The Only Road
(No. 3544)
PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1916.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THE LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
MARCH 31, 1872.
"Jesus said to Him, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes
to the Father but by Me." John 14:6.
JESUS had been speaking about the Father, about His going to the
Father, about the Father's house and about going there. And He was
asked by Thomas this question, "We know not where You are going, and
how can we know the way?" We are to understand this verse as being an
answer to that question. He tells him where He was going, namely, to
the Father, and also the way to the Father, namely, by Himself.
Now this verse has been read and read, too, with a great deal of
profit, without always being read correctly. For instance, suppose I
were to divide my sermon into three parts, tonight, and show that,
first, Christ is the way? Secondly, that He is the truth? And thirdly,
that He is the life? I do not think I should be able to give you the
meaning of the text, for you will observe that He is not speaking about
three things–He does not say, "I am the way, and the truth, and the
life"–He is speaking about only one thing, namely, that He is the way,
and then the two words, truth and the life, are put in to explain what
He means by the way. So I think.
Luther, taking the first meaning and putting in an, "and," for it is
necessary to put one in to make it out, says Christ is the way, that
is, through Him men begin to be Christians. Secondly, He is the truth,
that is, through Him they are instructed further in the faith. Thirdly,
He is the life, that is, through Him they enter into eternal
blessedness in the life to come.
Now it is very true, but it is not the Truth of God taught here–at
least, we think not, certainly if we follow the strict analogy of the
language. Augustine read the passage this way, "I am the way, the true
way and the living way." But that is not quite it. There is truth in
that and it is more correct than Luther's reading–but we cannot see
the sense without some considerable violation of the language. It is
true, but not the Truth of God taught here.
What we want to do is not only to preach about the Truth of God, but
the Truth of God that is in our text. It appears to us that this was
our Lord's meaning–"I am the way to God." That is the great
teaching–"No man comes to the Father but by Me and I am the way in
this respect–that no man can come to know the truth with regard to the
Father except He knows Me as the truth. And, secondly, no man can
possess the life by which He comes to the Father except He receives Me
as the life. I am the way to the Father in a double sense–of being the
truth which teaches men about the Father and being the life which
enables men to come to the Father and have practical communion."
Believing that to be the meaning of the text, we will try and work it
out. First, then, Christ is the way to the Father as He is the truth.
Secondly, He is the way to the Father as He is the life. And, thirdly,
taking the general statement with which the verse closes, He is
altogether and in all respects the only way to the Father–"No man
comes to the Father, but by Me."
To begin, then–I. CHRIST IS THE WAY TO THE FATHER SO FAR AS HE IS THE
TRUTH. He is so in this respect–nobody knows the Father until, first
of all, He knows Jesus Christ. God the Father is to be seen in Nature.
He has painted every flower and He it is that hangs every blade of
grass with the glistening pearl of dew. But so dim are our eyes and,
after all, so little of the more spiritual parts of His Character could
God reveal in mere materialism, that man does not behold God there. We
are often told that we are to go from Nature up to Nature's God–just
about as easy to go from the higher pinnacle of the Alps to the stars!
The step is too long for human nature. Men have never taken it. Those
men of old who ransacked Nature–the old philosophers and teachers of
the heathen–did not discover God. "The world, by wisdom, knew not
God."
Oh, what a maze of deities they had–what strange gods! What strange
characters they gave to God! Our very chil-dren–in their classical
learning in schools, get their minds polluted by reading the deeds of
beings that were called gods among the heathens. If a man does not form
the same false conception of God the ancient heathen did, it is partly
to be accounted for by the almost unconscious effect of Christianity
upon men's minds! Men cannot form such ideals of God living in England
as they could, living in Greece, before the Gospel had been preached
there–yet every idea of God that is not drawn by men from Revelation
and is not brought to men through Jesus Christ, the Mediator, is sure
to be a false one, a lopsided one–an ideal of God in which some one
virtue preponderates to the destruction of others. It is not God at
all! It is a gross caricature of God. It is, in fact, no more God that
men think out by reason than the golden calf was God which came out of
the fire when Aaron had thrust gold into it. They did not know God.
You have only to take up the works of any of our great original
thinkers who scorn to call themselves Christians, and though you will
see that Christianity has molded their thought, you will only see truth
so far as it has done that, unconsciously, to themselves. But where you
get their real thoughts and reasonings, you will find that they have
not come to the Father because they have neglected the great Truth of
God which is in Christ, which is the way to the great Truths which are
in God the Father.
Now while this is true with regard to the Person of the Father,
Himself, let me remind you, in the next place, that it is true with
regard to everything about the Father. Now there is one doctrine in
Scripture which is peculiar to the Father. It is the doctrine of
Election. The Father has chosen us to be His people. Everywhere in
Scripture it is put down as the work of the First Person of the blessed
Trinity–to choose a people to Himself that shall show forth His
praise. Now there are many persons who want to get at that doctrine. I
have known many unconverted people want to understand it. I frequently
get letters from persons troubled about it. They say that they should
feel peace if they could understand that doctrine.
But, beloved Friends, if any such are here tonight, I will speak to
them. You cannot get to Election–you cannot get to the Father by a
direct road from where you are. Just read that signpost. "No man comes
to the Father but by Christ." If, then, you want to understand
election, begin with Redemption! You will never understand the eternal
choice till you begin at the Cross. Begin with this, "God was in
Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their
trespasses unto them." Do not begin at the 9th of Romans. You had much
better begin at the 3rd of John, "Like as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that
whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
You will be worrying yourself, bothering your poor head and tormenting
your poor heart for many years if you try to get to the Father first!
Your business is to take God's Law and rule–and go to the Son upon the
Cross, first–and then to the Father upon His Throne. It would be a
strange thing if our children would insist upon going to the University
before they went to grammar school. They would never learn anything in
that way because the studies of the University are too severe for them
until, first of all, they have gone to preparatory schools. It were an
odd thing, indeed, if every man that took down his Bible, should always
begin it backwards and read Revelation first–and if every man read the
Lord's Prayer beginning at, "Amen," and went backward to, "Our Father!"
Yet some minds will persist in this. There is a charm to them about the
mystery of Sovereignty and Election, and they must begin with that.
Little children, why must you first eat strong meat? Here is milk for
you–be satisfied with your milk! It will strengthen you. You shall
have the strong meat, by-and-bye, when, by reason of use, your senses
have been exercised! Listen to Christ's tender words, "No man comes to
the Father but by Me." There is no way to Election except through
Redemption.
And now, another illustration of the same Truth of God. Even the
Fatherhood of God is known only in Christ. This is what is mainly
intended in this verse. It is not known as a Truth of God, till, first
of all, we know the Truth concerning Christ. And the Truth concerning
Jesus, the First-Born and elder Brother, is the way to learn the truth
concerning the entire family. What a muddle there is made in this world
about the Fatherhood of God. According to some, we are, all of us, all
alike His children and He must be, indeed, a strange Father if His
dealings with the sons of men are to be considered as the dealings of a
Father.
Indeed, we can very well understand why some have said, "How can we
account for this pit of Hell?" Would a father put his children there?
Certainly he would not. And if God is a Father to all mankind, alike,
and in the same sense, then
it would be utterly unaccountable that there should be any eternal
destruction from the Presence of the Lord. But this fatherhood is a
fiction, a sheer and clear fiction–an invention of modern times! There
is another fatherhood in which God is the Father of the twice-born, the
Father of the regenerate. The God and Father of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ and, next of all, those who are in Jesus Christ. And when
you come to know Christ as the Son–and yourself as one with Him–then
you begin to know what the Fatherhood of God means in its specialty to
the elect, in its truth, in its depth and in its blessed outflow–that,
being a Father, He chastens us, He loves us, feeds us, guides us,
trains us, educates us and provides for us an inheritance which none
shall ever be able to take from us!
I venture to say it here, again, that no man knows anything in truth
about the Fatherhood of God till he knows something about union with
Christ–his own sonship by virtue of his brotherhood with Jesus. No man
comes to the Father but through the Son!
And now I shall take another point of the same great Truth of God. It
is commonly thought that anybody can understand the mercy of God–at
any rate, we can get to it. But, Beloved, an infinite deal of mischief
has been created in this world by a mistaken notion about mercy with
regard to God–that God is not very particular about our sins, that He
does not judge us too severely, that He knows we are tempted a great
deal–that we have strong passions and, therefore, He winks at it all
and, notwithstanding that we are not what we ought to be, yet He will
graciously overlook it and accept us. That is the common notion of
God's mercy, but there is nothing whatever in Holy Scripture to support
it–there is no grain of evidence that such mercy as that is in the
heart of God at all!
The Lord is angry with the wicked every day! He hates sin, even a
single sin! He will by no means spare the wicked. He neither closes His
eyes against sin, nor will He stay His hand from the punishment of sin.
No man comes to the Father's mercy till He has learnt Christ! But when
you come to Jesus Christ–and you understand that God took His Son from
His bosom and put Him to death in our place that He might have mercy
upon us without the violation of His jus-tice–when we see how He made
Christ to be our Substitute, in order that He might freely and fully
forgive–then we see what kind of mercy God's mercy is! It is not mercy
to the sin–He punished that–it is mercy to the sinner! It is not
mercy that thinks little of sin, for He put His Son to death when sin
was laid upon Him! It is not mercy that winks at sin and treats it as
though it were a trifle, for He made His Son cry out, "Why have You
forsaken Me?" It is a kind of mercy that is consistent with the
fiercest wrath against every particle of iniquity! The Lord is a
consuming fire and will by no means spare the guilty! Every
transgression shall have its recompense of reward.
But yet He is a "God merciful and gracious, passing by transgression,
iniquity, and sin," and this you can only know the meaning of when you
know Christ as the Truth of God that conducts you to the great Truth of
the mercy of God! Equally, the same remark might be made upon God's
justice, but I shall not tarry upon that. I shall rather close these
observations upon this first head by saying that we do not truly know
the power and dominion of God till we, first of all, know Christ. We
may know God to be Omnipotent. We may understand that He does as He
wills, but that Truth, in its real force, never breaks upon the soul
till it shines through the Mediator! I am alarmed to think of God's
greatness. I am afraid when I think of His supremacy. I know that He
can do as He wills and yet I rebel! I know that He can punish me, that
He can crush me–and I tremble in His Presence–but I feel no love to
Him until I see His love to me in the Person of His dear Son.
And then, in a moment, I bless Him, for He is Omnipotent, and I can see
His Omnipotence on all sides. I bless Him that He is the King! Let the
children of Zion be joyful in the King. I thank Him that He does as He
wills. I rejoice that He does, for He only wills to do that which is
for the good of His own chosen ones. You cannot love God in any one of
His attributes, or know Him aright and truly unless it is through first
knowing Jesus Christ!
Beloved, then let me say to you, gathering all up in one–you will do
serious mischief to yourselves if you study any Truth concerning God
apart from Jesus Christ. Luther was quite right when he said, "I will
have nothing to do with an absolute god. I will not try to study him as
god. I know that I cannot look at the sun; I must have a smoked glass
to look through–I must have the Person of the God-Man to take away the
blinding Glory of the invisible God–invisible because too bright for
my eyes to gaze upon. You must have God in Christ. I will not try to
study anything else."
Our preaching, if we do not preach Christ, is useless! We may preach
what we like about the Father, what we like about portions of
Scripture–but if there is no Christ, there will be no good come of it.
Somebody once said, "Why is it that the Methodists and others get
people to hear them and they have conversions, but you do not find
crowds go to hear
Unitarians, neither do you hear of conversions?" And somebody said,
"There is no blood in the Unitarian religion and the blood is the very
life of it." Leave out the atoning Sacrifice and you have left out the
marrow from the bones, and the bones from the body! The fabric becomes
soft, weak, powerless, yes, you have left out the very soul of the
Gospel if you leave out Christ, the Mediator, Christ, the Surety,
Christ, the Atonement, Christ suffering in our place! As our preaching
ought to be full of Christ, so let your studies of Scripture be!
Read everything in the light of Christ! Calvinism I believe in, but not
Calvinism without Christ–it becomes fatalism then. I am thankful to
hear the practical preacher who preaches the precepts, but I do not
believe in his preaching without Christ. He will get into legal bondage
as sure as he is a man. The one thing that will keep preaching alive is
to keep Christ in it–Christ at the top, Christ at the bottom, Christ
in the middle and Christ all the way through! Many a man's theology is
a very gold pot of ointment, but there is a nasty fly in it that will
make it stink–and there is nothing that will get the stinking fly out
of the ointment but Christ–He keeps our theology sweet and pure. We do
not know Christ, Himself, nor anything about Him to any saving and
practical purpose, except in that way. The Truth of God that is in
Christ is the way by which we get to the Truth concerning God.
And now we shall pass on to the second point.
II. CHRIST IS THE WAY TO THE FATHER AS HE IS THE LIFE. We get life
through Him–then we come to
God. But we are dead till we get Christ–and God is not the God of the
dead, but of the living! We are dead, I say, till we get Christ and the
place of the dead is on the earth–not in Heaven. Bury the dead out of
my sight, corruption cannot inherit the Kingdom of God! Now observe we
never come to God till first we get life enough in Christ to have Him
as a hope of pardon. I never dared think of coming to God till, first
of all, I saw that He had laid help upon One that is mighty, even upon
Christ Jesus. When I understood that the only-begotten Son of God
became Man for the sinner's sake and suffered in the sinner's place,
then I thought, "There is hope for me."
And the next thought I had was, "I will arise and go unto my Father,
and I will confess my sin, hoping that He will have mercy upon me." Is
there one here that wants to be reconciled to God? Soul, your only hope
of ever being reconciled to Him is on the Cross–it is through
Jesus–and only through Jesus, that you can have even half a hope that
is worth having of ever being the friend of God. Oh, look there! Go to
His bleeding wounds to get life and you will then begin to get to God!
But it was later when that hope grew into possession and into faith–it
was then that we came to God by Christ. Many of you remember when you
not only had a hope of being pardoned, but knew you were! Perhaps you
remember the very day when all the load of your sin was rolled off your
shoulders and you felt light as air, though, before, your heart had
been heavy as lead. You remember that time. Did you not, at that
moment, look at God and bless Him with all your heart? Did you not feel
you loved Him because He blotted out your sin? Did you not feel that
day that you could talk to Him, that you could praise Him, that you
could magnify Him, that you could live for Him and die for Him? I know
I did! I knew I had come to God because in Christ I had the full
assurance that my transgressions were forgiven me! The life that gives
the assurance of pardon is the life which is the way by which we come
to God. Since then, Beloved–since we have come to God through complete
pardon, we have often come to Him in prayer. But I will ask you, Did
you ever get to the Father in prayer except through the Son? Have you
ever tried to pray and forgotten Christ? If you have, it has been a
dead failure!
Remember the Primitive Methodist Prayer Meeting, where the brother got
hampered in prayer and could not go on? Somebody in the meeting cried
out, "Plead the blood, Brother! Plead the blood!" Yes, and then the man
began to pray again! You have always found it so, I know–that you
could not pray till you got to pleading the blood. I have many a time
been with God in prayer, asking for a great blessing–and I have felt
that I had not got it till I could come to such a text as this, "Do it,
for You have promised it. Do it, for You will glorify Your Son–do it
for His sake, He deserves it! You have promised that He shall have the
full reward for His soul's travail–do it for His sake."
Then I have felt I have got it, for I had got the Father because I had
pleaded the Son. The Son's life within my soul had helped me to plead
His precious merit and the life that showed itself in the breath of
prayer enabled me to get to God the Father. You must have felt this,
Believers–you must have felt this, I know. It is just the same when
coming to God in praise. It is easy enough to sing a Psalm, pleasant
enough to get a hymn and hum it over to yourself, alone, but for real
worship of God and thorough devout praise of Him, you will never do it
unless you have been, first, to the foot of the
Cross! There is no music that is sweet to God unless Christ tunes the
harp. If there is no blood on the harp, there will be no music such as
God can accept. When the Lord touches the tongue, then it praises Him
aright–but only if He touches it with a drop of Jesus' blood–nothing
else! "Oh, let the redeemed of the Lord say so," says the
Psalmist–"let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed
out of the hands of the enemy"–as if He felt that nobody could praise
God so well as those that had tasted of the redemption that was by
Christ Jesus. The way for every chorister to come unto God with a
sincere thank offering in to come via Crucis–by the way of the Cross!
Only in that way can He be accepted with His thank offering.
But, Beloved, I trust we know what it is to come to God as a matter of
lifelong experience. It ought not to be by fits and starts that we come
to the Father, but, like Enoch, we are to walk with God! It should be
habitual with us, to commune with the Most High. But, mark you, it can
never be so unless it is habitual with us to rest upon the finished
work of Christ. Lose your sense of acceptance in the Beloved and you
will lose communion with God! Get away from the foot of the Cross and
you have got away from the foot of that ladder, the top of which
reaches to Heaven. There is no other ladder but Christ, Himself, in His
Atonement. Get away from that and you have taken away the bridge by
which you can get to God at all! Fellowship with God must come through
faith in Christ! The meeting place under the Law is the meeting place
under the Gospel.
Now, under the Law, the only meeting place was the Mercy Seat, the
propitiatory that covered the Law, that golden slab covered the Law on
stone. There God met with His people. And Jesus Christ covers God's Law
completely! Our sins are not seen–His righteousness, His
propitiation–that is seen and God will meet us there! But He will meet
us nowhere else! We can only come, then, to communion with the Father
by reckoning and resting upon the mediatorial work of the Son. And
assuredly, at the last, we shall want to come to the Father through
Christ when the veil that now separates us from the invisible world
shall begin to be torn in two. We shall long to be in the many mansions
and to hear our Father's welcome, but we shall have to die with Jesus'
name upon our lips in order to get there! We shall have to rise,
too–our spirit will have to mount with Jesus! He must give it the wing
and when our body rises, it must be in the image of Jesus and in the
life of Jesus, otherwise we cannot come to the Father for the Glory
entrance or the Grace entrance.
It is because Christ is the life that we are able to come. We have no
way, whatever, and no possibility of ever discovering a way by which,
in our life, we can have fellowship with God–the God of our
salvation–except by receiving life through Jesus Christ! Oh, men and
women, I trust you desire to be at one with your Maker! I trust you
wish to be friends with Him who can crush you as a moth between His
fingers! I hope there is a desire within your soul to have Him for a
Friend whom nothing can endure to have for an enemy! If, then, you will
come to God, there is the gate–that gate with the mark, with the blood
mark–you must go through there–through the wounds of Jesus!
You get to God's heart only in that way. He has shut every other gate
of mercy, if there ever were another open, and this one stands open as
the only one–but it is open night and day! You must come to God the
Father through Jesus Christ the Son, who suffered, died, rose again and
sits at the right hand of His Father forever.
Now we shall close our discourse by the third point, but very briefly.
The last sentence of the text takes a sort of sweep–a broad sweep. It
does not state that Christ is the way because He is the truth, or
because He is the life, only, but it says without exception, "No man
comes unto the Father but by Me," by which I understand, first, that–
III. CHRIST IS THE ONLY WAY THAT GOD HAS APPOINTED by which we can come
to the Father. The priest tells me that I must get to the Father only
through him. He is a liar and there is no other answer necessary but
that! We need not enter into such a question to debate with him. I
would as soon believe a cow, if it could speak and tell me that I was
to come to God by it, as believe that I was to come to God through a
sinner like myself! No, God does not come to me in that shape–He has
better ways and modes. "There is one God," says the Scripture, "and one
Mediator between God and man, the Man, Christ Jesus." In that way we
believe, but in the way of priestcraft we do not believe and may God
save us from it!
This is the only one, the absolutely solitary way to God, for God never
appointed another–that is to say, He has never appointed a way through
ceremonies, nor a way through frames of feeling, nor a way through good
works. What is the picture of the way to Heaven by good works, Why, it
is Mount Sinai all on a blaze, like Etna smoking and heaving like a
great volcano! And where are the people that want to get to Heaven by
good works? There they are, down in the valley! There is a great ring
set round the mountain. Why don't they come up? In the first place,
they do not want to come
up, for the mountain is altogether on a smoke! Even Moses said, "I do
exceedingly fear and quake." In the next place, they cannot come up,
for there are boundaries set about the mountain–"and if so much as a
beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with
a dart." You cannot get nearer to God than that on the footing of
works, for Mount Sinai is the symbol of works! Look to the flames that
Moses saw, and shrink, and tremble, and despair! You cannot get to God
that way!
Calvary is the mountain! Why do you leap high hills? This is the hill
that God has chosen–the Calvary of the Cross–the Golgotha of the
tremendous Sacrifice! There you can get to God–He has appointed that
to be the place where you shall meet with Him. Oh, do not try to find
another way! Be not so arrogant as to say, "This is my way," but take
God's way and come humbly, now, to Jesus Crucified, and you shall meet
with God and find mercy and pardon tonight! It is the only appointed
way.
Next, it is the only actual way. You never did meet the man that got to
God except through Jesus Christ. I have known men who talked about
worshipping the pure god of Nature. I knew one who never went to a
place of worship and when I spoke to him, he said, "I worship God in my
own garden." I said, "Yes, I suppose that is a god made of wood. I
think I heard you knocking him down the other morning." And I believe
that is the true worship of Nature. It does not go much beyond that
sort of thing and, if you find out those who profess to find God
without coming to Jesus Christ, you will find their god is their belly
and that they worship pleasure–and they lie in their throat when they
talk about coming to God apart from Jesus Christ! They do not come! No
one ever did come and no one ever shall come–the majority of them do
not want to come. He that casts off Christ casts off God with Him, or
he that says, "I would come to God, but will not come to Christ,"
contradicts himself.
There is, deep down in his very soul, a hatred of God, the very true
God, or else there would be no hatred to the Christ of God. But Jesus
Christ is the way, the only way and, blessed be God's name, He is an
open way! Whoever desires to come to God the Father, tonight, may come
through Jesus Christ! The way to God is open. There are no bolts nor
bars, no bogs across the road to keep a sinner out. God's mercy is as
free as the air we breathe to every soul that will take Christ and rest
in Jesus Christ. This is the one condition–come to God by Christ–and
you may come. Come now! Come with all your sins about you! Come in all
your filth, and rags, and leprosy. Come, though the sentence of wrath
hovers over you and the black clouds of justice threaten to smite you
with the lightning of eternal wrath! You may come now and as you are,
tonight, if you will but come through Christ.
We need a Mediator between our souls and God, but we do not need any
mediator between our souls and Christ. We need to get ready to come to
God, but we need not get ready to come to Christ! You cannot come to
God unless you are washed in the blood of Christ and clothed in the
righteousness of Christ! But you may come to Christ just as you are–no
need to rid yourselves of one foul blot. Come just as you are, without
any good thing, whatever, without even enough goodness in you to be
seen with a microscope! Come just as you are, even if you have so much
sin that eternity could scarcely hold it! You may come to Christ though
you are almost as bad as a devil. Though, in some respects, you are a
very devil, yet you may come to God in Christ, but not to God out of
Christ! You must come to Christ, first, and, at the foot of the Cross,
look up to the atoning Sacrifice. There is a way to God's heart for
you, even you!
And this way is a most suitable one for all here present. You know if
there is a ladder, it is no use to anybody if it does not go to the
top. If I want to go up to the top of a house–and a ladder goes only
half-way–it is of no use to me. If I want to go to God, I need a way
that reaches up to God. Now Christ is, Himself, God. He will lead us
right up to God through Himself if we get to Him.
Now, a ladder that went to the top would be no good for me if it did
not go down to the bottom! Though it reached to the top of the house,
yet if it only went half-way down, I could not get there. Christ is a
Man just like myself. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born of a
virgin and was a sufferer of human infirmities, even as you are–and
died as you will. He lived in suffering, as you may. Oh, then,
look–the Ladder has its foot in His Humanity and, again, has its top
in His Deity! Climb it! He is a suitable Savior for you!
What kind of Man was Jesus Christ when He was here on earth? He was
very holy, but was He very reserved? Was He distant? Did He turn His
back when He saw a sinner? Did He get to the other side of the street
lest He should touch him and so be defiled with the presence of a
publican or a harlot? The Pharisees did that, but not the Master, for
this Man received sinners and ate with them! He sat at the same table
with them and He was called the friend of publicans and sin-
ners. Oh, Sinner, what a Christ, Christ is! What a suitable Savior for
you! Do not think, today, that He is the judge of sinners! Today He is
the friend of sinners! Do not look at Him, today, as though He were the
censurer of sinners, the critic and the cynic against sinners. No, but
the lover of sinners' souls! Oh Sinner, may His Spirit draw you to come
to Him, tonight, in these pews!
Let this silent cry go up, "Jesus, Son of Man and Son of God, bring me
to Your Father! Teach me Your Father by teaching me Yourself! Give me
life before God by giving me life in You. You are the way–Yourself, in
Your own Person. I trust You–be the way for me, for me, for me,
unworthy though I am! Dear, dear Savior, glorify Your mercy by
forgiving my sin, my great sin, and accept my unworthy person through
Your infinite compassion, and reconcile me unto God."
Oh, such a prayer as that will be heard! Have you prayed it? It is
heard! If you do not feel it is heard, pray it again! Keep on praying
it but, above all, look to Christ upon the Cross! Count the purple
drops as they distil from His dear wounds! Remember that He was God
that died upon that Cross. Sit and look, and look, and look, and look
again! Look, I say, and look again–and if peace does not come with
looking, keep on looking and you will get peace there–and faith there,
and life there! You will not take faith to Christ–you will get faith
from Christ! Keep on looking! Keep on looking!
I heard a Brother say the other day that what he saw, he always looked
at. And that is a sensible thing to do with a great many things, but,
above all, with Christ. If you see Him, keep on looking at Him! It does
not merely say, "See Christ," but, "Look unto Him, look unto Him, and
be you saved, all you ends of the earth." God grant you that gracious
life–look, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.