Do we suppose that men may be saved by simply accepting Christ as one’s personal Savior and not as Lord? What a great tragedy it is that this is the prevalent view of Gospel preaching in our age today! Men and women everywhere are bid to believe in Christ to receive their ticket stamps to heaven and have their stamps to hell revoked. Is this saving faith? Are such ministers convinced that such a belief will save a man?

What kind of faith clings to Christ while he is still clinging fast to his sin? What kind of salvation binds a man to heaven while he still wedded in his trespasses and sins? If Christ is not your Lord then He is not your Savior!

Is this so with you, dear reader? Is the Gospel preached to you, one that bids you to simply believe and not repent under His Lordship? If so, then you have been told a lie. For this is the Gospel message: Repent and believe the Gospel! To be a part of the Bride of Christ you must be divorced from the world; from self-will; self-righteousness; self-interest! Come to Christ and forsake all sin and self! It is the contrite and abased man that clasps the Cross with the empty hand of faith that God pleases to save. Will you do so today?

“Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you”—John 6:27

Does this language imply that the obtaining of eternal life is a simple matter? It does not; far from it. It denotes that a man must be in deadly earnest, subordinating all other interests in his quest for it, and be prepared to put forth strenuous endeavours and overcome formidable difficulties.

Then does this verse teach salvation by works, by self-efforts? No, and yes. No in the sense that anything we do can merit salvation—eternal life is a “gift.” Yes in the sense that wholehearted seeking after salvation and a diligent use of the prescribed means of grace are demanded of us. Nowhere in Scripture is there any promise to the dilatory. (Compare Hebrews 4:11).

“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him”—John 6:44

Plainly does this language give the lie to the popular theory of the day, that it lies within the power of man’s will to be saved any time he chooses to be. Flatly does this verse contradict the flesh-pleasing and creature-honouring idea that anyone can receive Christ as his Saviour the moment he decides to do so.

The reason why the natural man cannot come to Christ till the Father “draw” him is because he is the bondslave of sin (John 8:34), serving divers lusts (Titus 3:3), the captive of the Devil (2 Tim. 2:26). Almighty power must break his chains and open the prison doors (Luke 4:18) ere he can come to Christ.

Can one who loves darkness and hates the light reverse the process? No, no more than a man who has a diseased foot or poisoned hand can heal it by an effort of will. Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? No more can they do good who are accustomed to do evil (Jer. 13:23).

“And if the righteous with difficulty is saved, the ungodly and sinner where shall they appear?” (1 Peter 4: 18, Bag. Int.).

Matthew Henry said,

“It is as much as the best can do to secure the salvation of their souls; there are so many sufferings, temptations, and difficulties to be overcome; so many sins to be mortified; the gate is so strait, and the way so narrow, that it is as much as the righteous man can do to be saved. Let the absolute necessity of salvation balance the difficulty of it.

Consider your difficulties are the greatest at first: God offers His grace and help; the contest will not last long. Be but faithful to the death and God will give you the crown of life (Rev. 2:10).”

So also John Lillie,

“After all that God has done by sending His Son, and the Son by the Holy Spirit, it is only with difficulty, exceeding difficulty, that the work of saving the righteous advances to its consummation.

The entrance into the kingdom lies through much tribulation—through fightings without and fears within—through the world’s seductions, and its frowns—through the utter weakness and continual failures of the flesh, and the many fiery darts of Satan.”

Here then are the reasons why saving faith is so difficult to put forth.

(1) By nature men are entirely ignorant of its real character, and therefore are easily deceived by Satan’s plausible substitutes for it. But even when they are scripturally informed thereon, they either sorrowfully turn their backs on Christ, as did the rich young ruler when he learned His terms of discipleship, or they hypocritically profess what they do not possess.

(2) The power of self-love reigns supreme within, and to deny self is too great a demand upon the unregenerate.

(3) The love of the world and the approbation of their friends stands in the way of a complete surrender to Christ.

(4) The demands of God that He should be loved with all the heart and that we should be “holy in all manner of conversation” (1 Peter 1:15) repels the carnal.

(5) Bearing the reproach of Christ, being hated by the religious world (John 15:18), suffering persecution for righteousness’ sake, is something which mere flesh and blood shrinks from.

(6) The humbling of ourselves before God, penitently confessing all our self-will, is something which an unbroken heart revolts against.

(7) To fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim. 6:12) and overcome the Devil (l John 2:13) is too arduous an undertaking for those who love their own ease.

Multitudes desire to be saved from hell (the natural instinct of self-preservation) who are quite unwilling to be saved from sin. Yes, there are tens of thousands who have been deluded into thinking that they have “accepted Christ as their Saviour,” whose lives show plainly that they reject Him as their Lord.

For a sinner to obtain the pardon of God he must “forsake his way” (Isaiah 55:7). No man can turn to God until he turns from idols (1 Thess. 1:9). Thus insisted the Lord Jesus, “Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:33).

The terrible thing is that so many preachers today, under the pretence of magnifying the grace of God, have represented Christ as the Minister of sin; as One who has, through His atoning sacrifice, procured an indulgence for men to continue gratifying their fleshly and worldly lusts.

Provided a man professes to believe in the virgin birth and vicarious death of Christ, and claims to be resting upon Him alone for salvation, he may pass for a real Christian almost anywhere today, even though his daily life may be no different from that of the moral worldling who makes no profession at all.

The Devil is chloroforming thousands into hell by this very delusion. The Lord Jesus asks, “Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46); and insists, “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 7:2 1).

The hardest task before most of us is not to learn, but to unlearn. Many of God’s own children have drunk so deeply of the sweetened poison of Satan that it is by no means easy to get it out of their systems; and while it remains in them it stupefies their understanding.

So much is this the case that the first time one of them reads an article like this it is apt to strike him as an open attack upon the sufficiency of Christ’s finished work, as though we were here teaching that the atoning sacrifice of the Lamb needed to be plussed by something from the creature. Not so. Nothing but, the merits of Immanuel can ever give any sinner title to stand before the ineffably holy God. But what we are now contending for is, When does God impute to any sinner the righteousness of Christ? Certainly not while he is opposed to Him.

Moreover, we do not honour the work of Christ until we correctly define what that work was designed to effect. The Lord of glory did not come here and die to procure the pardon of our sins, and take us to heaven while our hearts still remain cleaving to the earth.

No, He came here to prepare a way to heaven (John 10:4; 14:4; Heb. 10:20-22; 1 Peter 2:21), to call men into that way, that by His precepts and promises, His example and spirit, He might form and fashion their souls to that glorious state, and make them willing to abandon all things for it.

He lived and died so that His Spirit should come and quicken the dead sinners into newness of life, make them new creatures in Himself, and cause them to sojourn in this world as those who are not of it, as those whose hearts have already departed from it.

Christ did not come here to render a change of heart, repentance, faith, personal holiness, loving God supremely and obeying Him unreservedly, as unnecessary, or salvation as possible without them. How passing strange that any suppose He did!

Ah, my reader, it becomes a searching test for each of our hearts to face honestly the question, Is this what I really long for? As Bunyan asked (in his The Jerusalem Sinner Saved),

“What are thy desires?

Wouldest thou be saved?

Wouldest thou be saved with a thorough salvation?

Wouldest thou be saved from guilt, and from filth too?

Wouldest thou be the servant of the Saviour?

Art thou indeed weary of the service of thy old master, the Devil, sin, and the world?

And have these desires put thy soul to flight?

Dost thou fly to Him that is a Saviour from the wrath to come, for life?

If these be thy desires, and if they be’ unfeigned, fear not.”

“Many people think that when we preach salvation, we mean salvation from going to hell. We do mean that, but we mean a great deal more: we preach salvation from sin; we say that Christ is able to save a man; and we mean by that that He is able to save him from sin and to make him holy; to make him a new man.

No person has any right to say ‘I am saved,’ while he continues in sin as he did before. How can you be saved from sin while you are living in it? A man that is drowning cannot say he is saved from the water while he is sinking in it; a man that is frost-bitten cannot say, with any truth, that he is saved from the cold while he is stiffened in the wintry blast.

No, man, Christ did not come to save thee in thy sins, but to save thee from thy sins, not to make the disease so that it should not kill thee, but to let it remain in itself mortal, and, nevertheless, to remove it from thee, and thee from it.

Christ Jesus came then to heal us from the plague of sin, to touch us with His hand and say ‘I will, be thou clean’.”

—C. H. Spurgeon, on Matt. 9:12

They who do not yearn after holiness of heart and righteousness of life are only deceiving themselves when they suppose they desire to be saved by Christ. The plain fact is, all that is wanted by so many today is merely a soothing portion of their conscience, which will enable them to go on comfortably in a course of self-pleasing which will permit them to continue their worldly ways without the fear of eternal punishment.

Human nature is the same the world over; that wretched instinct which causes multitudes to believe that paying a papist priest a few dollars procures forgiveness of all their past sins, and an “indulgence” for future ones, moves other multitudes to devour greedily the lie that, with an unbroken and impenitent heart, by a mere act of the will, they may “believe in Christ,” and thereby obtain not only God’s pardon for past sins but an “eternal security,” no matter what they do or do not do in the future.

Oh, my reader, be not deceived; God frees none from the condemnation but those “which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1), and “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are [not "ought to be"] passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Cor. 5:17).

Saving faith makes a sinner come to Christ with a real soul-thirst, that he may drink of the living water, even of His sanctifying Spirit (John 7:38, 39). To love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, to pray for them that despitefully use us, is very far from being easy, yet this is only one part of the task which Christ assigns unto those who would be His disciples.

He acted thus, and He has left us an example that we should follow His steps. And His “salvation,” in its present application, consists of revealing to our hearts the imperative need for our measuring up to His high and holy standard, with a realization of our own utter powerlessness so to do; and creating within us an intense hunger and thirst after such personal righteousness, and a daily turning unto Him and trustful supplication for needed grace and strength.

—A. W. Pink, Studies on Saving Faith: It’s Difficultyⁱ

Read more of “Studies on Saving Faith” here.

Footnotes

1. Pink, A. W. (19). The doctrines of election and justification. “… materials found herein were first published in 1932, 1933 and 1937 …”; Includes indexes. Swengel, Pa.: Reiner. [↩]