Author: Fred Pruitt
If a man should gain the whole world and lose his soul, what would it profit him? This is a question that every man, woman, boy, and girl should ask themselves. When we consider and understand that our life here is only a short span of years at the most, we should make preparations to live on with God after this earthly life is over.
In reading God’s sacred Word, we find that there is only one way by which any soul can obtain eternal life with God, and that is through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. The apostle Peter says in Acts 4:12, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” God values your soul very highly and through the giving of His Son to be reviled, defamed, cursed, and put to shame and contempt, slaughtered in crucifixion, He has paid an immense price for your soul.
It is written of Jesus by the prophet Isaiah, in the fifty-third chapter, “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely, he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities [not for His iniquities]: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” The immense suffering and humiliation that the Saviour underwent was not for any wrong that He had done, for He “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.”
God, our Father, saw us in sin, lost and without any hope, and the penalty attached to sin was death and destruction, misery, damnation, and eternal burning. It is written, “For God so loved the world [sinners], that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever [that means you, me, or anybody else] believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16.
We usually measure the value of a thing by what we are willing to pay for it, so we see that God placed an immense value on our souls, for He was willing that His only Son should suffer the awful outrage of wicked and sinful men and be exposed to the ghastly treatment and bear the reality and severe pains of one being crucified, the just, suffering for the guilty. The penalty of our sins was eternal death. In order for us to be granted eternal life, the debt of our sins had to be met, had to be paid. It took the blood of an innocent man to pay that debt. Jesus was the only innocent man to be found, for all others had sinned and come short of the glory of God.
John wept when he saw us all in sin and no one was found to open the book and loose the seals thereof. Surely, it was a serious thing and something that should cause great weeping. John was soon comforted, for an elder said, “Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.” (Read Revelation 5.)
When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, suffered, bled, and died upon the cross, He opened the Book of Life to every soul; and all who will believe can be freed from sin and death and have eternal life. The precious, innocent blood of the Lamb of God is the immense price that God, who loved you, has paid for your soul; and that blood, if believed in and received as an atonement for sin will make the “vilest sinner clean” and innocent. When the precious Son of God was dying upon the cross, the Father looked down upon the scene from heaven and saw the innocent blood of His dear Son flowing freely. Finally, the anguish, pain and suffering ceased, and it was finished. The Father was satisfied with the sacrifice that He had made for our sins, and the death sentence is canceled to all who will believe and receive His blood as an atonement for their sins.
If sinners will become sorry and repent, ask forgiveness for sins committed, and accept the blood sacrifice which Jesus offered for their sins, they will be covered by the blood of the Lamb; they will have made peace with God through the sacrifice made by the Lord Jesus Christ.
If souls could realize the extreme suffering and abuse that Jesus, an innocent Man, underwent to purchase their salvation, they would have to be hard-hearted indeed to reject such a Saviour and turn from their only hope of eternal life.
To give you some idea of what it means to be crucified, I shall quote from Farrar’s Life of Christ: “It was unanimously considered the most horrible form of death. Among the Romans, the degradation was also a part of the infliction, and the punishment . . . was only used in the case of the vilest criminals. The one to be crucified was stripped naked of all his clothes, and then followed the most awful moment of all. He was laid down upon the implement of torture. His arms were stretched along the cross-beams, and at the center of the open palms the point of a huge iron nail was placed, which, by the blow of a mallet, was driven home into the wood. Then through either foot separately, or possibly through both feet together, as they were placed one over the other, another huge nail tore its way through the quivering flesh. Whether the sufferer was also bound to the cross we do not know; but, to prevent the hands and feet being torn away by the weight of the body, which could not ‘rest upon nothing but four great wounds,’ there was, about the center of the cross, a wooden projection strong enough to support, at least a human body, which soon became a weight of agony. Then the ‘accursed tree’ with its living human burden was slowly heaved up and the end fixed firmly in a hole in the ground.
“The feet were but a little raised above the earth. The victim was in full reach of every hand that might choose to strike. A death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and death can have of the horrible and ghastly-dizziness, cramping, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, publicity of shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of untended wounds, all intensified just up to the point at which they can be endured at all, but all stopping just short of the point which would give to the sufferer the relief of unconsciousness. The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries, especially of the head and stomach, became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and, while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerable pang of a burning and a raging thirst. Such was the death to which Christ was doomed.”
My dear sinner friend, this is a description of the humiliation and intense suffering that Jesus went through because He loved your soul and wanted you to be free from sin and have eternal life. Jesus is a friend of the sinner. What more could you ask a friend to do to prove that he loved you? God valued your soul so highly that He gave His Son as a price for your soul, and Jesus loved you so much that He willingly suffered for your redemption. God is not sending souls to hell, but has made a way for you to escape that awful place, and now, He begs you to plead guilty of sin and ask forgiveness and accept the Blood as an atonement, and have peace with God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Choose life, for eternal life is in His Blood.
