A FAITHFUL SAYING

This is from a sermon preached by George Müller at the opening of Salem Chapel, North Common, near Bristol, February 27, 1872.

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15-16, NIV)

Well, now, dear friends, you are almost all strangers to me. I don’t know the state of your life, cannot possibly know it; therefore, I do not know what it is you need to hear most, and therefore, in the consciousness of my weakness, I asked the Lord again and again to direct me to a portion of Scripture from which to speak to you, and after I prayed, I was directed to these two verses in 1 Timothy. This is just the portion which suits us all; there is not one here present for whom there is not something contained in this portion, for we are all sinners, without a single exception; and that is a point which I desire particularly to impress on your hearts, as well as on my own.

By the grace of God, I am convinced by it; now are all here present convinced that they are sinners? We are all sinners, and great sinners; and here it rests. Some make excuses and say they are not as bad as others: They have not murdered anybody, they have not robbed anybody, but that is not the question. We are all naturally going our own way, instead of going the way that God would have us go. And it is just this which is hateful to God, that we naturally please ourselves, go our own way, do all that we like, instead of caring about the ways of God, instead of seeking to please Him. It is because we seek to gratify ourselves and do not set God before us, on this very ground, that we are sinners whose sins are most hateful to God.

If we had what we all deserved, then we would all go to hell. There would be no help for us. But in this verse, it is pointed out that although we are the chief of sinners, there is yet hope! Wicked, guilty ever so much, yet there is no need to despair if we are ready to be saved in God's own appointed way.

Now, these verses bring the matter before us in very few words. The Holy Spirit, through the apostle Paul, seeks to commend the way in which a sinner is to be saved. God might speak in the way of command or threat—“If you will not believe, I will send you to hell.” But God is persistent, reasoning with sinners. That is, according to the heart of God, which is so merciful and so compassionate, so that He might get the sinner to Himself; and therefore He says it is a “faithful saying," which is quite true! There is no flaw in it; it is all real, all good, the saying that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. You stake nothing, you risk nothing; you may depend on it that it is so.

It is worthy of all acceptance. It deserves to be accepted. But have we all accepted this statement? By the grace of God, I have accepted it, and there are not a few here present who have accepted it. Just ask yourselves this question one after the other. Let not a single heart be left out here. The old need it as well as the young. “Have I accepted it?” You see, I am a witness for God, and I tell you I have accepted it. And I could point to this one, to another, and another who have accepted it; but the point is, have we all accepted it?

The hearts of those who have accepted it eagerly desire that all might accept it. If there be any here present who might be in doubt about it, let them now accept this statement. We have especially to notice where it says “Christ Jesus came into the world." What does this imply? That He was before time. It also teaches us the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Son of the living God, the Creator of the universe, by whom all things were made, by whom everything is kept in existence, and for whose honor and glory everything has been created, without whom none of us would have an existence, without whom none of us would be kept in existence.

And how did He come into the world? As a prince? No, not as His Royal Highness, on whose account thanksgiving is made today, but instead He came as a little baby in a manger. He was a carpenter's son, working at the bench as a carpenter, and called upon this account the carpenter's son, and thus going on until He was thirty years old. As such, He came into the world, in the form of a servant, as a poor one, as a lowly one, as a despised one—not as a prince, not as a nobleman's son, but as a poor one, taking upon Himself the form of a servant, and for thirty-three years thus going on. And why did He come into the world? To save sinners, for this very purpose. He did not come into the world to save good people, and if there are any people here who consider themselves good, then they are not among the number Jesus came to save. If you continue so, you will not have the benefit of this salvation. We must be brought to see that we need the Savior, that we are wicked people who deserve nothing but punishment. As long as we have a good opinion about ourselves, and will do our best to please God, and make up for any little thing that might be lacking, we are altogether mistaken; we know nothing yet about the way to heaven. 

We must first see that we are sinners: that is, that we are wicked, although we are not drunkards; that we are wicked, although we are not murderers; that we are wicked, although we are not thieves; that we are wicked, although we may be industrious; and although we have not defrauded people, because naturally we are going our own way, we are seeking to please ourselves, to do the things we like, instead of doing the things which God would have us do. We all fall short of the glory of God naturally; we have all gone astray from God like lost sheep. If God were to go from one to another and identify those who are sinners, everyone would be marked. I would be labeled, and you would be labeled, not one would be passed by, but everyone would be identified as sinners.  And if the question were asked, “Are there any great sinners here?” and if God were to label all the great sinners, He would mark me and you and every single one of us!

But there is hope! Hope for such wicked sinners as you is found alone in God's appointed way. Hope in Jesus, but in no other way. Hope through the shedding of the blood of Jesus, but in no other way. Hope by God not sparing His only begotten Son, wounding Him, bruising Him, laying upon Him the punishment due to us. That blessed Holy One stands, and He has transferred to and laid on Him all our sins and all our iniquities. 

Do you all remember the Franco-Prussian War? Now, the French and German people, whether they liked it or not, had to be soldiers if their health and strength allowed it. Now suppose it could have been managed in the case of anyone that a substitute could have been bought, that is, by giving another man who was not under the necessity of attending to his business, a sum of money to serve instead, then the substitute took the place of that other one, and went into battle and fought in his stead. So the Lord Jesus Christ became a substitute for me and you! We ought to be punished for our iniquities, for all our wicked deeds and wicked thoughts, for our pride and high-mindedness, for our self-will, and our temper, and for all those things; but our blessed Lord Jesus had the punishment for all our sins laid on Him, He stood instead of us, and in our stead endured the torment, anguish and punishment we ought to have borne throughout eternity. 

He became a real man and really bore the punishment. But not only was it necessary that He should be a man, He must be Divine, in order to give value to the sufferings; and all the woe, the misery and anguish which ought to have come upon us throughout eternity was concentrated in that time when the Lord Jesus hung upon the Cross. He came into the world to save sinners, to deliver them from hell, from the power of sin, to bring them into His own kingdom.

And now you see what the sinner has to do to depend upon Jesus for salvation. 

We have not to go to Paris, or Bath, or Bristol; here, in this very place and at this very hour, it can be had! No money has to be paid for it, but only to accept what God, in His wondrous grace and mercy, has provided through His dear Son. If we do this, we shall obtain forgiveness of sins, shall be accepted by God, shall be justified, shall be heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, and have heaven at the last. Now, how many are ready to receive this blessing? Who will say, “This is good news; I will accept it”? Or will you slight it still? The vilest, the most hardened, the most wretched, may even now obtain the full blessing through Jesus.

Paul says, “of whom I am chief.” He did not say, “Jesus came into the world to save such wretched sinners as you are; but I am a very good person, and I do not need this.” No, he said that he was the first among them, the chief of sinners. He did not point out other people to be very bad, making himself out to be very good. I do not mean to say, dear friends, that you are worse than I am. If I were to speak from my heart, I should say that I am one of the vilest, most guilty sinners who sought most greedily to find satisfaction in the world, and found it not! What an encouragement is contained in this word for you and me, that Jesus Christ “might show forth all longsuffering”! Now, what did Paul mean? Just this: “I am such a wicked, guilty sinner, though I did such abominable deeds, I, Saul, a great persecutor, who sought to torment to the uttermost those who believed in Jesus, tried to make them blaspheme Christ, who worried them to such a degree, and sought to use such means in every way to get them away from Christ that I compelled them often to blaspheme, and went a great distance to a large city, Damascus, to bring them to Jerusalem, and torment them there—yet I was converted just when on the point of entering Damascus” (see Acts 26). 

The Lord Jesus appeared to him and said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4). This abominable wretch, Saul, was accepted by Jesus, and not only obtained forgiveness of sins, but became one of the chief instruments in preaching the gospel! See what an encouragement this is. The apostle Paul was converted so that afterwards not a single sinner might despair, that none might say, “Oh! I am too great a sinner.” You should say, “Oh! Paul was converted; Paul was a pattern to show that what the Lord did for him, He will do for others. Saul was converted, and therefore I need not despair!” 

Now, is there anyone here who says, “I am too old for Christ,” you are not too old;. If anyone should say, “I am too hardened,” you are not too hardened; look at Saul. If anyone should say, “I have too long neglected the Lord Jesus,” if you wish to obtain the blessing in the appointed way, there is hope, and you are told as an encouragement that Paul was converted. If any should say, “I have sinned against light and knowledge, and I have neglected it and resisted it to this day, and never laid these things to heart,” it is true that it is very late, but not too late if you are willing this very evening to accept Christ. “Come, stained by sin as you are,” says Christ, “and here I am with open arms ready to receive you. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Coming means believing Him, trusting Him.

Finally, a precious word, particularly for you and me who believe in Jesus. We believe—but for what purpose, to what end, and what is the end result? To life everlasting, that is, through this faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are united to the Lord Jesus Christ. Through this faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we become one with the risen Lord Jesus, who lives forever; and if we believe in Him, the life of the Lord Jesus will be ours forever!

How blessed, how unspeakably blessed that the moment is when the sinner rests in Jesus and obtains life everlasting! The body may die, and in millions and millions of instances it has died; but as surely as the soul trusts in Jesus Christ for salvation, so surely from that moment we obtain life everlasting, because it is a heavenly life, the divine life, the life of the risen Lord Jesus, as certain as that blessed One is at the right hand of God. We throughout all eternity shall be a happy people; we throughout eternity shall live spiritually; we throughout eternity shall partake of the rivers of pleasure at the right hand of God, shall enjoy the Presence of God and of His dear Son. Oh, how blessed and precious, that when this little span of life shall come to an end, there will be the development of that eternal life which is in us now, as surely as we have put our trust in Jesus! Oh, the unspeakable blessedness of being in heaven! As ages shall roll on, our happiness shall become greater and greater.

Now, beloved brothers and sisters, let us see to it that during the little time we are here on earth, we bear much fruit. We are called to show forth the praises of Him who bought us, we are no longer our own, we are His who has given Himself for us, and our business is to give ourselves to Him—with our substance, with our all, to give ourselves to Him—and to seek for the little time that we live here to bear fruit to the honor and praise of His name.

So that it may be so, let us look to this precious book, the Bible, to obtain nourishment and strength for our souls. Now, are you readers of the Bible? There are so many religious resources out there that they furnish a great temptation to neglect this blessed book, and instead to read all sorts of books, periodicals, and newspapers. But if you want real happiness, real spiritual strength, seek daily to get to this blessed book. Are you in the habit of regularly reading through the Bible? Some just open the Bible, and where it falls open there they read; but after a little while, it will always open in the same place. How do we read other books? We begin at the beginning and turn over page after page. That’s how we should read God's blessed book.

Let me recommend to you something I have known the blessing of for over forty years. After my conversion, I did not read the Bible much but instead read missionary papers and other books. But since July 1829 (now nearly forty-three years ago), I have been reading God's blessed book: I read sometimes in the Old Testament, and sometimes in the New Testament. I put a mark where I left off, and read on from there when I come to it again, reading thus regularly on. Since then, I have read through the Bible over a 100 times! And I am not tired of it yet. It is just as fresh and as new and as pleasant as at the beginning, and I am just as delighted with it as if I had never read it before. I speak to you as one who has known the blessing of God’s Word all these years. And to it I owe all I have, and I am just as happy in reading this portion as any other portion. We have not to pick and choose; it is the whole that constitutes the Word of God. Is it not a shame that we have God's blessed book and have not read it through even once?

Suppose a rich uncle of yours were to die and leave a will, and your name was in the will: “To my nephew I give three of the cottages in such and such a place; and every year ten pounds is to be paid to my niece Sarah, and to my niece Jane, and to my niece Ann." Now, if you knew that your name was in the will, you would want to see that it was all correct, you would want to read the whole will, saying, “Perhaps there is something more that my uncle may have said about me." Now these things are written for your blessing and mine, and they are better than these three cottages, and better than a thousand pounds.

Oh, how deeply important it is to read what God says about us! If you cannot read, ask God to help you to read; if you have no Bible, then I pledge myself to supply you with a Bible. Only be earnest about your soul; don’t treat the things of eternity as trivial. It is high time that we should be earnest about our souls. And we must see that God teaches us by His blessed Spirit. We must not suppose that we are clever enough to understand it all by ourselves. If in humility of soul we wait on Him, He will teach us. If He has taught us, then we must seek to carry out the light, for one of the special means to obtain light is to practice what God has given us. If otherwise, God might say, “I have taught you so and so, and you have not done it."

We must be faithful to the light we have. If we thus go on, our peace and joy will increase more and more. From strength to strength we shall go on, and our path will shine brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.