No Human Saviour by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 27, 1911

No Human Saviour

By F. M. W.

HUMANITY can never save itself. Its very nature is weakness and imperfection; “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” The tendency of the human heart is continually downward. Says the prophet: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Describing mankind in their natural state, the apostle Paul says they were “without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.”

From this lost and undone condition there is no power in man to recover himself. Will-power proves unavailing; education and all the refining influences of an advanced civilization can not effect a change; no system of philosophy or of social ethics will work a transformation. In God’s sight the civilized and the educated heathen is no better than the most ignorant barbarian. One may have a finer outward exterior, a gilt and gloss which the other does not possess; but no change has been effected in the soul.

The principle of self-salvation not only permeates the great heathen religions of the world, but it is the very essence of many so-called religious beliefs. Too many professed Christians to-day hold the idea that through intellectual development, or esthetic culture, or perhaps by penance and self-mortification, they may obtain the gift of righteousness, an experience of a changed life. Perhaps in some measure every reader of these words has been beset in his own experience by this stumbling-block. Continually, this evil principle of salvation by works seeks recognition. We need to realize constantly, as expressed by the prophet Isaiah, that “all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth; because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.” Our very best efforts are failures; our greatest wisdom in God’s sight is but foolishness. “Without me,” says the blessed Master, “ye can do nothing.”

The Power of God

God magnifies his wonderful mercy in that while humanity is in this lost and undone condition, he himself becomes their Saviour. “I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no saviour.” He invites, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” God invites mankind from his fallen state to sonship with himself. He bestows this blessed boon without money and without price: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

Sonship is bestowed upon the simple condition of acceptance, of humble, childlike faith in the promise and word of the blessed Master. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power [“the right, or privilege,” margin] to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.”

He bestows the right and privilege to sonship; but he might offer all this, and still man would be utterly powerless to obtain this boon, but with the call to sonship goes the power to attain unto this relationship. He bestows upon us the right to become sons. He gives us the power whereby we may enter as members of his own family, and this boon is bestowed irrespectively of social position or worldly wealth. “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” The blessed Saviour meets

every man right where he is. He comes to the king on his throne, to the prisoner in his cell, to the serf in the field; he comes to the man of great intellectual power, and to the poor, ignorant, degraded savage. He only asks that the heart be open to the influence of his Holy Spirit, that the will be yielded to his control, that the life be consecrated to his service; and then by his divine grace he transforms the unregenerated soul into the son of the Highest.

O the depth and magnitude of the unsearchable riches of God’s free grace! His love is beyond our comprehension. Before this great revelation the whole universe at last will stand in speechless amazement. In the great day of final salvation God only will be exalted. The redeemed will cast themselves at his feet, confessing that not by might nor by power, not by human genius nor by intellectual philosophy, but wholly as the free and unmerited gift of God, has their salvation been obtained.

Let us learn the lesson here of ceasing to strive to attain heaven through human effort. Realizing our weakness, let us cast ourselves helplessly at the feet of Jesus, asking him to change our hearts, and to make manifest in our mortal flesh the life of the Lord Jesus. In proportion as we realize the futility of our own efforts and the weakness of our might, will his divine power work in our behalf. Let us realize indeed and truly that all flesh is grass; let God alone be exalted in our experience.

F. M. W.