el which is the gospel to win
souls--this message of a sin-bearing, sin-expiating love which pleads
for acceptance, which takes the whole responsibility of the sinner,
unconditionally, with no preliminaries, if only he abandon himself to
it."

A young person who felt that his time in this world was short, wrote
to an eminent English preacher to write and tell a sinner what he must
do to prepare to die--what is the preparation required by God--and
when he is fit to die. The preacher wrote: "I urge you to cast
yourself at once, in the simplest faith, upon the Lord Jesus Christ
and you shall be saved. All your true preparation for death is
entirely out of yourself and in the Lord Jesus. Washed in His blood,
and clothed upon with His righteousness, you may appear before God
divinely, fully, freely and forever accepted. The salvation of the
chief of sinners is all prepared, finished and complete in Christ
(Eph. 1:6; Col. 2:10). Again I repeat, your eye of faith must now be
directed entirely out of and from yourself, to Jesus. Beware of
looking for any preparation to meet death _in yourself_. It is _all in
Christ_. God does not accept you on the ground of a broken heart, or a
clean heart, or a praying heart, or a believing heart. He accepts you
wholly and entirely on the ground of the atonement of His blessed Son.
Cast yourself in child-like faith upon that atonement--'Christ dying
for the ungodly' (Rom. 5:6)--and you are saved! Justification is this,
a poor law-condemned, self-condemned, self-destroyed sinner, wrapping
himself by faith in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, which
is unto all them that believe (Rom. 3:22). He, then, is justified and
is prepared to die, and he only, who casts from him the garment of his
own righteousness and runs unto this blessed city of Refuge--the Lord
Jesus--and hides himself there--exclaiming, 'There is therefore now no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus' (Rom. 8:1). God is
prepared to accept you in His blessed Son, and for His sake He will
cast all your sins behind His back, and take you to glory when you
die. Never was Jesus known to reject a poor sinner that came to Him
empty and with nothing to pay. God will glorify His free grace by your
salvation, and will therefore save you just as you are, without money
and without price (Is. 55:1). I close with Paul's reply to the anxious
jailor, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved' (Acts
16:31). No matter what