Can you be described as "weary and heavy laden" (Matt. 11:28)?
Posted : 28 Nov, 2011 02:04 AM
"...as many as were appointed to eternal life believed" (Acts 13:48).
Devotional
There can be nothing in the Bible adverse to the salvation of a sinner. The doctrine of predestination is a revealed doctrine of the Bible. Therefore, predestination cannot be opposed to the salvation of the sinner.
So far from this being true, we do not hesitate most strongly and emphatically to affirm that we know of no doctrine of God's Word more replete with encouragement to the awakened, sin-burdened, Christ-seeking soul than predestination. What stronger evidence can you have of your election of God than the Spirit's work in the heart? Are you really in earnest for the salvation of your soul? Do you feel the plague of sin? Are you aware of the condemnation of the law? Can you be described as "weary and heavy laden" (Matt. 11:28)? If so, then the fact that you are a subject of God's drawings, that you have a felt conviction of your sinfulness, and that you are looking wistfully for a place of refuge, affords the strongest ground for believing that you are one of those whom God has predestinated to eternal life. The very work thus begun is the Spirit's first outline of God's image upon your soul�that very image to which the saints are predestinated to be conformed (Rom. 8:29).
But while we thus vindicate the doctrine of predestination from being opposed to the salvation of the anxious soul, we must with all distinctness and earnestness declare that in this stage of your Christian course you have primarily and mainly to do with another and a different doctrine. We refer to the doctrine of the Atonement.
If you could look into the book of God's decrees, and read your name inscribed upon its pages, it would not impart the joy and peace which one believing view of Christ crucified will convey. It is not essential to your salvation that you believe in election; but it is essential to your salvation that you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
In your case, as an individual debating the momentous question how a sinner may be justified before God, your first business is with Christ, and Christ exclusively. You must feel that you are a lost sinner, not that you are an elect saint. The doctrine which meets the present phase of your spiritual condition is not the doctrine of predestination, but the doctrine of an atoning Savior. The truth to which you are to give the first consideration and the most simple and unquestioning credence is that "Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. 5:6), that he "came into the world to save sinners" (1 Tim. 1:15), that he did "not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:32)�that in all respects, in the great business of your salvation, he stands to you in the relation of a Savior, while you stand before him in the character of a sinner.
Oh, let one object fix your eye and one theme fill your mind�Christ and his salvation. Absorbed in the contemplation and study of these two points, you may safely defer all further inquiry to another and a more advanced stage of your Christian course. Remember that the fact of your predestination, the certainty of your election, can only be inferred from your conversion.
We must hold you firmly to this truth. It is the subtle and fatal reasoning of Satan, a species of atheistic fatalism, to argue, "If I am elected I shall be saved, whether I am regenerated or not." The path to eternal woe is paved with arguments like this. Men have deceived their souls with such vain excuses until they have found themselves beyond the region of hope!
But you must rise to the fountainhead by pursuing the stream. Conversion, and not predestination, is the end of the chain that you are to grasp. To settle this great question, you must ascend from yourself to God, and not descend from God to yourself. You must ascertain God's objective purpose of love concerning you by his subjective work of grace within you.
In conclusion, we earnestly entreat you to lay aside all fruitless speculations and give yourself to prayer. Let reason submit to faith, and let faith shut you up to Christ, and let Christ be all in all to you.
Beware that you do not fall short of true conversion�a changed heart, and a renewed mind, so that you become a new creature in Christ Jesus.
And if you do betake yourself to the Savior as a poor lost sinner, all vile and guilty, unworthy and weak as you are, he will receive you and shelter you within the very bosom that bled on the cross to provide an atonement and an asylum for even the foremost of sinners.
