How to Be Saved and How to Be Lost

OUR subject to-night is one that has engaged the thoughtful and earnest attention for years not only of theologians but also of sociologists, historians, political philosophers and reformers. Some tell us that “Christ Jesus came into the world to proclaim the great truths of the Father¬ hood of God and the Brotherhood of Man” Others say that “Christ Jesus came into the world to carry to completion God’s original thought in the creation of man.” Still others tell us that “He came into the world to reorganize society on new lines, to establish a new form of human society, the kingdom of God on earth.” Not a few tell us that “Jesus Christ came into the world simply as the proclaimer of new ethical principles by which men were to mould their lives.”

But there is no need that we speculate or guess or argue as to why Jesus Christ came into the world; for God Himself has seen fit to tell us in the most plain and explicit words just why Jesus Christ came

HOW TO BE SAVED

into this world. You will find God’s own statement of why Jesus Christ came into the world in I Tim. 1:15, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” No one can mistake the meaning of those words. Listen again: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” When we stop to reflect upon the exact meaning and full force of this statement it will seem incredible. These words unmistakably declare that it was an interest in sinners, in the vile outcast, in rebels against God, in blasphemers, persecutors, perjurers, thieves, robbers, harlots, thugs, bandits, murderers, that induced the glorious Son of God to leave heaven’s joys and glories and to come down into this world. And these words furthermore tell us that Christ Jesus came into the world not to punish sinners as the holy executioner of God’s wrath against sin, nor to study them as a great philosopher. No, no, He came to save them. Does it look credible that the Son of God should step down from the throne of His glory, lay that infinite glory aside, consent to enter this world through the lowly door of Bethlehem’s manger and leave it through the shameful and dreadful door of Calvary’s Cross to save sinners? No wonder that Paul felt it necessary to preface this astounding statement with the words, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation” Paul well knew that philosophers and thinking men generally would not be ready to accept this state¬ ment of the purpose of the coming of that infinitely glorious person, Jesus Christ, into this world, and therefore he will call their attention to the fact that as incredible as this statement appears to be, it was God’s own word and therefore worthy of man’s un¬ questioning and absolute confidence and of all acceptance. Yes, this is why Christ Jesus came into the world, this is the great central purpose of His coming, to save sinners. “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

I. In Whose Behalf it was that Christ Jesus Came Into the World

Notice first of all, please, in whose behalf it was that Christ Jesus came, in the behalf of “sinners.” “Sinners” is not a nice word, and the fact for which it stands is even worse than the word. Sin is the foulest, hatefullest, most hideous, most loath¬ some thing in all the universe. Disease, leprosy, death, corruption, rottenness, putridity, and all other repulsive and disgusting things are one and all merely inadequate types of sin and its hideousness and repulsiveness. The sinner is the personal embodiment of all this foulness and vileness and repulsiveness, and yet Jesus Christ the Holy Son of God came into the world in behalf of sinners.

Men and women who were sinners and who were conscious of the fact seemed to be the only people in whom Christ Jesus took any interest when He was here on earth. He “received sinners,” He “called sinners,” He “ate with publicans and sinners.” He announced as His program, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9: 13), and again, “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). A

HOW TO BE SAVED

very prominent and eminently respectable and profoundly pious leader among the Jews came in a very deferential way to Christ Jesus one night to ask Him a few important questions, and He practically slammed the door in his face by saying “you must be born again.” He would not even reason with him, but kept saying “you must be born again.” In the very next chapter a loose, abandoned woman strays His way and He tells her all about the water which if a man drink thereof he will “never thirst again,” and about the true way to worship, and about His own Messianic office.

In the 1 8th chapter of Luke a most attractive young man came to Jesus Christ, a young man who had led a most exemplary life, a life of morality and piety and generosity and culture, and Christ sends him away sorrowful by an uncompromising demand that he sell all his honestly gotten possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, and in the very next chapter He tells a notorious, money-grasping old sin¬ ner named Zacchaeus that He wants to put up at his house.

In the 7th chapter of Luke, Jesus Christ hits a very respectable and highly esteemed and hospitable gentleman named Simon a slap in the face, and al¬ most in the same breath tenderly says to a disreputable woman of the town “Thy sins are forgiven — go in peace.”

All of His interest was in sinners, all His tender¬ ness was for sinners, all His infinitely gracious invitations were for sinners. Oh, how wondrously kind and gentle He was to sinners. But how merci¬ less He was to moralists, to all who boasted of their own goodness, of their religion and their righteousness, stripping off the veneering of decency that covered the real rottenness within, calling them “white¬ washed sepulchres,” “hidden graves,” enclosures of rottenness and corruption and dead men’s bones, “generation of snakes.”

Christ Jesus came to save sinners. Do you wish Christ Jesus to take an interest in you and to save you? Well, then, you must take your place before Him as a sinner, just a commonplace, unadorned, un¬ varnished, inexcusable, self-confessed sinner. Not a respectable sinner, no; nor a genteel sinner, nor a cultivated sinner, no; nor an attractive sinner, no; nor an amiable sinner, no; but just a plain, unadorned sinner; a poor, miserable, vile, guilty, worthless, hell¬ deserving sinner. Do you know that more people are shut out of Jesus Christ’s saving grace and out of pardon and out of heaven and out of eternal life be¬ cause they won’t get right down before Christ Jesus as sinners, plain, ugly, wretched sinners, than by any¬ thing else? Far more people are shut out of heaven by the pride that keeps them from crying “God be merciful to me a sinner,” than are shut out by the enormity of their sins or by the stubbornness of their infidelity. It is as true to-day as it was when Jesus Christ first said it to the moralists of His own day, “the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you” (Matt. 21:31).

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