“Are you ready?” is a question that we often hear. Moreover we ourselves are constantly getting ready, making plans, or making preparations for our future, for our career, for our work, for our family. Often we make preparations referring to ten or twenty years in the future. But, alas! how little we know what the future holds for us! O, if only we knew, with what earnestness we would have made real preparations then!



Yet the problem is that not only do we not know what the twenty or ten years ahead hold for us, but what the morrow has in store for us. But in spite of the uncertainty surrounding the future, there is one future event regarding which there is not the slightest uncertainty or doubt, about which, alas, man does not want even to think—and that is our meeting with God! And for this meeting we all ought to make ready.

However, as certain is our meeting with God after death, so uncertain is the time of it. It may be after fifty years, or ten, or five or even after one year. It may be after a week, or even today. It may come when we will be old and gray headed, or it may be in one’s young and tender years. It may come naturally or through accident or calamity. The young die with the same ease and frequency as the old.

And immediately after death every one of us shall meet God. Are you, therefore, ready to meet your God? Do not say, “I do not believe in life after death.” What you believe or do not believe does not alter the facts. And you do not believe according to what? What is your ground for not believing? How do you know that there is no life after death? Can you by searching discover, or scientifically prove that there is no life after death? Why do you believe those who say that there is no life after death? Did they go and by experience find out? Why do you believe those who argue for things of which they them-selves are ignorant, and you do not believe God, who has both created it, and testified regarding it, and offers eternal life freely to every one who asks of Him in faith? Be prepared, therefore, to meet your God.

But how can one be prepared to meet God? What can he do, especially while his sins testify against him, and his conscience condemns him, and the wrath of God is revealed against him from heaven? Ah, there is nothing that one can do or offer to God for his sin and to earn the favor of God, for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 3:23; 6:23). We all have sinned. We all incurred the righteous judgment of God against us, and therefore, we all stand condemned before Him with whom we have to do.

What then? If you love your soul, do not try to deny, to evade, or to escape from Him. Do not try to justify yourself. But go to Him owning your sin. Go to God as you are; go to the throne of grace to obtain mercy.

Plead with Him: “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luk 18:13)!

“But,” you will say, “how can one obtain mercy, and find favour and acceptance with God? How can God be just and still justify the ungodly?” We answer; “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (Joh 3:16), Whom “he hath made to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2Co 5:21); and “while we were yet sinners, in due time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom 5:6), for without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin, “who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness” (1Pe 2:24), “that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Joh 3:16).

It is, therefore, through the Lord Jesus Christ, through Him, who came in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, and in that capacity He suffered and died in the stead of His people that God fully pardons every sinner that comes to Him in Christ, imputing unto him the righteousness of Christ. Come, then, to God by faith.

Confess your sins to Him. Plead that the Lord may be merciful to you for Christ’s sake. And if you truly come to Him, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, He will most certainly accept you, for He has said, “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (Joh 6:37).

Then, study the Scriptures. Meditate on the Word of God. Seek to know His purposes and His will. Walk humbly before Him according to all His holy commandments. Pray that the Holy Spirit may sanctify you and perfect in you the good work which He has commenced in you, for He says, “Be ye holy, for I am holy” (1Pe 1:16). Prepare, therefore, to meet your God!

THE LOVE OF GOD

“There are three things told us in Scripture concerning the nature of God. First, “God is Spirit” (Joh 4:24). God is “Spirit” in the highest sense. Because He is “Spirit,” He is incorporeal, having no visible substance. Had God a tangible body, He would not be omnipresent; He would be limited to one place; because He is “spirit,” He fills heaven and earth. Secondly, “God is light” (1Jo 1:5), which is the opposite of darkness. In Scripture, darkness stands for sin, evil, and death. Light stands for holiness, goodness, and life. “God is light” means that He is the sum of all excellency. Thirdly, “God is love” (1Jo 4:8). It is not simply that God “loves,” but that He is love itself. Love is not merely one of His attributes, but is His very nature.

“The love which one creature has for another is because of something in the object; but the love of God is free, spontaneous, and uncaused. The only reason God loves any is found in His own sovereign will. Would I know the length and breadth of God’s love towards a sinful world? Where shall I see it most displayed? Shall I look at His glorious sun shining down daily on the unthankful and evil? Shall I look at seed-time and harvest returning in regular yearly succession? Oh! No! I can find a stronger proof of His love than anything of this sort. I look at the cross of Christ. I see in it, not the cause of the Father’s love, but the effect.”

So, we read in Romans 5:8: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners [enemies] Christ died for us.” It was at the Cross that the sinful heart of man was fully portrayed (Jer 17:9), and it was at the Cross that the heart of God was fully demonstrated to sinners—and we all fit into that category.

The chief design of God is to commend the love of God in Christ, for Christ is the sole channel through which it flows. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (Joh 3:16). “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation [the atoning sacrifice] for our sins” (1Jo 4:10); that sinners might be reconciled to a Holy God (2Cor 5:19).

This is why the Bible calls the Gospel a glorious Gospel, because it is the good news of God’s redeeming love through Jesus Christ, the Lord. For He, the Son of God, took upon Himself humanity in the fulness of time. As the Son of Man, He fulfilled the righteous demands of the Law, and then at the Divinely appointed hour, He lay down His life as the suffering Substitute for sinners that He came to save. He redeemed them from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for them, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree” (Gal 3:13). This kind of love is indescribable. Come to the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, in repentance and faith, that God’s love may be shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5).

THE WRATH OF GOD

The clear testimony of holy Scripture is that wrath is one of the Divine perfections. That God must and will punish sin and the sinner, is written on the pages of Holy Writ and we are all sinners (Rom 3:23). The Bible makes no attempt to conceal the fact of God’s wrath, that vengeance and fury against sin belong unto Him (Heb 10:30-31). The wrath of God is His holiness stirred into activity against sin; for it is sin that causes God’s justice to be poured out upon sinners in a never ending eternity of suffering and misery.

Sin is the transgression of God’s holy Law and therefore the holy Law demands payment. Sin is war on God and therefore demands condemnation. Is it not folly to go on in sin and pleasure and carnal security when the sword of God’s justice hangs over your head? “Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Gal 3:10).

Listen! The place in hell is ready: For we read in God’s Word that hell is moved to meet you at your coming. Oh, what a thing is this then, that you can go on in pleasure and madness when hell itself is moved to meet you! (Isa 5:14; 14:9).

Your only hope and my only hope to escape the righteous judgment of God against our sin is to flee unto the Lord Jesus, for in Him and Him only has God provided a refuge from the storm of His wrath (Heb 6:18-19). You may ask; how do we come to Him? The answer is by faith. You come trusting Him and His finished work upon the Cross. You come believing His Word that you are a sinner and deserve His wrath, but come looking to Christ, the Lamb of God that taketh away God’s wrath from you and your sins, because He bore them away in His own body upon the tree (1Pe 2:24). Come crying like the Publican in the temple who saw a sacrifice, “God be merciful to me, the sinner” (Luk 18:13). The Lord Jesus came down from heaven’s heights to earth’s depths that He might die in the place of sinners. Christ came to die, “the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God” (1Pe 3:18).

That is all we are, ungodly sinners, and yet Christ died for us. Therefore, recognize that you are ungodly; believe the message of hope in Christ for sinners! Look to Him by faith; seek Him for true and godly repentance: cry after Him for mercy; tell Him your need, the desperate need of your soul; tell Him that you are an unworthy soul, worthy only of hell, and trust the Son of God for His mercy. “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord; and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God for he will abundantly pardon” (Isa 55:6-7).

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