Wednesday, July 21, 2010

If He does not wash you...



If a man profess to be a Christian, and is not in his walk and conversation holier than other men, that man’s profession is vain. There are some who seem to think that we are to come to Christ as sinners, and then after having believed in him are to live as we did before. But, my brethren, it is not so. Christ saves his people from their sins. When you hear the complaints of God’s servants concerning their temptations and their indwelling sins, you are not to conclude from that sin has dominion over them, or that they have not overcome sin, or that they are not other men than they once were. Nay, my brethren, I believe the holier a man becomes the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him; but he is in very truth a far better man, he is a spiritual and holy man.

If Jesus wash you not, so that you become godly and upright, you may depend upon it you have no part in him. If he do not wash that tongue, and cleanse away those angry, or idle, or filthy words; if he do not wash that hand, and render it impossible for it to perform a dishonest or unchaste act; if he do not wash that foot and render it impossible it should be able to carry you to the haunts of vice and criminal amusement, you have no part in him. It is all worthless for unconverted persons to be baptised and come to his table, for if be has not sanctified you in some measure he has not justified you. If you are not a changed man, neither are you a saved man, and if you do not aspire after holiness, neither need you hope that you shall have a part in the heaven of the blessed. “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.”

From a sermon entitled "The Sine Qua Non," delivered April 17, 1870. Image by Eduardo Wickboldt under Creative Commons License.

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