THE KING’S BUSINESS
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salvation. Works and service are the out come of our having already been saved. If you will turn in your Bible to Romans 4 :5, you will read these words, “But to him that worketh not, but betieveth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness," so it is evident that all we have to do with our salvation is to believe on Him that justifieth the ungodly. Our salvation is purchased, not by anything that we do but by what Jesus • Christ did when He bore our sins in His own body on the cross. His atoning death covered all our sins. “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord .hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). Every sin that we ever committed or ever shall commit was fully atoned for when He died upon the cross; He “re deemed us from the curse of the law (which we had broken) by becoming a curse in our place” (Gal. 3:13) “He who knew no sin became siH in our behalf, (t. e., took our place of condemnation) that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (i. e., our sins were put to His account, and His righteousness is put to our ac count (2 Cor. 5 :21). It was His death and His death alone that secured salva tion for us. We appropriate this salva tion by simply believing on Him who se cured it for us by His death, i. e., by accepting God’s testimony about Him that our sins were laid upon Him (Isa. 53 :6) and trusting God to forgive us because He died in our place. The moment any one thus believes he is justified from all things (Acts i3:39) ; he .has eternal life (John 3: 36) ; he becomes a child of God (John 1:12). We obtain assurance of salvation by simply believing what God says in His Word about Christ and about those who believe in Him. John tells us.in 1 John 5:13, “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 (i., e., that we may know it through His written Word, not through our feelings and not through the witness of the Holy Spirit). The Holy Spirit does
afterward bear witness together with our spirits that we are the children of God (Rom. 8:16), but it is only when our spirit bears witness to it on the simple ground that God says so in His Word that the Holy Spirit bears witness together with our spirit. And it is our duty to believe that we are saved, and have eternal life (if we believe on Jesus Christ) whether the Spirit bears witness to it as yet or not. Not to believe it until we receive the Holy Spirit’s testimony is to question God’s Word and to make God a liar. He that does not believe God (i. e., what He says in His word, viz., that every one that believes in Jesus Christ is justified and has eternal life) makes God a liar, because he does not ¡believe the record (or witness) that God gave of His Son (1 John 5:10). The record or witness that God has given concerning His Son (given in His Word) is that “he that hath the Son (has Him simply because he has received Him) hath life.” You are looking in the wrong place' for assurance. You are look ing at your feelings, or at the witness of the Spirit, instead of looking right at what God says in His Word. If you have re ceived Jesus Christ (i. e., if you have taken Him as your Saviour, believing what God says ■ about Him, namely, that He has laid your sins upon Him) and trusted God to forgive you because He died in your place, and if you have taken Him as your Lord and King (i. e., making His Word, as far as you understand it, the rule of your life) and if you have taken Him as your risen Saviour who has power to save to the uttermost (Heb. 7 :25) and are trusting Him to keep you, then you are saved even though it was God’s will that you should go to China, and you did not go. If you have not so received Him, why so receive Him this very moment, and the moment you do, your sins are all forgiven (Acts 13:39); you have eternal life (John 3:36; 5 :24); you are a child of God (John 1 :12). The first thing for you to do is not to decide the question of going to China, the first thing for you to do is to decide whether you have received Jesus or not,
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