Anything Meretricious?

My Hearer, are you seeking salvation by works—by anything that is meritorious or meretricious?
You are spending your money for that which is not bread!

Are you seeking a knowledge of salvation by your own feeling? Do you consult your frames of mind, hopeful or desponding, as one marks the rise or fall of a barometer? Do you dream of being prepared for Christ and fitting yourself to receive mercy?
This is to impose on yourself and to insult the Savior!

Christ needs nothing from you—He comes to bring everything to you! Even your sense of need He gives you.

All your fitness is to be unfit!
All your preparation for washing is to be foul!
All your prerequisite for enriching is to be poor as poverty can make you!

Come as you are to your God through Christ, the Mediator, and in Him you shall find salvation!


Do notice particularly that the words are not, “Say unto my soul, I am your Savior,” but more than that—“I am your salvation.” As if God were not only the Giver of salvation, but absolutely salvation itself.

To get a hold of Christ is to get salvation!
To get God on our side is to be saved!

Salvation does not merely come from God as a gift—it absolutely involves the appropriation of God, Himself, as the portion of one’s own soul! How wonderful this is!

Who can find God?
Who can imagine, much less describe, His Infinite perfections?

Salvation proceeding from THE LORD, from JEHOVAH, from the GREAT I AM, communicates the wealth of His adorable attributes. “Say unto my soul, I”—our translation reads—“I Am.”

Ask, what are You, Lord?
The answer comes, “I Am your salvation.”

Charles Spurgeon, from the sermon, "Assurance Sought"

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
   
(2 Corinthians 4:1-6 ESV) Emphasis added.