IS VICTORY EARNED, OR A GIFT?by Charles Trumbull EVERY saved child of God at one time or another longs tor victory over sin. Yet many such children of God have sadly given up hope of having in this world a complete victory, mistakenly supposing that that blessing is only for the life after this. They do not know how simple, and how immediately available, is the victory for which they are not daring to hope. It is right at hand, in Christ, for all who let Him undeceive them as to the lie which Satan has told them, and who will receive the victorious life as the outright, supernatural gift of God. An earnest Christian expresses what are more or less the thoughts of many on this subject. He writes with hearty appreciation, yet with frankly expressed positiveness: Under the heading, "Victory Christ's Work, Not Ours," you state: "Christ is living the victorious life today; and Christ is your life. Therefore stop trying. Let him do it all. Your effort or trying had nothing to do with the salvation which you have in Christ: in exactly the same way your effort and trying can have nothing to do with the complete victory which Christ alone has achieved for you and can steadily achieve in you." Can this be true? If it is, why should anyone make the effort so much as to accept Christ as his Saviour, let alone striving to put out of his life tendencies that he knows are bad, that his life may be purer and better, more attractive and lovable? If Christ does it all, why so much as the effort even to believe that he is the Saviour? You have taken the incentive to be a Christian out of the hands of anyone by saying that Christ saves whom He will regardless of whether they want to be saved or not, or you are preaching the Gospel of universal salvation. I have no hesitancy in saying I do not believe in your position. My entire experience refutes it. Had I never made the effort to be a child of God through Christ, and desired it and agonized that I might be saved, I do not believe that I should ever have had the consciousness of being saved by Him, but probably would have gone on as a selfish and self-seeking man of the world, and paid less and less attention to His claims upon my life. Therefore I claim that Christ plus my efforts won the victory — either futile without the other. I believe that the victorious life which your correspondent writes about is brought about by the continuous desire and effort to gain it, and that it will not come without that desire and that effort. I realize, of course, that no man can save himself, but I believe that God expects every man to do his part toward that salvation. It is true that God can save no man unless that man does his part toward salvation. But what is man's part? It is to receive the salvation that God offers him in Christ. the sunday school times is not preaching Universalism. It believes that the whole message of the Bible rebukes that mistake. God forces salvation on no one; and God has revealed to us in His Word that many reject salvation. Our wills are tree to act; their action is the accepting or the rejecting of the "tree gift of God . . . eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." But this act of the will, by which we voluntarily and deliberately decide to take what God offers us, is not what was meant, in that editorial on victory, by "effort." Men do not, by agonized effort, secure their salvation. They may agonize indeed under the conviction of sin which the Holy Spirit brings into their life. That is His way of showing them that they need salvation. But their agony ceases when they accept the free gift and realize that God has done for them what, by all their agony, they could never have done for themselves. Yet the great truth that so many earnest, surrendered Christians have even yet failed to see is that salvation is a twofold gift: freedom from the penalty of sin, and freedom from the power of sin. All Christians have received in Christ as their Saviour their freedom from the penalty of their sins, and they have received this as an outright gift from God. But many Christians have not yet realized that they may, in the same way, and by the same kind of faith in the same God and Saviour, receive now and here the freedom from the power of their sins which was won for them by their Saviour on the cross and in His resurrection victory. Even though they know clearly that their own efforts have nothing to .do with their salvation from the penalty of their sins, they are yet deceived by the Adversary into believing that somehow their own efforts must play a part in their present victory over the power of their sins. Ow efforts can not only never play any part in our victory over the power of sin, but they can and do effectually prevent such victory. - more -
