The Forgotten Elixir

I often pull Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon off the shelf for some devotional reading. I think he is much more grace-oriented than most devotional writers who fail to really point me to Christ. Many devotionals seem to exhort me to pull myself up by my own bootstraps by trying harder instead of encouraging my soul in my Redeemer.

The April 23 Morning reading by Spurgeon is as about as spot on as anything you'll ever come across when it comes to how to deal with sin on a daily basis...he offers the True Solution, the Forgotten Elixir...the solution that is often hard to come by in today's moralistic evangelicalism. Read....and enjoy...and believe afresh in the Savior, rejoicing in your salvation!

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us."—Romans 8:37.

E go to Christ for forgiveness, and then too often look to the law for power to fight our sins. Paul thus rebukes us, "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?"

Take your sins to Christ's cross, for the old man can only be crucified there: we are crucified with Him. The only weapon to fight sin with is the spear which pierced the side of Jesus. To give an illustration—you want to overcome an angry temper, how do you go to work? It is very possible you have never tried the right way of going to Jesus with it. How did I get salvation? I came to Jesus just as I was, and I trusted Him to save me. I must kill my angry temper in the same way? It is the only way in which I can ever kill it. I must go to the cross with it, and say to Jesus, "Lord, I trust Thee to deliver me from it." This is the only way to give it a death-blow.

Are you covetous? Do you feel the world entangle you? You may struggle against this evil so long as you please, but if it be your besetting sin, you will never be delivered from it in any way but by the blood of Jesus. Take it to Christ. Tell Him, "Lord, I have trusted Thee, and Thy name is Jesus, for Thou dost save Thy people from their sins; Lord, this is one of my sins; save me from it!"

Ordinances are nothing without Christ as a means of mortification. Your prayers, and your repentances, and your tears—the whole of them put together—are worth nothing apart from Him. "None but Jesus can do helpless sinners good;" or helpless saints either. You must be conquerors through Him who hath loved you, if conquerors at all. Our laurels must grow among His olives in Gethsemane.

Amen!