13-CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A THROUGH TICKET HOME
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: A THROUGH TICKET HOME A STUDY IN DIVINE GUARANTEES
SINCE CHRIST had a prenatal, divine record, a supernatural birth, lived a sinless life, died an atoning death, has an assured resurrection, had a visible ascension, has promised to intercede at God’s throne of power in behalf of all believers, is building a home for His people and promises to come back for us and take us to that home and give us eternal fellowship with Him, it might be well for us to think of our ticket, whether or not we have a through ticket.
I judge none of us would want a round-trip, but all would like to be assured that he had a guaranteed, through passage to these eternal mansions. The fact is, heaven is just ahead.
- The Father is watching for us.
- The Savior’s love-cross is holding out nail-scarred hands, beckoning to us.
- The Holy Spirit will soon be calling for us.
- The ransomed hosts are looking expectantly toward the city of God.
The big question facing us is: Has salvation any eternal values? Does God vouchsafe a through transportation ticket to the eternal home? What says the Bible? It is our only schedule for such a trip.
CERTAIN SCRIPTURAL FACTS
Let us look at some of the outstanding doctrines concerning sinners and their salvation which are clearly taught in the Bible.
All men are sinners, conceived in sin, sinners by nature and sinners by choice.
Their case is pictured very seriously by the Word of God.
- They are condemned, already dead in trespasses and in sins, under God’s wrath.
- They have come short of the glory of God.
- They are helplessly and hopelessly imperiled in the entanglements of sin, without God and without hope in the world.
The prophet says, “Thou hast loved my soul out of the pit of corruption.” The pit of corruption is the natural state in which lost men are born and live without Christ.
All moral merits, legalism, self-righteousness, ceremonialism, creedal salvation, have utterly failed in the face of the penetration, inoculation, ingrained prevalence of sin. Man cannot merit salvation. They are the heirs of death instead of the heirs of life. They cannot traffic in righteousness. Priesthood’s holy orders, churches’ ordinances, sacraments, none of these can reach deep enough to find the core and center of death in the souls of men and eradicate sin’s poisoned fluids. Man’s destiny-hell-ward-is sure unless some outside, holy power comes down into the seat of life.
All systems of salvation except Christ’s plan have failed in the presence of an Adamic sin, fallen human nature, and the power of Satan’s hold upon the souls of men. We must turn away from man to God for help to save sin-mastered human nature.
CERTAIN ENCOURAGING PROMISES The Word of God is sown down with great, outstanding promises for sinners.
“Look unto me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Isaiah 45:22).
“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
“Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).
“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
“He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).
“Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17).
CERTAIN IMPORTANT STEPS TO BE TAKEN An unsaved man is an alien and is a long distance from God. He has to take two steps to find God. These are repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21).
He ought to take many steps with God, not in order to be saved but because he is saved.
- He should publicly profess faith in Christ, as Jesus says, “He that confesseth me before men, him will I confess before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32).
- He should follow Christ in baptism and into Christ’s church, not in order to be saved but because he is saved.
- Then, after that he should follow a life of unselfish, consecrated service, living the exemplary life, giving his talents, his time, his money to Christ’s cause.
He lives every day in just one step of heaven, and death is that step.
CERTAIN VITAL TRANSACTIONS In one’s conversion there are certain vital transactions resulting from one’s repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ described salvation to Nicodemus as a birth from above in which a new nature is imparted.
The old nature is changed (John 3:1-12).
- Paul says after this heavenly alteration of life called regeneration we are new creatures in Christ Jesus.
- Peter says we are partakers of Christ’s nature.
- Christ says, “I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
- Paul says by this new nature we become “children of God by faith.”
How can one who is a child of God by spiritual birth, partaking of the nature of Christ, ever become any other than God’s child? If this is not true, Christ’s illustration of spiritual childhood does not illustrate at all.
- Jesus says when one believes in Christ he receives life everlasting (John 3:16; John 3:36; John 5:24).
- Paul says, “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life” (Romans 6:23).
This eternal life is possessed as a gift from God based on one’s repentance and faith in Christ. It is a spiritual transfusion of the life of Christ into our psychic veins. How can one become dispossessed of eternal life?
Salvation is described by Christ coming into our heart-life, “Christ formed in us, the hope of glory.”
He says,
- “Ye are hid with Christ in God”;
- “I will come into you”;
- “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.”
“If ye abide in me and my words abide in you” are Christ’s words telling of God’s guarantee to keep us and save us on and on. He says: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand” (John 10:27-29).
What could make a greater guarantee than this?
The Scriptures tell us what God does with our sins:
- Washes them whiter than snow (Isaiah 1:18);
- As a thick cloud He blots out our sins (Isaiah 44:22).
- He pardons, cleanses, justifies, forgives, buries our sins in the bottom of the sea, puts them behind His back, separates us from them as far as the east is from the west.
- He remembers them against us no more forever.
- He loves our souls out of the pit of corruption (Isaiah 38:17).
Do these Scriptures not tell the story of God’s heavenly guarantee for a through ticket to Christ’s mansions in the sky? Taking all this together, Christ being absolute God and a perfect atonement and having a complete resurrection and being seated at the throne of power in heaven, and the divine, eternal life which He by regeneration transfuses into our eternal soul substance, how can any of us doubt Him?
On these bases every believer may be sure that his faith-ticket is a through passage to heaven. “There is therefore now no condemnation,” no judgment, for them “who are in Christ Jesus.”
There need be no fear of death or judgment. Paul says, “Neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nothing in the grave of the past, nothing in the peril of the present, nothing in the womb of the future, can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus,” and, therefore, “we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”
This guarantee is not a license to sin, either to love it in our hearts or practice it in our lives, but it is an inner urge and a heavenly, powerful dynamic to solve and explain life; and we are to wait for Christ’s return, or His call before He returns, with a complacent confidence and a holy living, assured of a through transportation ticket to the heavenly mansions. Glory be to His name!
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