Power in the Blood

Mr. Innis, a great Scottish minister, once visited a lost man who was dying. When he came for the first time he said, “Mr. Innis, I am relying on the mercy of God; God is merciful, and He will never damn a man forever.” When he got worse and was nearer death Mr. Innis went to him again, and he said, “O, Mr. Innis, my hope is gone; for I have been thinking, if God be merciful, God is just, too; and what if, instead of being merciful to me, He should be just to me? What would then become of me? I must give up my hope in the mere mercy of God; tell me how to be saved!” Mr. Innis told him that Christ had died in the stead of all believers—that God could be just, and yet save the justified through the death of Christ. “Ah!” said he, “Mr. Innis, there is something solid in that; I can rest on that; I cannot rest on anything else”; and it is a remarkable fact that none of us ever met with a man who thought he had his sins forgiven unless it was through the blood of Christ. Meet a lost man; he never knows that his sins are forgiven. Meet a legalist; he says, “I hope they will be forgiven”; but he does not pretend they are. No one ever gets even a fancied hope apart from this, that Christ, and Christ alone, must save by the shedding of His blood.
—C. H. Spurgeon