NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 9
NOTES ON SCRIPTURE 1895 NO. 9
Many who believe in Jesus are not happy. They do not joy in salvation. Why? The reason is that, though truly converted, they have not learned what is between the sinner and God. Jonah had to learn it in a painful way. It was will, and this is the real cause of restlessness in souls; they do not see that all in them contrary to God has been removed. Will brought Jonah to the whale’s belly. He had to pass through death in figure, and then he is alive without a will, entirely at the control of another, and this is the only place of happiness for a christian. No soul has real clearance in the sight of God who has not passed through this, and unless you know the greatness of the salvation, you cannot be in the joy of it. It is not only your sins that have to be cleared away, but your will. The Lord went through what we get in Jonah 2 - death. You have to appropriate His death. Israel had to walk through the Red Sea; they did not make the way through, but they walked it. There is no other way to be free of your will but to appropriate the death of Christ. That which caused the distance between you and God is gone in Christ’s death. If you enter into the great reality of that fact you will say, “I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God”, Jonah 2:6. In learning this a man comes to say, “Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” Romans 7: 24. Then he finds the Deliverer, and he says, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Then he sees that Christ Himself has opened the way out of it. Saul of Tarsus was struck down by the light of the glory; and after three days and three nights of deep exercise of heart, he who had thought himself so incomparably good, but who, having a will against God, was the chief of sinners, found that through the death of Christ he was clear of that man altogether; that all of Saul was gone in the cross, and he had found Another - the blessed Lord; and his link with Him was the Spirit of God. It took him three days to learn this; some take thirty years to learn it, and some never learn it till their deathbed; but sooner or later, every soul must learn that it is by Christ’s death he gets free.