The Full-Handed Saviour
A receiving faith presupposes an offering hand: now, Christ is offered to us in the gospel; there is God's offering hand: but where is our receiving hand of faith? Alas! whence is it, that we cannot take Christ that is offered to us? Even because our hand is full: the empty hand is a receiving hand; but our hands are so full of sin, so full of the world, so full of self-righteousness, that we have not an empty hand, to receive what is offered to us, by the hand of free grace, in the gospel: and we have no will to quit our hold of that, with which our hands are full; and hence cannot take a grip of Christ offered to us. However, herein lies the excellency of the gospel, that it is a Christ, a Jesus, a Lord that is offered to us therein: and the gospel is to be pressed on this account, because, as all that reject it, rejects Christ; so, all that receives it truly, doth receive Christ in it. Human doctrine, however true, brings nothing, at best, but knowledge and speculation to us; but gospel doctrine brings salvation to us; yea, the Saviour himself to our hand, to be received: and, when the offering hand of the gospel, and the receiving hand of faith meets together, then the good work is begun.
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The soul, in receiving Christ, acts freely; he receives the water of life freely, Rev. xxii. 17. Ifa. lv. 1. The man comes to receive Christ with an empty hand, as to one that justifies the ungodly; Rom. iv. 5. "To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." To him that worketh not, in the law sense; not to work, and not to work perfectly, is all one to the law. Now, the man is convinced that, as he cannot work perfectly, nay, cannot work at all, so he comes to Christ as one that is in himself ungodly, acknowledging that the righteousness, by which he can stand before God, is only in Christ, and not in himself, in whole or in part. The man comes emptied of all qualifications to recommend him to God; he sees himself qualified for nothing, but hell and damnation; and thus comes freely, to get all good out of Christ's fulness; he is an empty-handed sinner; but he comes to one who is a full-handed Saviour; for he hath such a stock of grace as cannot be exhausted: angels have a fulness of sufficiency, but they have none to spare; but Christ hath a fulness of redundancy, that hath been flowing over to sinners, near these six thousand years, and yet is not lessened: and it is he that lets out of his grace with the word you hear, or else you get no good of the sermon.
—Ralph Erskine, The Duty of Receiving Christ, and Walking in him opened.
