Who will save you?

[AI translation] We all know that October is the month of the Reformation. The beginning of this great religious and revivalist movement is usually officially counted from the date when the Augustinian monk Martin Luther posted his ninety-five-point theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. But this movement actually goes back much deeper than that: to the spiritual struggles of two men who were serious believers in God. Martin Luther and, independently of him, John Calvin, wrestled and agonised for nights on end over their most vital question: the salvation of their souls. Their spiritual warfare is almost mirrored in the passage of Scripture in which Paul so vividly portrays the struggle between good and evil in the depths of the soul, culminating in this almost desperate cry: "O wretched man, who will deliver me from the body of this death?" This great question was finally resolved for both of them: salvation is of the Lord, "through Jesus Christ our Lord!" This solution to the question in fact started the great movement we call the Reformation.But it is not only Paul, not only the Reformers, but every serious believer who has this great question in his soul: "Who will save me?" Is it a settled question for all of us, "Who will save me?" The eternal great question of the eternal believer's soul! It is worth pondering. "Who shall save me"? And the self-confident man beats his breast proudly: I myself shall save myself! I do my work with honour, I do my duty, I do no harm to anyone in the world, and I may even be of use to some. To God and man I give what is due, I do not need deliverance! A little success in work, a little progress in life, a little recognition of talent, and one believes all the good and beautiful things that others say about him! Such a self-satisfied man may even be convinced that the good God values him as much as he values himself, and takes it for granted that he is to be held in public esteem here on earth and in heavenly bliss in the hereafter. He almost feels that his sense of his own excellence and his sense of his own dignity as a human being is part and parcel of his sense of himself and of the dignity of his office.
There were men like this in Jesus' day: they were called Pharisees. This was the type of man with whom Jesus had the most struggles. What a far cry from this is the spirit that gave birth to the Reformation, whose anguished sigh is, "O wretched man!" Oh, what a long way must a soul go before it comes to this realization! It is almost wonderful how desperately a soul struggles against the realization that it is truly guilty. When disappointments come in life, when things suddenly start not working out the way you wanted them to, when family wars, friction at work, create more and more unrest in your soul: she tends to feel sorry for herself, to feel like a martyr, a victim, not understood, not appreciated enough, oppressed - but she tries to maintain her own innocence at all costs. And if he has to give up his own innocence, he blames others first. He may blame his parents, who did not raise him well; his family members, who did not help him; his environment, which seduced him; everyone who did not stand by him. From there it is only a step - but still a very big step - to complete disillusionment with oneself, to admit and take the blame for the sin, to realise that all the respectability he exudes is a sham, a mask behind which lie things that, if people knew it, they would despise him for.
Moreover, this realization, this total disillusionment with myself, can only be reached in a personal relationship with the living God, in the light of God's holiness and grace! Only a man who truly believes in God knows what is good, what is right - for he knows the divine law, God's will, God's commandments - but then he realises again and again that this knowledge of what is good does not save him from doing the opposite of what he thinks is good! Socrates and the other Greek sages believed that right insight, clear knowledge, also leads to right moral action, and that sin is nothing more than a wrong action due to imperfect knowledge. Oh, but not so! It is in vain that I know what would be good: from this knowledge does not follow the action of that good! In fact, the more clearly I know the divine good, the absolute good, the more this knowledge reveals the evil in me! It is precisely in the light of the divine law that I see myself, as Paul, Luther and Calvin did, "O wretched man!"
And even the will is not enough. You have experienced in your own life what Paul said: 'I have the will, but I cannot find the means to do what is good. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want" (Rom 7:18-19). Again, we do what we despise, what we abhor, what we hate, and even, as the apostle says, 'what I hate, I do' (Rom 7,15b) Yes, what I despise, what I hate in another, I do myself. We hate envy, yet how often we envy the fate of others. We hate it when someone lies, and yet how many lies our lives are full of! We hate moral filth, and yet we often contaminate ourselves with it. We despise selfishness, vanity, heartlessness - why are we so often selfish, vain and heartless? Why? Is it not a terrible thing to do what one does not want, what one does not love, what one despises, what one hates? But it's in you, isn't it?
There's a terrible duality, a split in us. So Paul says: "For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man; but I see another law in my members, contrary to the law of my mind, and I am captivated by the law of sin which is in my members." I both love it and rebel against it. I rejoice in it, and I sin against it. I trample on what I delight in, what I see as beautiful and good, what I know, what I know to be the most beautiful and best! There are two laws in me at once, one in my mind, the other in my members: and these two diametrically opposed laws are incessantly at war within me. My whole inner world is like a terrible battlefield, where there is a constant struggle between good and evil: between the law of my mind and the law of my members!
Such is the terrible power of sin! The apostle says: it is almost no longer I who do the evil that I do not approve, that I do not want, but sin in me! It is a foreign power, but it dwells in me! Yes: sin is not a passing acquaintance whom we sometimes meet, nor a lodger who will one day leave, nor a lodger whom we can somehow put out of the house or hate, but the most unpleasant lodger with whom I am shut in, who plays the part of a landlord in me, a cruel tyrant whom I am forced to serve! Thus does the believer, in spite of his best intentions, fall back into his old sins, and become entangled in all sorts of filth, which he hates and despises!"- This is what Paul, Calvin, Luther, and every man who has ever since earnestly aspired to a sanctified life, felt when he cries out, almost in despair, "O wretched man! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?"
This is the greatest misery! It is not that one is sick or poor - that can be helped somehow. It is not that one is abandoned, helpless, helpless in the world - that can be helped by another man. The real great misery is when someone feels his spiritual and moral misery before God in all its fullness! He feels that before God he cannot stand, before the one true Judge he has no excuse! No son of man can help this misery! There are great men who can do a great deal to alleviate the material, social, medical miseries of others, and it is good that there are such men, but no matter how great a man may be, he can do nothing to save a single soul from sin, to lift it out of the bondage of its sins!
When a man can sigh, "O wretched man," he knows very well that the other man, whoever he may be, is just as wretched and helpless against sin as he is. Not only can he not help me, but he cannot help himself. And in a way this feeling is useful because it makes us like people. At the highest stage of self-knowledge, which we are now discussing, one notices that the difference between one man and another disappears. I no longer envy the other person because I know that he is just as miserable as I am, I do not despise anyone, I do not look down on anyone because I know that I am just as miserable as he is. In this respect we are all comrades, brothers and sisters. The only difference between us is that one knows how miserable he is and the other does not. But the main question for all of us is the same: "Who will save me?" Woe to him who can only think of this question on his deathbed...
"Who will deliver me"? And in this question, if it is honestly torn from one's soul, there is almost the solution to the problem. For it is that the man who has awakened to his own misery, the man who cannot cope with his own sinful nature - finally seeks salvation in someone else. Not in his own strength, not in his own knowledge, not in his own good will, effort, striving, will, but in all that he himself can do, all that he can do - he turns to God! That is why Paul immediately continues: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord"! He does not say, "I thank God for my intelligence, I thank God for my knowledge, I thank God for my education, I thank God for my language" - all of which in themselves can be a reason for thankfulness, but not enough to do the good that I want to do and that I know to be good. Neither education, nor environment, nor learning, nor better discernment can overcome the power of sin in me - but "thanks be to God that salvation is through our Lord Jesus Christ"! In other words, only God taking my case into His hands, working a miracle in me, and making the impossible possible through faith in Jesus Christ, will help! It is true that in the daily struggles of our Christian life, in the endless crises of sanctification, nothing and no one really helps but Jesus. Only Jesus can overcome the tyrannical law of sin in me and in you. Just as the forgiveness of sins is given by God alone for the merit of Jesus, and we can do nothing to earn it: so the victory over our sinful nature is always given again by Him, through Jesus. Surely I should despair if there were not a Power, a Love Power over me, Who makes the impossible possible in me!
So if you feel this terrible duality, this inner struggle, this struggle between the law of your mind and the law of sin in your members - and what moment do you not feel it? Never forget one thing: let your soul look at Jesus, and you will be enlightened at once as to what to do, what to say, how to behave in that situation, and you will be able to do it, you will be able to do it, because then it is not you who are doing it, but Jesus - in you and through you! Someone said it so beautifully in Bible class the other day: make room for Jesus in you! He says to us what He once said to Paul: "my power is done through weakness" (2 Cor 12,9b) Not in the sense that my power and your power are done together - but in the sense that my power is done through your weakness. In our utter powerlessness to do good, we can always count on His power to make the impossible possible!
Would that more of us could say with a sincere heart, "O wretched man that I am!" - for I am. But thanks be to God, who gives deliverance from the greatest and most miserable misery through "our Lord Jesus Christ!"
Amen
Date: 12 October 1969.