"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."
Christ a Personal Saviour
By W. A. Colcord
"If any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me."
JESUS! no name so sweet to the soul redeemed from sin. "And thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins."
Nor is there any other such bliss and happiness in all the world as that which comes from this same salvation from sin thru Jesus: "David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin."
But no one can experience this bliss and receive this salvation except those who receive Christ as their personal Saviour. While all nations and all men in all nations have been blessed thru the light and blessings brought to this world by Jesus Christ, none are blessed with salvation from sin but those who receive Christ as their personal Saviour from sin.
Christ is the Light of the world. He is "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." All hopes of salvation, all desires for redemption that spring up in every human breast, come from Him and center in Him.
An Individual Work.
But salvation is a personal, individual work. Men are not saved by wholesale, as by families, communities, or nations, but one by one as individuals.
While Christ is the Saviour of the world, He saves the world only as men individually accept and receive Him. "He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name."
To receive Christ, according to the last scripture quoted, is to believe on His name, to have faith in Him as the Messiah, the Sent of God. But faith is a personal matter. No one can exercise faith for another. No one's faith will answer for another. Each must exercise faith for himself. Each must confess his own sins, and accept Christ as his own personal Saviour from these sins, and, by living faith, receive Him into his heart as the One who is able, not only to cleanse him from sin, but to keep him from sinning, or he can never know salvation.
"He that cometh to God must believe that He is." "Without faith it is impossible to please Him." "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin." "God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."
The apostle Paul recognized Christ as his own personal Saviour when he said: "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."
Plockhorst Christ and Peter.
And so, while the Gospel message of salvation is to all the world, it is addressed to each one individually in the world: "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." "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."
How vain, therefore, must be every attempt to save men by wholesale, without faith, thru some "national reform" movement, or some "God-in-the-Constitution" or "Act-of-Parliament" measure. And yet this is what many, for over a thousand years, have been trying to do. Every religious establishment in the world is simply a witness to the fact that men have been attempting to save their fellow men by law—by wholesale—instead of by preaching the good news of salvation thru faith in Jesus as a personal Saviour.
And, sad to say, this terrible delusion is not altogether a thing of the past. Many today are clamoring for religion by law, and salvation by Sunday laws. They think that unless the law steps in, religion will die out; that unless Sunday observance is required by law, church attendance will cease, and men will grow worse and worse until piety dies out altogether.
But such an idea is the very opposite of the truth. It is true that religion, genuine religion, is dying out, and men are ceasing to attend church and be pious. But there was never a time when there were so many Sunday laws in the world as there are at the present time. Salvation, therefore, does not reside in these laws. To look to them or to legislation at all for salvation is the greatest folly. What men need to see to obtain salvation is not civil law, but the Saviour. "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." It is but the trick of the devil to cause men to look elsewhere for salvation. "Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."
The godly Spurgeon well said: "I am ashamed of some Christians because they have so much dependence on Parliament and the law of the land. Much good may Parliament ever do religion, except by mistake! As to getting the law of the land to touch our religion, we earnestly cry, 'Hands off! leave us alone!' Your Sunday bills and all other forms of act-of-Parliament religion seem to me to be all wrong. Give us a fair field and no favor, and our faith has no cause to fear. Christ wants no help from Cæsar. I should be afraid to borrow help from government; it would look to me as if I rested on an arm of flesh, instead of depending on the living God. Let the Lord's day be respected by all means, and may the day soon come when every shop shall be closed on the Sabbath, but let it be by force of conviction, and not by force of policemen; let true religion triumph by the power of God in men's hearts and not by the power of fines and punishments."
The only salvation worthy the name is that which comes thru personal faith in a personal Saviour.
