Gooding, David: 4 - What Happened on the Damascus Road?

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. In past lectures, I have been submitting to you evidence for the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. This evening, I propose to submit still further evidence, but evidence of a somewhat different sort. Hitherto, the evidence I have submitted for our Lord's deity has been, on the whole, what we might call objective evidence. The evidence of his life, his character, his miracles, his death, and his resurrection. This evening, I turn to the other side, the side of our personal experience, the subjective evidence of the truth of our Lord's deity. I have left this side till the last lecture, and I devote to it only one lecture in a series of four. I would not like you to gather from that that I consider this evidence is less important than the other. In fact, there is a sense in which this evidence is of supreme importance. I followed the order of the lectures as given, uh, on purpose for the deliberate reason that unless we first of all believe that Jesus is the Son of God, we shall not be prepared to take those next steps that are necessary in order that we may come at such personal experience of God as shall satisfy our souls. If I may borrow the phrase of the Apostle John that he gives us at the end of his long discourse, the Gospel of John, I would point out to you that the apostle himself follows that same order. He says, these things have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through his name. You will see that there are the two sides there. There is the objective side, the evidence that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, evidence that must come first. But John does not stop there. In fact, it would be almost a denial of everything that John has spoken if he did stop just there. Those who believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, must necessarily go that next step and find that eternal life through believing on him, which it was his purpose to bring us. After all, our Lord came here to this earth, not merely for exhibition's sake, not merely that he might let us know that there is a person such as we call the Son of God. He came here for eminently practical reasons. He offered himself, you may remember, to the people as the bread of life, thereby implying that people are hungry, and offering himself as the bread that can satisfy that hunger. He came here offering himself as the light of the world, which very often supposes that he regards men and women as living in darkness without him. To sum it up in a phrase, he came here according to his own account of things, that he might give us men and women eternal life. He defined eternal life in these terms. This is life eternal, that we might know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom God has sent. And it is a thing to be noticed very clearly, that in his preaching he was constantly pointing out to people that eternal life is a thing that starts here and now in this life on earth. We shall find a marked difference between the preaching of our Lord Jesus and some of the more popular phraseology that we are accustomed to use nowadays. It is possible to represent salvation as being merely that, um, at the end of life on earth, some go to heaven, and some to perdition. So that being saved in many people's minds has become equivalent to going to heaven. Now, to be sure, it is quite true that they who trust our Lord will be taken to heaven. He himself explicitly said to his disciples just before he left them, if I go away, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye might be also. The great and glorious part of the Christian hope is that expectation. But we should not let that becloud our minds. Our Lord spoke far more of this other thing, of having eternal life. That does not mean existing forever. That does not mean merely going to heaven when we die. That is an experience of God that men and women enter into now, here in this life, and entering into that experience, know it with a conviction that comes not merely of reasoning, but comes by the working of God's Holy Spirit in their heart. So that anyone who is brought into touch with God by Christ in this fashion, to quote the words of scripture, has this witness in himself. A certainty, a sureness, an experience of God that none could possibly take from him, because it is implanted there by the direct workings of God himself. Now Christ came to do that, and evidently, if that is what he came to do, the greatest evidence that any man or woman can possibly have of the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ is not that he did miracles, not merely that he rose again from the dead the third day, but that he has done precisely this thing in that particular human life. Therefore, as I say, I want to submit evidence for his deity after this fashion, but you will immediately see that, strictly speaking, I can offer you very little evidence. For the evidence that comes in this direction is the experience, the personal experience between the individual soul and God. I may argue that a certain confectioner in town makes good cakes. I may point out to you that in his any one particular cake there are so many pounds of fruit, and it is the best possible flour, and mixed up according to the very best recipes. And perhaps that might incline you towards the general direction of putting out your hand and taking a slice of that cake. But in the last analysis, the real evidence that that is a good cake only comes to the person who is prepared to make the experiment, put forth the hand and take the cake and eat it. And if I might compare small things with large, so it is with our Lord who offered himself as the bread of life. I have submitted evidence of his miracles, evidence of his death, of his character, of his resurrection from the dead, evidence, I do submit, which is overwhelming, that he was and is the Son of God. But now, of course, comes the crucial test. If any would know with utter certainty, there must necessarily be that personal experience, that consent upon the individual's part to allow our Lord Jesus Christ to do that very intimate and personal work which he calls salvation. Just how does it happen? And what does it mean? Curiously enough, when we come to the practical application of Christianity, we shall find a whole array of ideas as to what Jesus Christ really was intending to do. I am aware of these very many different interpretations. I'm aware too that some people, perhaps almost with the counsel of despair, have said, well, you know, it doesn't really matter what interpretation we put on all these things, so long as we be sincere, so long as we make some genuine attempt to lead the Christian life, then let each man have his own way of looking at things. Why should we trouble too much about doctrine, when really what we want is, is a bit of Christian living? So be it that we all live in the Christian fashion. Why should we trouble about the niceties of conversion. In view of that, I want to speak quite humbly. I sub- submit to all that our best tactics are once again to take the scriptures, to take the inspired histories, and as best we can in them, ask, what did Christianity do when it first started? That Christianity spread and spread like wildfire, we know as a historic fact. That in spite of persecution, in spite of the fact that early Christians were eventually brought under the most fierce persecution, that still it survived and went on and grew. One has the extraordinary situation that an apostle like Paul can go to a city, as he did to Thessalonica, be there scarcely a month, and yet leave behind a Christian community that survived against very severe persecution. What happened? Well, I invite you to think, and to judge from the kind of thing that these men preached, what happened? We have one historian in the New Testament, who was inspired of God, so I believe at any rate, to give us a faithful summary of the kind of preaching that was preached by the early Christian missionaries. I refer, of course, to the Acts of the Apostles written by Saint Luke. And if we take all the sermons that are there, they are not in extenso, but we may presume they are faithful summaries, leaving out nothing that was vital or important. The first thing that must surely strike us about the preaching of those early Christians is that there is an almost complete absence of the subject matter of the Sermon on the Mount. So much so that we may make bold to say that the early people were converted to Christianity not by the teachings of the sermons on, Sermon on the Mount. You look in vain in any one of Paul's or Peter's public sermons for any stressing of the golden rule, for instance, do unto others as you would that they did unto you. That wasn't the stuff that converted the ancient world to Christianity. You will, let me hasten to add, you will find that when these men wrote to people who had already become Christians, then their epistles are full of that kind of message, full of that kind of exhortation which we find in the Sermon on the Mount. They evidently regarded those teachings as teachings for people who were already Christians. But how did you become a Christian? Standards of the Sermon on the Mount are exceedingly high, and it must appear to all thoughtful people that unless we are given some more than human power with which to carry out those exhortations, those exhortations set such a high standard, it would almost be impractical for us to attempt anything. I want to make that point very definitely. For sometimes I think in our modern world we are in danger of obscuring and confusing these two things. We do not become Christians. We do not enter into this experience of God which Christ calls eternal life, by an attempt to keep the Sermon on the Mount, however honest and well meant such an attempt is. There is a prior experience. There is this basic matter of receiving eternal life. There is this fundamental experience of being put into right relationships with God through the personal work of our Lord Jesus Christ... in our hearts. What did they preach? We shall find, almost with monotonous regularity, that they preached, first and foremost, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, and argued from his resurrection that he was the Son of God. And then, very, very frequently, you will find that they took the next step and pointed out that Jesus Christ was not only the Son of God, is not only risen from the dead, but will eventually come to judge mankind. Paul, you may remember, standing in the Areopagus Council in Athens, preached this most definitely as almost the first conclusion that anyone ought to make from the resurrection of our Lord. He said, God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance to all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. One of the first conclusions God wants us to draw from the resurrection of our Lord is the certainty of a moral judgment that all must face. It is, after all, to be expected, surely. Mankind cannot crucify its creator, put him safely in a tomb, and think he has heard the last of it. Any program for the future that omits to account for this grave issue must be fundamentally wrong. Jesus Christ was God's son, and God's son has in this world hung upon a cross. It cannot be that we have heard the last of that yet. Raised from the dead, he is most certainly coming to judge. So that a human being who says, but I do not feel any personal need of Jesus Christ, is hitting his head against a stone here, whether he feel need or not. The resurrection of Christ is urged upon us as God's final proof that there is coming a moral judgment. Let us listen to the words of Christ himself on this score. How serious will that modern moral judgment be? Sometimes people get the impression that Jesus Christ has brought us a message of such love of God, that he has forever dispelled any ideas that God is a God of judgment. Such notions, evidently, are not founded on the historic preaching of our Lord. Our Our Lord Lord reminded his contemporaries that to fail of this eternal life that he had come to bring was to perish. Our Lord reminded his contemporaries that in that coming day there would be people who would be cast out of God's kingdom. Outside, he said, there would be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was not any apostle whom you might think to have got a distorted idea of what Christ said. It was our Lord himself who used those exceedingly solemn terms. That for some, eternity would mean a suffering in which the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. And you say such a view of things is too extreme for us to accept. That is why, you see, I spent three weeks arguing with you the deity of our Lord. To accept the deity of our Lord, I say again, is no academic matter. If Jesus Christ is God, then we must bow to everything he says just because he says it. We need to be exceedingly clear just here. No amount of sentiment, no amount of our arguing, well, I think God ought to be like this, can save us from this dilemma. If we really believe that Jesus is the Son of God, then we must accept what he said about the future state of mankind. It was he who said, better to enter into life maimed than to enter in the next life into a hell where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. If we would reject that idea, then we must be prepared to reject the deity of our Lord. If we reject that idea, the Christianity we have is a Christianity of our own making. Then they not only preached the resurrection of our Lord and the certainty of a moral judgment. They preached secondly, and with great emphasis, the death of our Lord. And that death, not to begin with as an example that men might follow, but that death in the sense of a sacrifice for sin. Herein, of course, the Christian apostles were not preaching any doctrine that was really novel. We reminded ourselves the other week of the great prophecies of the Old Testament that had prophesied for what purpose our Lord should die. Notably, that great passage in Isaiah fifty three: He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. But I do not wish this evening to argue this matter even from Old Testament or, or the writings of the apostles. In the short time at my disposal, I wish to quote the highest, the supreme authority, our Lord himself. Right central to Christianity, you will find it right back to the early days, are two institutions, two rites, the one of them baptism, the other the Lord's Supper. And in that second institution, the Lord's Supper, we have the gospel preached in symbol, but in such fashion as we cannot possibly mistake it. In fact, one would gather that this must be central to Christianity, for when our Lord left two symbols by the help of which his people might remember him, he left bread and wine, saying, this is my body which is given for you. This is my blood shed for many, for the remission of sins. It is well that we get that in focus. Christians are asked to celebrate this Lord's Supper, and every time they do so, shall we notice it is not Christ as our great example that is being preached before us? It is Christ as our great sacrifice for sin. His body given for us, his blood shed for the forgiveness of sins. That supper was not an invention of the apostles. We'll find that going right back to the very beginning. This was what our Lord instituted on that most sacred occasion, in those last few moments before he went to the cross. To reject this and its message would to be re- to reject the most sacred thing in all Christianity. I have no wonder our Lord laid it down so straightly that his people were to take literal bread and literal wine, that they might have a literal and physical symbol of this fact that is central and fundamental to Christianity. His blood shared a ransom for many, bearing in upon our minds the demand of scripture everywhere, that while there is forgiveness, bountiful and free forgiveness with God, that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. And basic to all Christianity must come that forgiveness that is purchased to us by the shedding of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if we would rightly understand what this means, the impact it had upon the ancient world, and the impact it ought to have upon us, if we gather it rightly, we must be prepared to see another hard saying. You will find the early Christian preachers, if you read them through, speaking to the effect that there is an offense about the preaching of the Christian gospel. What they call the offense of the cross. They didn't mean that early Christian preachers were rude and discourteous. They meant that there was inherent in this very message of Christianity a stumbling block, a something over people, over which people would be liable to trip, a something that people would find as a great barrier to accepting the Christian message. And I want to stress that because, unless we see that point, we probably haven't got the right end of the stick. We do not feel within our hearts what Paul means when he talks about this offense of the cross. We're probably being content with too shallow an interpretation of the Christian message. He said it was an offense both to the Greek and to the Jew. To the Greek first. The Greek seeks after wisdom, says Paul. He stands for our intellectual types. And the preaching of the cross to them, says Paul, I know it really, seems foolishness. It has an offense to them. And it does, one must admit, to this very present. People will be found arguing, but look, this Christian gospel, this urge that I believe, this urge that I submit my mind to what the Bible says, you know, surely God meant us to think. Surely I don't have to accept everything Jesus Christ says because he said it. Surely I meant to think for myself. After all, what God, what did God give us a brain for, if he didn't give us a brain that we might think therewith and decide for ourselves? Well, certainly God gave us brains that we might think therewith, and perhaps most of us, myself included, err here than that we do not think enough. There are evident limits to our thinking. Suppose I take a scientist quite apart from things religious, and I watch him at work and watch to what extent he uses his mind. I shall observe this. He is not called upon to use his mind to create a universe. He is called upon to use his mind merely to study the universe already created. He doesn't create any evidence. He doesn't argue with the sun. Look here, sun, you ought to be a little bit different from what you are, according to my theory, and I was given a brain to think with. No, if his theories disagree with the evidence, then the scientist changes his theories. You see, he's not there to create evidence, he is there merely to study it and understand it. So it must be with God. We're not asked upon to c- to create a God such as we would approve of. We could never find him by our own reasoning powers. We are called upon to face the evidence, and that evidence is Christ, to understand him, and if our theories conflict with him, to change our theories. But the offense of the cross goes deeper. It points to what is an uncomfortable truth, that when the very best brains have labored all they know, man is still a sinner, incapable of saving himself. Socrates and Plato thought these many centuries ago that if only men could be educated sufficiently to know what is right and to know clearly what is wrong, man would choose what is right. Socrates argued, you know, if a man really knew a thing was wrong and knew he was going to suffer for it, he wouldn't do it, surely. But two thousand three hundred years have proved Socrates wrong. Our present generation enjoys education as none have ever done before. You older people in the last ye- uh, fifty years have seen two devastating wars brought on not by uncivilized people, but fought out between the most highly civilized and educated people in the whole world. If education could save us, if man's own thinking powers could save him, if man had some latent ability to think, and by his thought control, by his ingenious workings out, if man had that power, then he would have done it long since. And what is more to the point, then God's Son need never have been put to a cross. The offense of the cross is to the Greek that it tells the most intellectual among us that he is, in spite of his fine intellectual powers, quite unable to save himself and make himself acceptable to God. In fact, so incapable is he, that if ever he is to be acceptable to God, no less a thing must happen than God's own son must die upon that cross. That is, after all, a humiliating thing to have to be told. It raises the issue. Is it God's son on that cross? If it is, then evidently such a drastic measure would not have been necessary. If any other means could have been s- found to save mankind. But the offense of the cross extends not only to the intellectuals. It's an offense to the Greeks, says Paul, and it is an offense to the Jew. And the Jew in those days, perhaps less so in this, but the Jew in those days was the leading religious man in the ancient world. In spite of all their failings, the Jews were vastly superior, at least they who took their religion seriously. After all, they had a religion given them of God. They had a law given them of God. The moral commandments of the Old Testament stood preeminently above all the other codes of ethics that the old world knew. And a Jew who honestly made an attempt to gu- guide his life by those moral commandments of the Old Testament certainly worked out a very fine character. The gospel to them was an offense. For that very same reason. It told a man, however honest were his attempts to keep God's moral laws, yet he could not be saved thereby. In fact, bluntly and pointedly, the New Testament lays it down that if men and women could have been saved by honestly attempting to keep God's commandments, then the cross of Christ was completely unnecessary. If righteousness could come by keeping God's Ten Commandments, then Christ has died in vain, says the Bible. That, once more, is a very hard pill to swallow. I stay to emphasize it, because here we are dealing with the terms that our Lord himself lays down. He is coming that we might be brought into right relationships with God. He is coming to impart to us eternal life, which is just that, to coming into right personal relations with God. We must get our foundations clear here. We must see ourselves as God sees us. And Christ hanging upon a cross. Preaches us this sermon straightly, that when we have done our very moral best, we are still bankrupt in God's sight, morally. So bankrupt that the only means of our salvation was the sacrifice of God's Son upon the cross. The love of God as expressed in Christ and in Calvary is far from being a sugary, sentimental thing. In fact, it will bid us somewhat sternly face the realities of the situation. Let me take to you a practical example of what I mean. I have entitled this lecture, What Happened on the Damascus Road. I mean to select Paul as a vivid example of what does happen to people in whom there takes place this experience of receiving eternal life. A person in whose life Jesus Christ has come, and he has put that man right with God, given him eternal life. I would like us to see it in extenso, how the thing is done and what it means. What did happen on the Damascus road to Saul of Tarsus? There was, of course, to begin with, that blinding vision. Visions that are not given to all, nor are they necessary. That vision proved to Saul of Tarsus beyond doubt, first of all, the thing that I have been laboring to you these past three weeks, that Jesus was risen from the dead and was the Son of God. Nothing less, perhaps, than a vision of that sort could possibly have convinced Paul. Evidently, it met a revol- meant a revolution in his life that anybody could see, that the Jesus whom he had s- persecuted, he discovered to be alive from the dead, and in fact to be God's own son. But let us listen to Paul stating the terms of that revolution in his life. It meant not that Paul now said, well, now, of course, hitherto I was a Jew, well, now I'm still a Jew, but I'm a Christian, and I must try even harder now to please God than I did before. It is not stated in those terms. In fact, this is such an exceedingly important point that I take liberty to read to you from the scriptures themselves Paul's own account of this revolution in his outlook. In his letter to the church at Philippi, he details some of his previous attainments in his efforts to please God under the Jewish system. He said, I myself might have had confidence even in the flesh. If any other man thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, I yet more. Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law, a Pharisee. And anybody who knows his ancient history will know how exceedingly strict and punctilious in the observance of the law were those Pharisees. A starching zeal, persecuting the church. And you may say, but that shows him to be an horrible monster. To hale men and women to prison for their religious faith is a terrible thing to do. Well, perhaps it is. But it shows us at least this, that Paul really believed what he believed. He was not morally anemic. For people to maintain that Jesus Christ, a mere man in Paul's view, a mere man, for people to maintain that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, was in the first place utter blasphemy. And in the second place, in his unconverted days, he would have regarded it as the most wicked thing, the most wicked sin that anybody could perpetrate against his fellow. To mislead people, and that eternally. To follow an imposter. That was such a wicked thing that Paul, in those far off days, showed his love for God, as he thought, his love for his fellow men, by stamping out to the best of his abilities this new sect, and by those means that were quite acceptable to his contemporaries. These were days when men fortunately felt, felt very seriously about the fundamental, fenda- fundamental matters of life. But whatever we may make of his zeal, it's certain, and his zeal in what to us are mere outward rituals, circumcision and so forth, we are pulled up with a jolt by the next thing that he can ha- he can claim as touching the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless. Paul was a well-known figure in Jewish circles, and since his Christian days, even more well-known in Jewish circles. A man whose character was so well known that anybody was at liberty to poke holes in it if they could. And he claims that in his unconverted days, so far as keeping God's commandments and doing unto others as they would that, uh, he would that they should do unto him was concerned, he was blameless. Not sinless, he doesn't claim to have been sinless. But from the point of view of outward observance, that is to say, anything that you would observe outwardly and see in his life, the man's life was utterly exemplary. Lived to please God, honestly trying to keep the commandments and succeeding perhaps more than any one of us here in this, in this hall. As touching the righteousness which comes by keeping God's law blameless. And I submit to you that that is a good many people's idea of Christianity, is it not? There are many people who, if they could say what Paul could have said in his unconverted days, that they had honestly and consistently throughout their life kept God's law to the very best of their ability, and as far as they personally knew were blameless, I fancy there are many people that would regard themselves as distinguished Christians, or good enough Christians any rate to please God, with nothing more that could be required of them. But I do want you to notice that so far from that being a Christian man and a Christian attitude, that is the utter reverse of Christianity. When Paul saw that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and woke up to the fact that the figure hanging upon that cross was God's son, there came such a revolution in Paul's attitude that he completely threw over all those claims hitherto made. Says he in explicitly, how be it what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea, verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is of faith through Jesus Christ. You say, how did he come to that attitude simply by this? If that is Jesus Christ on the cross, if that is God's son upon that cross, why was he there? Dying for me? What did I need dying for? But am I, am I not all right? Am I not doing the very best I can? What did he need to die for me? And then the truth dawned. With all that moral worth about him, God's view was that he was so desperately lost that nothing short of the sacrifice of God's son could possibly save him. And when Paul came to believe that Jesus was the son of God, it revolutionized his life to this extent that hitherto he abandoned completely all reliance upon his own efforts to keep God's law. Here he says so explicitly, abandoned it, and took his stand before God solely and totally as a sinner, depending on the sacrifice of Christ. But you say, does it matter what attitude we take? Of course it matters what attitude we take. Christ constantly emphasizes that this matter of salvation, call it what you will, is a question of our personal relations with a person. When we sin, we do not sin against a code of rules written up upon the walls of heaven. When we sin, it is not that God has a book up there and he has, he looks up the particular command and says, ah, you, you sinned against that command. When we sin, we sin against a person, and that person is God. To be saved, to have eternal life and come into relationship with God again is a personal matter. And not until this grave question of our human personal sin is dealt with, can God possibly impart to us his eternal life. And God says that the very best we can do by keeping his law will not fit us, will not make us acceptable. If we would be acceptable- accepted with God, we must learn to abandon faith in our own efforts, and as bankrupt, bankrupt sinners, come to God through the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Somebody will say, but I don't get this. This sounds to me too extreme. Surely we are to do our best. Surely to preach that a man has got to abandon faith in his own moral effort and trust only to Christ, that is to jettison all moral effort and all moral accomplishment. Well, before I proceed, may I tie you down just here? I want to provoke you, if I can, not to argue with me, but to see whether I am not fairly expounding what God says. Is that not what God says? What do you really believe about that figure on the cross, is the question. Is he the Son of God? And why does he suffer? Somebody who will say, but surely what it is that is it we have to do our best in these matters, and then you'll see where we come short. Then Christ, I believe, died for us that he might help us over that little bit. He did not. We mistake God, we mistake God's laws if we have that view. Way down in Queens, as you know, we hold yearly examinations. We encourage the students to take them and sit by them and sit by the rules, incidentally. And at the end, if we find a student coming out with seventy five percent, we congratulate him. He's attained to honors, first class honors. That he fell twenty five percent short is a mere nothing. This is distinction level. And it would appear that many people have the f- the viewpoint that if we keep God's law to seventy five percent, say eighty percent, we have sort of ass- attained a distinction level mark, and that the death of Christ sort of just encourages to think that God will overlook the other twenty five percent. That is not so. God himself tells us that if we keep his whole law and offend in one point, we are guilty of all, and God's law curses us to our very faces. Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written to do them. You will say that's grossly unfair. Well, then it comes down to this issue, doesn't it? What do you really think of Jesus Christ? We cannot believe he's the Son of God one moment and then refuse to believe what he says the other, you see. It does really come down to this. What do I think of Jesus Christ? What do I make of his death upon the cross? God's ultimatum is that we take one of two positions. We stand on our own merits, on our keeping of his law, and if we come one thing short, we are cursed. Or we abandon our merit, and as bankrupt sinners, we come upon the ground of Christ's sacrifice. I see no way out of that impasse. Not if we are to believe that Jesus Christ is God's son. You will say, but, uh, Mr. Preacher, that that is, um, cannot be right. If that were right, people could be saved, as you call it, and then they could do as they pleased afterwards and still be saved. You say, surely that's wrong. Well, it is interesting that people make that objection. It shows how right I am, if you will mind, do not mind my being just a little bit conceited here. It shows how right I am, because that was precisely the objection that they leveled against the early Christian preachers. You may read it in extenso in Paul's letter to the Romans in chapter three. They said, you know, Paul, this doctrine is ridiculous. It comes to this, let us do evil that good may come. You may live as you please, and then God will save you if you just have faith. Paul, that's absurd. The very fact that they brought it against him, as some would be inclined to bring it against me, shows that I and he preach the same thing, surely. Of course, it does not mean that if a person trusts Christ and learns to abandon faith in his own works, and trust only in that sacrifice of Christ, it does not mean that that leads to Anomianism, to doing as I please. For the other great thing that Christ does for a man who dares to trust him is that he imparts his Holy Spirit. Salvation is two things. It is, on the one hand, forgiveness, being reconciled with God through the death of Christ, and on the other, it is the positive receiving of God's Holy Spirit, and God never gives his Holy Spirit like this to any, save as will come, on the grounds of the death of Christ. But when he does give him the Holy Spirit, then that Holy Spirit becomes in that man or woman a vital power. It is such a new thing that the Bible calls it a new creation. It is really a life, as Jesus Christ himself called it. It is eternal life. I do not say that some such people receive violent emotional disturbances. It is not to be confused with the joy and the happiness that re- result on times from the receiving of God's Holy Spirit. Though his work be silent, yet is it real? Some of the biggest forces in this universe are silent, as you know. The power of gravity that the sun is exerting at this very moment on Earth, and keeps Earth on its course, is, as far as I know, completely silent. We've never heard gravity. He would be a fool to deny it existed. When Christ brings a man into right relations with God, he imparts to him the Holy Spirit. This is what makes Christ utterly unique. No one could possibly believe this unless Jesus were the Son of God. No one else could do it. We come back once more to this thing. Is Jesus really the Son of God? He came not, you see, to inspire us first and foremost... with his example. Too much of a realist for that. He came to seek and to save, said he, those people that were lost. What they needed was first forgiveness and peace with God. What next they needed was a completely new power, his Holy Spirit to abide within. Somebody says, how does it happen? I have not time enough left to tell you in detail how this thing happens, but I trust it is obvious to us all that here we reach that stage in our argument when this thing must become entirely personal. I cannot submit the evidence to you. I can only tell you what Christ asks of each one of us. I can only urge you, if you have never done this before, to make that experiment that Christ lays down, in which Christ himself will show us the truth of these things by giving us this eternal life. But I would, as I close, like to stress this thing. It is not enough intellectually to assent to the fact that Jesus is the Son of God. Says James rather bitingly, the demons believe that there is a God, but it doesn't do them any good. There must of necessity, if we are to be pleasing to God, if we are to know these certainties, there must of necessity come that personal step in which we, by that act of faith, are linked with our living Lord Jesus Christ. The terms he used to illustrate this transaction were many, and all of them indicated an exceedingly simple act. If it is thirst, a yearning for God, let him come to me and drink. Or if it's security, I am the door, by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved. Or the reverse way, to as many as received him, says the Bible, to them gave he power to become children of God. They started off in life as creatures of God, for not all s- are children of God. But to as many as received him, he gave them the power to become what they never were before, to become children of God, and it's a question of receiving him. And he himself inspired that lovely illustration, said he, I stand knocking at the door of every man and woman's soul at some time. Now, if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, invaded by Jesus Christ. This is the true love of God. It calls us to a deliberate act of the will. It calls us to open our personalities and beings and receive on God's terms his own son, that he and we might hereafter be one forever. Those who do that know. Lest you think I'm going beyond my authority, let me quote you the words of the great apostle John. He wrote a gospel to this end, that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and then taking that next momentous step, might have life, might receive life through his name. And that that experience is an experience that people go through here on earth and know it, is made evident by his other writing, his epistle, when he wrote to some Christians who had received Christ in this manner, and he wrote saying, these things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. There is the glory of the salvation that the Son of God brings. He gives us here on earth to know God, to know peace with God, to receive eternal life and crowning joy and certainty, to know it. To know it. How do I know it, you say? Says the Bible, he that hath the Son of God hath this life. He that believeth in this fashion will receive the record in himself. God's Holy Spirit will record, will witness with that person's spirit that he is born of God, a child of God. But I must press upon you that this is not automatic. Whereas Christ tells us, he that hath the Son has this life, it is open to the human will to make the other choice. He that hath not the Son of God in this fashion, the words are exceedingly solemn, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. Therefore, I suggest it would indeed be fitting if we bowed our heads now just a moment in quiet prayer, and we who already know this experience may thank God for showing us his salvation in Christ. And if perchance any have not yet had this experience and have come at this evidence by personal faith in him, they may be pleased to ask God that he would show them how this thing really happens. Just a brief word of prayer to conclude the lectures. Almighty God, and yet so gracious, who has sent thy son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in human form, that he might die upon the cross for our sakes and for our sins. We thank thee, thou hast raised him again from the dead. We thank thee through him, thou dost offer us this glad, this exceedingly glad message of complete forgiveness and eternal life here and now begun on earth, and the glorious prospect of his return to take us to be with him and to explore eternity with thee forever. We pray that thou wilt help us understand thy word that we have been studying these weeks. Those in whose hearts thou hast placed this eternal life, cause them all, we beseech thee, to rejoice yet more and to lay hold of it. We pray thee especially to remember any of our friends who have not these certainties, to whom thou art a God afar off. We pray, O God, that thou wilt in thy goodness and kindness show them clearly what thou dost require us to do, that we might receive thy Son, and with him eternal life, and the glad assurance of thine eternal welcome. And help us all, we beseech thee, who profess his name, to live honorably, and by the power of thy spirit, that we may be living advertisements of the Savior who in his grace has saved us. And accept our thanks too at this time for the food and refreshment thou hast given us, through that same Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.