted by every true and rightly-instructed Christian.

“Yet, notwithstanding all this, the work of the Spirit is not the ground of peace, though He enables us to enjoy the peace. He is not our title, though He reveals our title, and enables us to enjoy it. The Holy Ghost is still carrying on His work in the soul of the believer. He ‘maketh intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered,’ (Rom 8:26). He labors to bring us into more entire conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ. His aim is ‘to present every man perfect in Christ,’ (Col 1:28). He is the author of every right desire, every holy aspiration, every pure and heavenly affection, every divine experience, but His work in and with us will not be complete until we have left this present scene, and taken our place with Christ in the glory. Just as in the case of Abraham’s servant, his work was not complete until he presented Rebekah to Isaac.

“Not so the work of Christ for us; that is absolutely and eternally complete. He could say, ‘I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do,’ (John 17:4); and, again, ‘IT IS FINISHED,’ (John 19:30). The blessed Spirit cannot yet say He has finished the work. He has been patiently and faithfully working for the last nineteen hundred years as the true—the Divine Vicar of Christ on earth. He still works amidst the various hostile influences which surround the sphere of His operations. He still works in the hearts of the people of God, in order to bring them up, practically and experimentally, to the divinely-appointed standard; but He never teaches a soul to lean on His work for peace in the presence of divine holiness. His office is to speak of Jesus. He does not speak of Himself. ‘He,’ says Christ, ‘shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you,’ (John 16:4). He can only present Christ’s work as the solid basis on which the soul must rest for ever. Yea, it is on the ground of Christ’s perfect atonement that He takes up His abode and carries on His operations in the believer. ‘In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise,’ (Eph 1:13). No power or energy of the Holy Ghost could cancel sin; the blood has done that. ‘The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin,’ (1 John 1:7).

“It is of the utmost importance to distinguish between the Spirit’s work in us and Christ’s work for us. Where they are confounded, one rarely finds settled peace as to the question of sin. The type of the Passover illustrates the distinction very simply. The Israelite’s peace was not founded upon the unleavened bread or the bitter herbs, but upon the blood. Nor was it, by any means, a question of what he thought about the blood, but what God thought about it. This gives immense relief and comfort to the heart. God has found a ransom, and He reveals that ransom to us sinners in order that we might rest therein, on the authority of His word, and by the grace of His Spirit. And although our thoughts and feelings must ever fall far short of the infinite preciousness of that ransom, yet, inasmuch as God tells us that He is perfectly satisfied about our sins, we may be satisfied also. Our conscience may well find settled rest where God’s holiness finds rest.

“Beloved reader, if you have not as yet found peace in Jesus, we pray you to ponder this deeply. See the simplicity of the ground on which your peace is to rest. God is well pleased in the finished work of Christ—‘well pleased for His righteousness sake,’ (Isaiah 42:21). That righteousness is not founded upon your feelings or experience, but upon the shed blood of the Lamb of God; and hence your peace is not dependent upon your feelings or experience, but upon the same precious blood which is of changeless efficacy and changeless value in the judgment of God.

“What then remains for the believer? To what is he called? To keep the feast of unleavened bread, by putting away everything contrary to the hallowed purity of his elevated position. It is his privilege to feed upon that precious Christ whose blood has canceled all his guilt. Being assured that the sword of the destroyer cannot touch him, because it has fallen upon Christ instead, it is for him to feast in holy repose within the blood-stricken door, under the perfect shelter which God’s own love has provided in the blood of the cross. May God the Holy Ghost lead every doubting, wavering heart to find rest in the divine testimony contained in those words, ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over you,’ (Exod 13:13).”

Until I saw the blood, ‘twas hell my soul was fearing;

And dark and dreary in my eyes the future was appearing,

While conscience told its tale of sin,

And caused a weight of woe within.

But when I saw the blood, and look’d at Him who shed it,

My right to peace was seen at once, and I with transport read it;

I found myself to God brought nigh,

And “Victory” became my cry.

My joy was in the blood, the news of which had told me,

That spotless as the Lamb of God, my Father could behold me,

And all my boast was in His name,

Through whom this great salvation came.

And when, with golden harps, the throne of God surrounding,

The white-robed saints around the throne their songs of joy are sounding;

With them I’ll praise that precious blood,

‘Which has redeem’d our souls to God.

Dear reader, Jesus spoke of regeneration as essential to salvation; and it is possible you may feel as if that experience stood between you and the “precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet 1:19). It seems as if it did, but it does not; for we are saved by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which is “shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:6). It can do you only good to consider the necessity of being born again, for it will shew you at once your utter helplessness and the all-sufficiency of the blood of JESUS alone to give you peace with God and a new heart. We do not shrink from the fullest statement of the truth of Scripture on this point, for it will be found that it does not clash in the very least with the truth, which I am specially desirous to impart, that we are not accepted as righteous in God’s sight otherwise than in Christ; for, says the Word, “He made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” The necessity of being born again will shew us only the more clearly that we must be saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone. Turn to and read the third chapter of the Gospel by John, and then ponder the following thoughts on this vitally important subject, and see how you are stripped of every plea for mercy arising from yourself, and laid down as a lost sinner at the cross of Christ, needing to be saved by “grace” alone.

Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, asserts the absolute necessity of regeneration, when He says, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3). And farther on, He says, as solemnly and decidedly, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). And He gives a fact as the reason of this necessity: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh” (John 3:6). “Flesh,” or corrupt human nature—man as he is—is unfit to enter God’s kingdom, and will ever continue so. No self-regeneration is to be expected. The total depravity of human nature renders a radical spiritual change of absolute necessity. The whole race, and every individual “man,” is utterly depraved in heart, his will averse from good, his conscience is defiled, his understanding is darkened, his affections are alienated from God and set upon unworthy objects, his desires are corrupt, his appetites ungoverned; and, unless the Holy Spirit impart a new nature, and work an entire change on the whole faculties of his mind by “the washing of water through the word,” cleansing away his filthiness of spirit as water cleanses away outward defilement, he must remain an unfit subject for God’s holy kingdom.

And observe that Jesus spoke of two classes only—those who are “fleshy,” and those who are “spiritual.” We are naturally connected—as are all mankind—with those who are “born of the flesh,” who, on that very account, cannot even so much as “see the kingdom of God”; and we can get out of our natural state only by a spiritual birth; for only “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). All of us being born of parents who were themselves fallen and corrupt, are necessarily infected by the hereditary taint of depravity of nature; and, besides, “the carnal mind is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom 8:7,8), and cannot enter into His kingdom. Attempts at morality are of no account with God. A moral Nicodemus was told he required something deeper and more comprehensive than conformity to a certain standard which passes with the world for morality. God’s standard of holiness is not morality, but spirituality.

But some may say that, by publishing such extreme views, we may make many well-meaning persons feel disgusted at religion, and go off from it altogether.

But it is not our fault if they do so on account of the insufferableness of Divine truth. Are you convinced that Scripture is right when it says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9)? Do you believe that, as a man in the flesh, you are more like Satan than God?—incapable of knowing, loving, or serving God, and although in reputation for the highest morality, utterly unfit for entering into His holy kingdom?

It is, no doubt, hard to believe that one’s own self is so bad as I have indicated, and none but the Holy Spirit can truly convince us of it; but does not Jesus represent our condition as utterly depraved—as “flesh? ” Does He not solemnly say, that without a new birth from above, not one—no, not even a moral, learned, inquiring Nicodemus—can see or enter the kingdom of God? He does not say that he may not, but that he cannot, enter—leaving it to be inferred that it is morally impossible. And this arises from the fact of its being a kingdom, as well as from the fact of our depravity. An anarchist has a decided dislike to constitutional and settled government; so a man, who hates the laws by which God’s kingdom is governed, cannot be a loyal subject of His holy administration. God would require to change His nature before He admitted any of us into His kingdom with our nature unchanged. But as God cannot change, we must be changed, if we would see or enter His kingdom. Before we can be happy and loyal subjects of it, we must be “born again”; and, being new creatures, have its laws written in our minds and hearts.

Besides, as a professor in one of our colleges has well remarked, “It is a principle of our nature that, in order to happiness, there must be some correspondence betwixt the tastes, the dispositions, the habits of a man, and the scene in which he is placed, the society with which he mingles, and the services in which he is employed. A coward on the field of battle, a profligate in the house of prayer, a giddy worldling standing by a deathbed, a drunkard in the company of holy men, feel instinctively that they are misplaced—they have no enjoyment there.” And what enjoyment could unregenerate men have in God’s kingdom, on earth, or in heaven?8 Even the outward services of the sanctuary below are distasteful to them, in proportion to their spirituality. As long as preachers keep by the pictorial and illustrative—and speak of the seasons of the year, the beautiful earth, and the ancient sea, mountains and plains, rivers and lakes, fields, flowers and fruits, sun, moon, and stars—they comprehend the discourse and applaud it; but when the deeply spiritual and eternally important form the theme, they feel listless, and characterize it as dull, prosy, and uninteresting. But if we cannot enjoy a highly spiritual discourse, it must be because we are “carnal,” and want the spiritual “sense” which always accompanies the new birth; for “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14).

And is it not an alarming truth, that this being “BORN AGAIN” is not a making of ourselves better, but a being made anew spiritually by God himself! This appears evident from what Jesus said during His conversation with Nicodemus. His words are these, “Except a man be born of water and of THE SPIRIT, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). This great change is effected by the Holy Spirit, through means of the living “water” of the Word of God—the testimony of Jesus—and is of a spiritual nature, “for that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” It consists not in outward reformation, but inward transformation. We must be regenerated in soul in order to be truly reformed in life. The change is of such a nature that it is sure to be manifested outwardly if it exist inwardly. If you wish to have a holy life, you must be born again. Praying, weeping, striving against sin, and obeying God’s laws, is just so much labor lost, unless you have in the first place this “born-again” experience.

Ah! but you say, as you read this hard saying, This lays me entirely prostrate before God, a sick and dying sinner; and I may give myself up to despair at once, for such an experience is utterly beyond my reach.

No, not at all! You may well despair of self, for self is incurably bad, but you are by this shut up to trust in “Jesus only” (Mark 9:8). For, remember, Jesus continued to lay before this Jewish ruler atonement through Himself, lifted up as a Mediator, and God’s free love to a perishing world, embodied in the gift and work of His Son. You want to be born again? Well, Jesus would have you look to the Son of man lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, and you will thus be pardoned and made to live. You say you are prostrated and helpless—with the poison of the serpent coursing through you—sick and dying, and you want to live—to experience such a new life as shall prove not only a present counteractive to the virus of this terrible death-poison, but also an enduring spiritual reality? Well, Jesus says, in this conversation with the inquiring ruler, that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

God sent His Son not to condemn the perishing men of the world to lie in their corrupt and diseased condition, and perish for ever, but that He Himself might die that they might be pardoned and saved! And those who are recovered from the disease of corruption, tell us that they were “born again,” not by lying in their corruption and crying for a new nature, and expecting it to come in some arbitrary and different way from that of faith; but their uniform testimony is, “Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth” (James 1:18); we are new creatures, “being born again by the word of God” (1 Pet 1:23); and “whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” (1 John 5:1).9 The realization of regeneration being by faith in Jesus, you must fill your eyes with the atoning cross if you would have your guilt removed, and you must direct your eyes to the risen Living One at the right hand of God, and through Him get out of the old creation with its condemnation and death, into the new creation with its justification and life, if you would know what it is to be “born again,” and have your heart filled with divine life (See Rom 6 and Eph 2). This is the truth which Jesus taught in His conversation with Nicodemus; and the whole drift of the Gospel in which it occurs is a copy of the mind of Christ on this point; for the writer says, towards its close, “These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name” (John 20:31).

If you still feel that you know nothing of being “born again,” bring your mind into broad and immediate contact with THE WHOLE of this conversation. Do not close the book and moan over the misery of your state, as it is now discovered to you by the awakening truths contained from verses 3 through 9; but go on until you take in the discovery of the plain, gracious, free, and righteous way of getting out of your death and misery, as you have it laid down by Jesus, when He speaks (from the fourteenth to the seventeenth verse) of His own all-sufficient sacrifice, and His Father’s unexampled love and gracious purpose towards perishing sinners, and His willingness to save and give eternal life to every one who believes in Him. “He that hath the Son hath life” (1 John 5:12).