| The Hidden Life |
Chapter 4 |
Page 5 |
In one sense it is not easy for Christ to save us. We struggle and resist, and there is much in us that persistently disputes his sway. It was the prayer of a saintly man, “Lord, save me in spite of myself.” We must all be saved, it would seem, if ever, in spite of ourselves. St. Paul found a law in his members forever opposing the impulses of the new nature in him, making him do the things he would not. The only way Christ can save any of us is by never giving us up, never letting go his hold upon us, never allowing our stubborn earthward striving to drag us out of his hands.
If he ever did grow weary of our persistent sinning, and were to let us have our own way, what would be the result? Suppose that Jesus had let Peter go that night after his denial, giving him no further thought, what would have become of the poor fisherman? He would have been swept away on the dark bosom of sin’s floods, and would never have seen his Lord’s face again. We do not know the perils of our own weakness, nor our capacity for sinning.
When the disciples were told by their Lord that one of them should betray him, they did not begin to suspect one another. Each one seemed to be seized with a terrible dread lest it might be himself that would do this dreadful thing. Who has not shuddered when hearing of the fall of some other person into sad, dishonoring sin, feeling that it might have been himself? Terrible are the possibilities of sin in human hearts. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”
We talk lightly of sin and sin’s dangers. We speak ofttimes sternly and bitterly of those who are overcome in temptation, and swept down in its relentless tides. Ofttimes we have little charity for those who fall. It is because we do not know sin’s awful power. There is evil enough lurking in the heart of the holiest of us, if only it were leashed, to destroy our souls forever. Nothing but the might power of the grace of God keeps unto final salvation those who are preserved blameless through life. We cannot fathom what we might have been, abandoned to ourselves to drift in the wild floods, had it not been for the hand of Christ, who saves us from our fatal self.
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