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I hope that I have done so already; but still, plain as it is, it is only the Lord that can make a man see it. It does at first seem most amazing to an awakened man that salvation should really be for him as a lost and guilty one. He thinks that it must be for him as a penitent man, forgetting that his penitence is a part of his salvation. "Oh,” says he, “but I must be this and that,”—all which is true, for he shall be this and" that as the result of salvation; but salvation comes to him before he has any of the results of salvation. It comes to him, in tact, while he deserves only this bare, beggarly, base, abominable description, "ungodly." That is all he is when God’s gospel comes to justify him.
May I, therefore, urge upon any who have no good thing about them— who fear that they have not even a good feeling, or- anything whatever that can recommend them to God—that they will firmly believe that our gracious God is able and willing to take them without anything to recommend them, and to forgive them spontaneously, not because they are good, but because he is good. Does he not make his sun to shine on the evil as well as on the good? Does he not give fruitful seasons, and send the rain and the sunshine in their time upon the most ungodly nations? Ay, even Sodom had its sun, and Gomorrah had its dew. O friend, the great grace of God surpasses my conception and your conception, and I would have you think worthily of it. As high as the heavens are above the earth; so high are God’s thoughts above our thoughts. He can abundantly pardon. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: forgiveness is for the guilty.
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