“The Personal Application of Christ’s Coming into the World”
Sunday, February 28, 1954
The seventeenth verse of John’s third chapter, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” This is really a part of John 3:16, joined to it by a connective for, for God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
Now, our Lord makes, or the verse here makes, three related statements. And these statements are so meaningful, so momentous, so critically important to the human race, that in the most conservative language we may properly say of this verse that it constitutes a proclamation extraordinary.
Now, there are three statements here. One of them is that God sent His Son into the world. The other one is that He did not send Him to condemn the world. And the third is, that He sent Him in order that the world might be saved. To show you that I do not read anything into it, that I merely show you what is there. Let me read Charles Kingsley Williams’ translation. He puts it in the positive instead of the negative. The meaning is precisely the same. For God sent His Son into the world, not to judge the world, but that through him, the world might be saved. That’s the same verse stated in the positive.
Now, I have been mulling this over this last week knowing that tonight I was going to attempt a sermon on it. I’ve been lying at night thinking about this, and walking around thinking about it. For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that through Him the world might be saved. And I have a question that I want to ask, not about that verse, but about our reaction to it. It might be called the unanswered question. And that question is, since this is the proclamation extraordinary; since this is and constitutes a proclamation so meaningful and so momentous, then why the apathy concerning it on the part of the people, even Christian people.
Now, in the full sound of this proclamation, this proclamation that God sent His Son into the world, that He did not send him to condemn, that He did send Him to save. I say in the full sound of this proclamation, more gravely significant this proclamation is than any declaration of war or proclamation of peace, any plague, or any news from afar, any discovery of any new continent, or even a new world would not be compared with this. And yet in the full light of it, people are indifferent. Upon our eyes there seems to have fallen a strange dimness. And on our ears, there seems to have fallen a strange dullness. And in our minds, there is a stupor, and in our hearts I I’m afraid, a great callousness. The very fact that one feels bound up, that in reading this over and thinking about it, and seeing the brilliant shining quality of it, and the significance of it to the human race, that this has been heard and we’re so little stirred up about it. That is as wonderful as the verse itself, in a different way. So wonderful, so terrible that this verse should be here.
Now if it wasn’t here, I could understand why we could go our way, and as Tennyson says, nourish a dumb life within the brain like sheep. If that verse was not there, then I could see why we could all come to church and sit in stoical silence. Why we could kneel in prayer and mumble into a deaf ear that doesn’t hear us. Why we can rise in the morning and I’m more concerned to whether the paper has arrived than with whether this verse is here or not. If the verse hadn’t been here, I could understand our apathy. I could explain our indifference, I could say it is the indifference of despair. I could say it is the apathy of despair like the Israel in Egypt for 400 years; generation that followed generation in slavery, generation after generation in bondage. And therefore, when a new generation of Jews came up, they didn’t expect anything but bondage. They were someone like who had languished in a prison camp for so many years, their friends have died and forgotten them. And they had no hope ever of having it otherwise. So their jaws hung and their brows sloped and their shoulders were bent and they had no expectation.
If this verse were not here, I’d know why we’re the way we are. If this proclamation extraordinary had not been made, I could understand how we can be so unhappy. I can understand how the human race should walk around looking down at the earth like the beasts and rarely looking at the sky. I could understand it then. But in the light of the fact that it was made 2,000 years ago, then I asked the question, what’s the matter with us? What’s the matter with Christians? And what’s the matter with the unsaved man who hears the message. What’s the matter with people every place?
Now, I say that this great stupor is upon us. And I feel it even here tonight. I sense it even here tonight. People think this is a spiritual church. I wish they knew all I know about it. And I wish they had to live with it all the time. I think a lot of people would change their mind if they knew how little of response there was, how little of that sensitivity of the Spirit, how little of that urgency of the heart, and how much of the world. I believe that this apathy that is upon us, is a tactical victory for organized evil. I don’t know too much about the dark spirits that move up and down in the world. I know as much as I want to know. I want to know even less as I grow nearer to God in grace. But I know that the Bible teaches, that there are sinister spirits that walk up and down. There are even organized spirits. Perhaps it’s what it means when He talks about principalities and powers and mights and dominions. It does not mean the good ones, then it must mean the opposite ones. There are undoubtedly abroad, invisible to the naked eye and perhaps even inaudible to the ear, but they are abroad and they are the legions of hell. They are the fifth column of iniquity present in the world, and their business is to subvert, introduce and destroy and bind and kill, like the thief that got into the fold.
I believe that after years of beating the propaganda of hell into human ears and beating us over the head until we’re groggy and punch drunk, and without any aspiration or hope, and without immortal dreams. I believe it’s a tactical victory for the devil. And I believe more than that, the very somber countenance you and I wear tonight is an astonishment to the unfallen creatures yonder. For there are the unfallen legions, the watchers, the holy ones, the seraphim, cherubim, the angels, the archangels, the holy creatures that never fell. And I know not how much they know, but they must know something, for they have been sent to announce the birth of Jesus in one instance. They were sent to announce the resurrection of Jesus in another instance. And in the book of Revelation we see them fly in midheaven and move about among men. So, they must be there, or rather, they must be here. And that we can take all of this with such indifference, must be an astonishment to holy creatures.
We say it is just that we are not like holiness people. We don’t roll in the straw and claim tent poles, that we are more sober, we’re better educated, that were more cultured. If I thought that were true then I would say, Thank God. But I don’t think that’s true at all, because as soon as the benediction is pronounced here, you couldn’t hear the archangel Gabriel if he blew his horn twenty feet up above the earth toward heaven because of the talk and the noise and the exuberance and the freshness and the interest and the smiles and all the rest. But when it comes to such a proclamation as that God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, we take it with an apathy and indifference. That is not a proof of our culture, but a proof of our sin. Not the proof that we are better educated, but a proof that we are more hardened.
Now, I believe not only is this a victory for organized evil and an astonishment to unfallen creatures, I believe also it’s a great grief to the God on High. I believe God loves enthusiasm. Not the enthusiasm of fanaticism, but I believe that God loves enthusiasm.
The Lord Jesus Christ had a special fondness for babies. And I think that He loved babies because they were so vigorous and buoyant and unsophisticated and fresh. And their reactions were unmediated, and they were not sickly dour with the pale cast of thought, to quote from Shakespeare. They just do what they do out of simplicity and its immediate response of their young hearts. And the Lord must have loved them. He laid His hands on their head and said that the kingdom of heaven is like these and made a great deal of the babies. And the theologians of course ever since have been tossing and kicking these babies around wanting to know what it all means. And simple-hearted people know that Jesus just loved babies was all. That’s all. He loved the bald ones and the hairy ones and the redheads and all the rest of them, because there was something about them that hadn’t yet been spoiled.
Do you know Wordsworth’s famous conceit? It is only a conceit, and is probably not true, but there’s something fresh about it. He says that when we are born, we come down from God trailing clouds of glory, that coming from the fresh hand of God; we come trailing clouds of glory and a little bit of heaven lies around the growing boy. Then as he travels further from his home, sad and tragic as it may be, as he travels further from his home, the glory disappears and evaporates. And that little bit of heaven that lies around the newborn boy, disappears like dew before the sun and finally, it’s no heaven anymore, and no glory anymore. But, he forgets God and his heart is hard and the earth shuts around him and he’s a carnal man in a fallen world.
My God, that we might have something happen to us that would toss us suddenly back into our childhood again, that it would grab us up and throw us back into the cradle of the human race and lay us and stretch us on the cool ground, and get us once more in rapport with the powers of God in the world and in grace. But these hard crusts get over our heart, this lack of sophistication, or this sophistication, this lack of simplicity, this defensiveness. I’m hardly talking to a man or woman or a young person tonight above ten that doesn’t have his guard up against me. They’re not afraid of me. They have known me around here since the beginning. But, they’re afraid, nevertheless of what I’m going to say; there’s a guard up there, and there’s a quick parry. Every preacher that preaches to congregation these days is fencing with masters. He lunges and plunges, and I don’t know the language of the fencers. I never fenced and don’t intend to. I’ve mended fences. And he’s always fencing with his audience.
And it’s very rare that anyone comes anymore to the house of God, and with guard down and head bowed and sits before you to hear what God will speak unto us. We have become so learned and so worldly and so sophisticated and so blasé and so burned out and so bored and so religiously tired and beat up, the freshness and delight, the trails clouds of glory, seems to have gone from us. And it’s the great need of this hour my friends that a verse like this when it is read, should have an instant response in the human race, a response afresh and alive. The very fact that I have to talk like this is incriminating in itself.
And I want to know why this is that God’s should send this proclamation extraordinary, “God sent His Son into the world.” He did not send His Son to condemn the world, but He sent Him that the world might be saved. And we take it with such apathy. Who has poisoned our cup? What evil alliances have we made? What has sin been doing to our hearts? What devil has been working on the strings of the heart of our soul? Who’s been giving us sedatives? Who’s been feeding us the medicine of apathy. What’s happened to us, that we can talk about this, sing about this, preach about this, and it leaves us untouched? O Dear God. I sympathize with old Wordsworth when he said, “I would rather be a heathen, a heathen, and believe in an outworn heathen creed than stand on the shore of the ocean and imagine that I could hear old Neptune or old Triton blow his horn and have something alive in me than to be a civilized Christian to which everything has died. The world is too much with us. Getting and spending late and soon we wasted our powers.
Well, God sent His Son into the world. But He didn’t send Him into the world as a judge. He sent him into the world as its Savior. There are the three ideas in that verse. And I say that for importance, there’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like this in other related scriptures that say about the same thing. Nothing like this in all the wide world. For the human race in its present condition, this is it. There may be a time way out yonder in the glorious tomorrow when all this is over and sin has passed away and the shadows have been driven from the sun and the brows of men are no longer furrowed and we are like Him and know Him and see Him as He is. And His name is on our forehead as we gaze on His countenance, and the slippery path we once trod is now only a memory fast fading. It may be that there will be other and newer and grander proclamations that God may make based upon this one. But, for us in our present condition, there is no proclamation as great; this is it. The proclamation extraordinary that God sent His Son into the world, and sent Him into the world that the world might be saved.
Now, it says, God sent His Son into the world. And I’d like to take one word and change it here and not change it at all, but just change it for you tonight. And yet, it’s exactly what God said and meant. The “world” there doesn’t mean geography. He doesn’t say, He sent His Son into the Near East. He sent His Son into Palestine. He sent His Son to Bethlehem. He sent His Son to the corner of second and ninth, if there were any streets in that sweet, tiny little town where he was born. No, it doesn’t have a geographical or an astronomical meaning. It has nothing to do with kilometers and distances and continents and isles and space and topography and mountains and towns. He came to Palestine. Of course He came to Bethlehem. Certainly He came to the Near East. Certainly He came to the little land that lies between the seas. Sure, all that’s true, but that isn’t what it meant here, and that isn’t why He came.
God sent His Son into the world means, He sent His Son into the human race. The “world” here, that God so loved the world doesn’t mean God so loved geography. It doesn’t mean that God so loved the snow-capped mountains or the sun-kissed meadows or the flowing streams or the great ice peaks of the North. God may love all of them. I think He does. I think you can’t read Job and the Psalms without knowing that God’s in love with the world He made, but that’s not what it means here. God sent His Son to the human race. He came to people, Jesus Christ came to people. If we could only remember that friends. Jesus Christ came to people, not the white people, not capitalists, not communists, not Republicans, not Democrats, not carpenters, not artists, not writers. He came to people, people, people! These other things are only incidental, but it’s people that He came to. For some reason, God loved people. And we can use generic terms you know, and general terms and pretty soon we’ve become scientific in our outlook. Let’s break that all down. Let’s dump it out the window. God sent His Son to the people of the world. And His Son came into and unto and upon the people of the world. And He even became one of those people. God sent His Son to the people of the world.
He sent His Son to the people, living people. Look at them, think of them, call them before us tonight. Imagine if you could be like Puck and draw a ring around the earth in forty weeks. Imagine that if you could be like some star above, or the moon and gaze all over the world in twenty-four hours. Imagine what you would see. You would see the crippled and the blind and the lepers. You would see the fat and the lean and the tall and short. You would see the dirty and the clean. You would see them walking the avenues, bold and upright without fearing a policeman. You would see them skulking in back alleys and crawling through windows. You’d see them twitching and twitching in the last agonies of death. You’d see them kicking footballs over the field or running around the track. You’d see them tiny and sick and you would see them great and brawny and strong. You’d see them ignorant, not being able to put one letter behind the other. And you’d see them walking gravely under the elms in some college town, dreaming deep dreams of the fourth dimension or dreaming up some great poem or play, to astonish and delight the world.
People. You would see plain people and black people and people whose eyes slant differently from yours, and people whose hair is not like your hair at all. People whose diet is not like your diet. You’d gag on what they love and they’d gag on what you eat every morning for breakfast. Their customs are not the same. Their habits are not the same, but their people. Nevertheless, they’re people. Their differences are external. Their similarities, internal. Their differences have to do with custom and habit. Their likeness has to do with nature. So they would be there, the thief and the liar and the truth teller and the martyr, the mother of many and the dying soldier and the boy in the basket were sent away to the sound of the Star Spangled Banner and came back in the basket to be forgotten out of Hines Hospital, people nevertheless.
And God sent His Son to the people. He is the people’s Savior. Jesus Christ came to people like your family and mine and people like us. God sent His Son into the world of people like you and me. Not to the learned theologians, not to the man who can spout Greek and Hebrew only, He came to them too. Their ability to spout Greek and Hebrew, that is only incidental. What they are is exactly the same as the ignorant boy whose language simply will not order itself. You see, you scratch a professor and you find a hillbilly. That’s all you have to do. You just take a pen or a knife blade and prick the skin a little of that dignified lady with the carefully groomed eagle claws walking around with the latest book under her arm, or on her way, don’t you know to hear about Geoffrey or some opera. Prick her a little and she’s just one more squalling woman. Scratch her a little and you’ve got one more female. And as the sarcastic old couple of has it, “Judy O’Grady and the Colonel’s lady are sisters under the skin.”
And out on the bus, oh, I saw this on the street car. I shouldn’t tell it. But I saw this on the streetcar. It was some time ago. I saw a white man this time, but he was drunk. And he was just drunk enough to be humorous. You know, they go through stages. They get bright eyed and then they get humorous. And then they get mean and then they get vomiting. And he was in the humor stage. And he was standing up in front clowning and now he was funny, that’s all. And everybody was laughing, including your undersigned, but a dignified lady sat there with a little boy. This is Junior. He had been brought upright, and no doubt she’d been off to finishing school. I don’t know what she was doing on a street car. I thought that was for us plain people, but there she was. And the little guy would look at this drunk fellow who was going through his contortions and making his funny remarks, and he’d giggle and she’d pat his shoulder. “It’s not funny, Charles. It’s not funny Charles. It’s not funny Charles.”
And I had as much amusement watching that dignified mother trying to tell her boy that that funny guy wasn’t funny. But listen to me now, three seats back of this dignified, well-groomed woman who wouldn’t stoop to laugh at a drunk man, there may have been an overstuffed, not to clean, gum chewing, loud talking, laughing colored woman on her way to do somebody’s wash. Different from each other you say? Scrape the skin a little, you’ll find, just the same. The dignified, learned and cultured lady, and the happy go lucky, uncultured woman on her way to do somebody’s wash, seem; Jesus knew that and he paid no attention to class. Class? The Lord knows nothing about this class business everybody talks about. He came to people. He came, God sent His Son into the world to people. He came to us, people. And He didn’t say, how’s your IQ? He came to us. He didn’t say, have you traveled much? He came to us, the people. So, thank God He sent Him and He came. Both of those are truth, no contradiction. God sent Him and He came. He came because He was sent and He came because His great heart urged Him to come.
Now, what was the mission on which He came? We’ve stated here already half a dozen times. But you know what I was thinking? If you knew that the Son of God was coming to the world, and you had never known the Son of God was coming. Let’s think ourselves out. Let’s think ourselves back to paganism. Let’s throw out our Bible and the hymnbook and our 2,000 years of Christian tradition. Let’s say we’ve never heard and somebody suddenly arrives with a proclamation “God is sending His Son into the human race. He’s coming! What would be the first thing you thought of? What would your heart tell you immediately? You’d run for the trees and the rocks, and hide like Adam among the trees in the garden. I won’t add one shadow to your heart, but I’ll ask you, ask your own heart. What mission logically should they have come on? God being a holy God high and lifted up and we being the kind of people we know we are. I ask you, what should have been His mission? He was a man with a mission. What should that mission have been?
Why did God send the angels to Sodom? To decide and fix judgement and take two or three out and burn the rest to cinders. Let your own heart tell you why would the Son of God come to our race? Our own hearts tell us why. Sin and darkness and deception and moral disease tell us why. And the lies we’ve told and the temper tantrum we’ve thrown and the jealousies we’ve felt tells us why. They tell us why. The sin we can’t deny tells us why He might have come to judge the world. If He hadn’t told us that, the Holy Ghost never would have said, not to judge the world. Why did He ever say it? Because he knew that the human conscience could only say one thing. O God, if you’re sending someone from your throne, find a place for me to hide. For my heart tells me I ought to die. My heart tells me that I’ve piled up iniquity and I should be sentenced, and I should die. And if the Righteous One is coming, then I ought to die.
But says the Holy Ghost, He didn’t come to judge us. He sent His Son into the world, true, but He sent His son not to judge the world. That wasn’t His purpose at all. He came that men might be saved. Ah, not to condemn but to reclaim was the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why did He come to men and not the fallen angels? I have said before from this pulpit, and I’m the only person that ever says it so I could be wrong. But also, I could be right. I believe He came to man and not to angels because man had been originally made in image of God and angels haven’t. I believe He came to fall on Adam’s brood and not to the brood of fallen devils, because the fallen brood of Adam had once been made in the image of God. I believe it was a morally logical thing, that when Jesus Christ became incarnated, He couldn’t become incarnated in the flesh and body of a man. Because God made man in His own image and though fallen and lost and on his way to hell, he has the potentialities that could take the Incarnation. God Almighty could pull up the blankets of human flesh up around His ears, and be a Man to walk among men. But there was nothing of like kind among angels and fallen creatures other than man.
So, He came not to condemn but to reclaim. And now I would close, but I would ask you to think of this in personal terms. God sent His Son into the world. The cross is not mentioned here, and the cross is not mentioned in John 3:16. We who preach, sometimes imagine that we have to open our mouths and in one great, big round sentence say all of the theology there is to say. God is not so squeamish. He says it all somewhere in the book. And the cross stands out like a great, bright shining pillar in the middle of the Scriptures. And without that cross on which the Savior died there could be no Scripture, no revelation, no redemptive message, nothing. But he didn’t say anything about the cross here. He simply said He sent his son and He gave His Son, those two words, “sent” and “gave” in the verse above and this verse. He gave His Son, He sent His Son. And later it developed that in giving His Son, He gave Him to die. But, He didn’t say so here.
Now, I want you to think of this in personal terms. Christ taught us to do this. In that story of the prodigal son, which Dickens said was the most pathetic, that is, it had more pathos in it than any other story that was ever told by mortal man. He was afraid we’d get generic, you know, and theological with it all, and get it into a book, you know, and put a period on there and have Article One, Section Two, Subdivision B. He’s afraid of that, God was, so He said, now, I’ll tell you about a boy. He said, a father had two boys. And one of them, the youngest one of them, the younger of the two came to him and said, Father, “give me my goods that followeth to me.” So, he divided unto him his living. Not many days after, the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, were he wasted his substance with riotous living. And then he joined himself to a citizen of the far country, who sent him into the fields to feed swine. And he feigned would have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat but no man gave unto him.
So one day he came to himself and he said, “how many hired servants of my father have food to spare and I perish here with hunger. I will arise and go to my father. Do you notice “I, I, I, I, I?” The Lord says, I want you to personalize this, I don’t want you to be thinking about this racially. I came to save people. I came down here for folk, people, and I want you to think about it in personal terms. And so, He told us that wonderful story. I will arise, I perish, I am hungry, I remember my father’s house, I will go. He said, “I.” So, he rose and went. And his father ran and you know the story too well, so well. Perhaps it has lost part of its meaning. And he threw himself at his father’s feet and the father fitted him out and killed the fatted calf and filled the house with unseemly music. That’s what one person thought. He said, why all this nonsense? Why all this music around here? Is somebody getting married? What is all this music? And the father ran out shining faced and forgot all about his angina. He came tearing out and down the steps, you know, like a boy of fourteen. He said, Your brother’s back!
And this sour Pharisee exploded on him and turned a glowering face and said, I’ve lived with you from my babyhood and you never gave me as much as a kid. And now this, thy son, wouldn’t even own him. He didn’t say, “my brother.” We used to call him “Buddy” in the early days, Buddy. Slept with him, loved him when he was little, but now a religious jealousy has gotten into his heart, and he didn’t even call him by his little old nickname. He said, your boy. He wasn’t his brother anymore. He said, he’s devoured his living with harlots. He used the roughest language he could use, the most shocking. He said, he gets a fatted calf and the father almost turned pale, I suppose, and said why boy, I never knew you felt this way about it. Why, everything I have is yours. But he said, can’t you see, something’s happened tonight. Your brother, my son, he was dead. He’s alive! He was lost and he’s found! And after that one little blow, I think he bounced back and went and turned back up the steps to tell somebody else, “strike up the bank.”
God is capable of getting you morally excited, you know, in the right sense of the word. And I want you to think about you tonight. God sent His Son into the world to save you. And not to save the heathen– save you. Heathen, sure, but only as individuals, save you. And you’ve got to have faith about yourself. Now, I wanted to say that, and I was afraid to say it. Even I sometimes am a little afraid to certain phrases for fear somebody will get down my neck or write me a dirty letter. But I want to say this, you’ve got to have faith about yourself. Not faith in yourself, but faith about yourself. Faith in Christ and faith about yourself. That is, you’ve got to believe that you’re the one he meant. If you don’t, all the general faith you have in God won’t do you a bit of good.
The Lord is “the” Shepherd, I shall not want. No, He couldn’t have said that. Or, if He’d said, The Lord is one Shepherd, one shall not want. He maketh one to lie down in green pastures. He would have gotten an “A” on that in school, but it wouldn’t have meant anything because it wouldn’t been personal. He said, He’s my Shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down. The prodigal son could have said, one’s father has goods to spare and one parishes with hunger. One should arise and go on to one’s father. Make it general like that, make it religious, you know, and it didn’t amount to anything. But he said, I am the hungry boy. God’s my Father. My father is back home. I am going back home. Now, you make that personal and see if it doesn’t mean something more to you.
For you see, unbelief always hides behind three trees. Here they are: some where else, some other time, some body else. Those are the three trees in the garden behind which unbelief hides. Somebody preaches a sermon on John 3:16 and we say, yes, somewhere else it’s true of somebody else, it’s true. Some other time, but not now. Faith believes about itself, believes in Him and about itself and says now wait a minute. If God sent His Son into the human race that he might redeem the human race, He can’t redeem the human race en mass. He has to redeem and save human beings as individuals. That must mean me. Don’t pay attention to grammar. Don’t say that must mean “I.” That’s right, but that isn’t right. Say, that means me Lord. Believe about yourself and say to yourself, well now, wait. Not somewhere else, but here. Not some other time, but now. Not somebody else, but me. In that most famous, most wonderful and most terrible of all hymns, Brother McAfee tells me how to pronounce it but I pay no attention. The “Dies Irae,” he says in one place that he pictures the judgment and the world coming apart like an old tent. And the dust and shock and terror of it, and graves opening and men screaming before God’s bar of judgment and the world is on fire. One of the old-fashioned general judgment ideas. And then he prays this tender, lovely little prayer. He is going to be there and he says, oh, remember Jesus, I was the cause and reason why Thou didst come on earth to die. He says, in that awful day God, in that awful day Lord, remember Jesus, I was the cause and reason why Thou didst come on earth to die.
What is your name? Mary? Alright, Iet’s suppose it’s Mary. I don’t know many Marys these days. There are more Shirleys and Marylands and Beverly, but let’s call it Mary. O Jesus, remember I am the cause and reason why I’m Mary and Thou didst come on this earth to die. John is it? O Jesus, remember I am the cause and reason why, I John, single yourself out. Not somebody else, you, actually you. Jesus Christ came not to condemn you, but to save you. Knowing your name. Knowing all about you. Knowing your weight right now. Knowing your age. Knowing what you do. Knowing where you live. Knowing what you ate for supper and will eat for breakfast, where you’ll sleep tonight. How much your clothing costs, who your parents were, knowing you individually as though there wasn’t another person in all the world. He died for you as certainly as if you had been the only last one.
What about it tonight? If you’re out of the fold and away from God, why don’t you put your name in there and say Lord, it’s I, it’s I. Remember Lord, I’m the reason, cause and reason why, Thou on earth didst come to die. That’s faith you see. That’s positive, personal faith in a personal Redeemer. And that’s what’s saves you. And if you will just rush in there, you don’t have to know all the theology in the wide world.
I got two calls on the telephone last week. One wanted to know what the Greek word for cousin was in order if he could find out whether Jesus had brothers and sisters, or whether they were His cousins. So I looked it up in Strong’s, who is my strong refuge, and another fellow want to know if Jesus could ever sin? So, what in the wide world would a poor, lost fallen man worry his poor, little old empty head about theological niceties. When he ought to be saying to himself, in view of the judgment, O Jesus, remember I am the cause and reason why Thou on earth didst come to die. I am the one Lord and all the little theological niceties that men argue about, let them go! I am the one He came to die for.
Do you believe that? Will you tonight believe it means you? Will you put your name in there? Now, I insist on it, put your name in there. Don’t you go out on here tonight, put your name and read it in, whatever that name is. Put it in there, write it down in your heart and say, Jesus, this is “I”, Thee and I, I and Thee as though there were no others. That kind of personalize believing in a personal Lord and Savior. Once that takes place in the human breast, they don’t fool with that fellow anymore. And the Lord God Almighty witnesses within His soul something has happened there and he belongs to God and God to him. You don’t have to feed him on a nipple and run around with luke warm, watered down milk for him. He grows in grace because he’s had that personalized, individual experience of knowing it means, “I.”