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FINDING HER TITLE DEED

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 19, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 32.

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FINDING HER TITLE DEED.

She was pointed out to me by a friend in the inquiry room of the tabernacle, with the request that I would talk with her. Her friend informed me that she was a lady of considerable fortune, and the owner of a beautiful house in a distant city, whence she had come to attend the meetings, with the hope of getting good to her soul.
Approaching her a few moments afterward, I inquired of her in regard to her spiritual condition.
“I have been for several years trying my best to be a Christian,” she said, “and I am no nearer to it now than when I began.”
“That is strange,” said I, “when the promise of immediate salvation is so plain for all who will accept it. What have you been doing all these years in order to be a Christian?”
“I have been doing everything I could do. I have prayed, and striven to do right, and to break off every known sin, and to obey every known requirement of God’s Word.”
“And yet you are not at peace with God?” I asked.
“Far from it. On the contrary, I have had constant doubt and darkness and misery of mind, so that I have been tempted again and again to give up all further effort.”
“Have you ever accepted Christ as your personal Saviour, and intrusted the whole matter of your salvation to him?”
“I have tried to, but I haven’t been able to get any evidence that he has accepted me.”
“What evidence do you expect to have?” I asked.
“Why, I think I should feel entirely different if I were a Christian. I should be happy and peaceful in my heart. I should have that joy and delight in Christ which so many tell about. Instead of this I am unhappy, and only growing more so the more I try to be a Christian.”
I saw at once that she was making the common mistake of searching the testimony of feeling for evidence of her conversion, instead of taking the testimony of the Word; and so I sought to clear away her difficulty by a simple illustration.
It had happened that a day or two previous I had heard two gentlemen talking about a house, which one of them, having come into possession of by the foreclosure of a mortgage, was trying to sell to the other.
“I doubt if you really own the house,” said the one who was asked to buy.
The other replied, very confidently: “I was in doubt of it myself till yesterday; but I spent the whole day in looking up the record, and now I am as sure of my title as I am of my own existence.”
Recalling the simple instance, I used it to make plain the assurance of faith to my inquirer.
“Do you own the house in which you live?” I asked abruptly.
“I do, sir.”
“How do you know that you own it?”
“Because my husband bought it and paid for it, and before his death gave me a deed of it,” was her reply.
“If any one should dispute your ownership of the house, you would appeal to this deed for the proof of it, would you not?”
“Certainly,” she answered.
“But what if you were to say something like this: ‘I know I own this house, because I feel happy and contented every time I walk through its rooms. I have a homelike feeling in it which I have nowhere else. And so I am sure it is mine, because I feel that it is.’ Do you think that this would be a sufficient ground on which to fix your claim in law?”
“Certainly not,” she replied.
“But you do have a homelike, contented feeling in that house, which you do not enjoy anywhere else, I suppose? You have a sense of ownership and rightful possession which you could not have in any other house?”
“Of course I have.”
“And what gives you the feeling of ownership and contentment?”
“The knowledge that I own the house, I suppose.”
“And this knowledge rests on the written word of your husband, contained in the title deed, does it not?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Now let us look at the matter of salvation. Christ Jesus came into the world to give us eternal life. Our sins had merited for us eternal death. But he atoned for those sins by his death. Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.” Col. 2:14. “And not only did he blot out the ‘handwriting that was against us,’ and so cancel our sins, but he caused a handwriting which was for us to be executed, called the New Testament. That Testament contains our title deed to the forgiveness which he has purchased for us, and the eternal life which he has freely given to us. The way to be assured that we have forgiveness and eternal life after we have believed is to consult our title deed, which is the New Testament, the Word of God.”
I then rehearsed to the lady the incident given above in regard to the sale of the house. I asked her whether the strong confidence of ownership which the man avowed after consulting the title deed was not reasonable; whether she had not the same confidence in regard to her own property, resting on the same evidence, to which she of course assented. I then added, “You say that you have tried to receive Christ as your Saviour, and that you are willing to accept him now?”
“With all my heart,” she answered with great emphasis.
“And if I can show you your title deed to eternal life, conditioned simply on such acceptance, and written by God’s own hand, ought it not to satisfy you?”
“I suppose so,” she replied.
Then, taking my Bible and turning to 1 John 5:11, 12, I slowly read that title deed to her:—
“AND THIS IS THE RECORD,— *That God hath given to us eternal life, and This life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and He that hath not the Son of God hath not life.*”
“Will you tell what this record is written for, as indicated in the verse following?” I asked. She read: “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life.”
“Do you believe on the Son of God?”
“I do.”
“Do you not accept Christ with all your heart as Saviour and Lord?”
“I do.”
“What does the record say about you then?”
“He that hath the Son hath life.”
“Don’t you know that you have eternal life then?” She hesitated. “You believe the witness of men, as found in the title deed of your house, you say; which is the surer, that, or God’s Word?”
“If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater,” she replied, reading the ninth verse, as I pointed it out.
“But what if we do not believe God’s record?”
—“He that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son.”
With these questions and explanations I left my inquirer, having gained her promise that she would carefully read and ponder her title deed.
I saw her soon after, and found that the same change had taken place in her which came to the gentleman who had spent the day looking up his real-estate record. Doubt had given place to assurance. Knowledge had been gained from the written Word, and on that knowledge peace was now springing up. Being justified by faith, peace had come, and peace was fast growing into joy, so that erelong this much-troubled seeker was as firm as a rock in her confidence of her acceptance. It is a history often repeated. A simple soul searching day after day the confused record of its own feelings, and striving painfully to get comfort from the stammering testimony of its own consciousness, and only finding out at last the truth of the psalmist’s words, “The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.”
Would that it did not take us so long to learn this lesson—that we must first accept God’s Word before we can expect the inward witness—that we must know in order to feel happy, instead of expecting to know because we feel happy. And the title deed has been executed in order that we may know: “These things have I written unto you that believe: . . . that ye may know that ye have eternal life.”—British Evangelist.