UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN

DEAR FRIEND, — I am sorry not to have been able to answer your letter before now, but I have prayed for you daily.

It seems to me that you would do well to think much of how God is presenting Himself. He is a Saviour God. Adam and Eve, as disobedient and self-condemned creatures in the garden of Eden, did not seek God, but He sought them, and without being asked He made for them coats of skins and clothed them. They had tried to cover themselves with fig-leaves, but this was of no avail; it did not even satisfy their own consciences. But when the Lord God undertook to provide for their need they could not doubt that He would be satisfied with what He had done Himself. They could rest in it with full assurance that it was entirely His own doing.

Now through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus God has found a way to justify us freely by His grace. He does not require that we should do a single thing; He delights to justify the ungodly sinner who believes in Jesus. Everything that needed to be done was done when Jesus our Lord was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification. It is our part as repentant sinners to submit to His way of clothing us with righteousness before Him through our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is so great, and His death is so wondrous in its sufficiency, that nothing more is needed as the ground on which God can clothe us with divine righteousness. Is ^[p. 359] not this most comforting and assuring? It is for faith to receive the good news, and to give God the praise for such wondrous grace. We are justified by faith without any merit or deserving on our side; it is all of pure grace on God’s part, and He acts in this way on the ground of the death of Christ. And being justified by faith we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

I think you have been looking for something to be brought about in yourself that would give you the assurance of salvation. But so long as you look for this you will never feel quite sure. You must fix your mind on the fact that God is well pleased to account you righteous through faith in His blessed Son. Your righteousness will never be in yourself; it is in Christ and only there. The truth is that in spite of all that you are God is favourable to you, and He has provided for you in Christ a spotless and perfect righteousness. As repentant and looking to God for mercy, Christ is provided and available for you.

“Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses”, Acts 13: 38, 39. This is what is in the mind of God for you; He does not desire to hold anything against you, notwithstanding how you have sinned against Him. You have not to commend yourself to Him in any way; He commends His love to you in that while you are a sinner Christ died for you. You can be certain of this because God says so. Instead of being against us, as Satan would like us to think, God is for us. The one who has the assurance of this in his soul is saved, for he has escaped from the darkness in which Satan once held him, and he knows God in forgiving grace, and as a Justifier.

Then God gives His Spirit to the believer as power for walk and holiness, and as we walk in the Spirit we do not fulfil the lust of the flesh. The deeds of the body have to be put to death, and the Spirit is power for this — see Romans 8: 13. When you are harassed by fleshly lusts you must look straight away to God for deliverance, and on your part you must avoid all occasions that tend to bring these lusts into activity. God, will not fail a dependent heart.

I trust these few lines may be some help to you.

Yours sincerely in the Lord,