November 11, 2020
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
From time to time I send around a letter such as this—written through a constant, pressing concern that souls understand and enter into God’s offer of eternal life. Please take a few minutes to read through it.
The single most pressing issue facing us all is this: Where we will spend our eternity? God is reaching out to men through the Gospel to attract them into an eternal relationship with Himself. Is there any that do not want blessing, peace and joy in their circumstances? The Bible says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and it also says that He “desires that all men should be saved and come to [the] knowledge of [the] truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).
Our natural minds are inherently disposed to lead us away from God. The immediate question, then, is, if God desires to bless us in an ascendant, eternal relationship with Himself—why would we at all resist?
The answer is simple: a dirty man in the dark may think—or, pretend—that he is clean; but, when he comes to the light his state is shown to be unclean. God’s light, the Bible says, is “that which makes everything manifest” (Ephesians 5:13).
This is the moral dilemma that can only be resolved in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. On the one side, we see that God is not only love; but, 1 John 1:5 shows us, also, that in His Nature “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” We as men, on the other hand, show by our thoughts and actions that we are, morally, anything but light—indeed, the Bible is specific in telling us that “There is not a righteous [man], not even one” (Romans 3:10).
We don’t like this language. It is true that “God made man upright” (Ecclesiastes 7:29) and that, as a result, there is a residual goodness in man that capacitates him to display natural love and charity in this world. But, that doesn’t offset the following: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strifes, jealousies, angers, contentions, disputes, schools of opinion, envyings, murders, drunkennesses, revels, and things like these” (Galatians 5:19-21). No, we say—that’s not me! But, it is “me”. Did you ever have an unmerited anger? a lust? unmarried sex? drunk? set up anything in this world as an idol for your predilections? Be honest—we’re guilty—it is “me”—and, “you”—and, the next fellow.
Man’s independency from God has resulted in sin/lawlessness. 1 John 3:4 says, “sin is lawlessness” (which means that we’re disposed to think, say and do what we want). The result of this is that Man is uneasy in the presence of God, as God addresses Himself to Man through the activity of his conscience—“I had not known sin, unless by law: for I had not had conscience also of lust unless the law had said, Thou shalt not lust” (Romans 7:7). This unease keeps us away from God. We see this immediately after Man’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden where it says, “Man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah Elohim, in the midst of the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8).
How has God resolved what is, naturally, an intractable dilemma—resolved in such perfection that Man can be not only delivered from his sinful, separatist nature; but, reconciled in such a way that Man is brought into a perfect, peaceful eternal relationship with God?
God has righteously imposed the penalty of death for sin. It would be unrighteous to allow sinful man to exist untrammeled for eternity. Thus, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and, solemnly, “it is the portion of men once to die, and after this judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). God has met the requirements of death and judgment in the Cross of Christ. A Man without sin has offered Himself as a Substitute for the sins of me and you. God has accepted that sacrifice—Hebrews 9:26 shows us, “But now once in the consummation of the ages he has been manifested for [the] putting away of sin by his sacrifice.” The Lord Jesus Christ suffered and paid for our sins on the Cross, went into death for us, and, in the righteous power of life indissoluble has risen from the grave. Hosea 13:14 says, “I will redeem them from death: where, O death, are thy plagues? where, O Sheol, is thy destruction?”
Here is how God presents all this: Do you believe what He has done to save you? There is no need to attempt some purported righteousness before God—it is fruitless—the apostle Paul says, “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, good does not dwell: for to will is there with me, but to do right [I find] not” (Romans 7:18). The Bible’s statement to each of us is the same: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that he that hears my word, and believes him that has sent me, has life eternal, and does not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life.”
That is the Gospel. “For ye are saved by grace, through faith; and this not of yourselves; it is God's gift: not on the principle of works, that no one might boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Romans 10 shows us, “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among [the] dead, thou shalt be saved. For with [the] heart is believed to righteousness; and with [the] mouth confession made to salvation.” We are saved through faith—wonderful, good news!
I trust that, if you have yet to accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior—if you have yet to surrender your will to His—that you will do so without delay. “Thou knowest not what a day will bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1). Every day 150,000 people die in this world. It says in 2 Corinthians 6:2, “now [is the] well-accepted time; behold, now [the] day of salvation”. Amen—may it be so for all of us.
P.S. For any that lack faith, God reassures with this language: “Ask, and it shall be given to you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). God has not gone to the extent that He has through Creation itself—and, subsequently and more importantly, the Cross of Christ—to be indifferent to your need. Ask God for help—He is a God of love—His hands are outstretched towards you.