It is not every contact with Christ that saves men; it is the arousing of yourself to come near to him, the determinate, the personal, resolute, believing touch of Jesus Christ which saves. We must believe for ourselves. The Spirit helps us, but we ourselves believe. Some of you sit still and hope that the Lord will visit you, and you wait by the pool till an angel comes and stirs the water, and all that kind of thing; but that is not according to the tenor of the gospel command. The gospel does not come to you and say, “Whosoever waits for impressions shall be saved;” but it says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; for he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” Exercise the personal, voluntary, intentional act of faith and you shall be saved.
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Touch," delivered November 4, 1877. Image by jd.echenard on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
1 comment:
only the regenerate, born again have the opportunity to “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; for he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” Regeneration cannot be resisted however the call to salvation through believing and baptism can and often is resisted by the already born again.
I believe that Spurgeon believed this truth!
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