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{The Application
Application for the Ungodly
Embark with Christ}
Venture yourselves with Christ. Throw yourselves upon His righteousness as that which will bring you to God. Consider a poor captive exile who finds himself in a strange land, a land of robbers and murderers. There, he is ready to perish and has no hope of either living there or escaping home with his life. Suppose he finally meets a ship captain who offers to transport him safely home. He embarks with him and ventures himself and all that he has in that vessel.220 You must do likewise with Christ. You are exiles from the presence of God and live in a land of robbers and murderers. Your sins are robbers. Your pleasures are robbers. Your companions in sin are robbers and thieves. If you stay where you are, you perish, and you cannot escape home by yourselves. Christ offers, if you will venture with Him, to bring you home, and He will bring you to God. Will you say now to Him, Lord Jesus, will you assume responsibility for me? Will you bring me to God and into the land of promise? With you I will venture myself; I throw myself upon you, upon your blood, upon your righteousness, and upon your faithfulness. I lay all my hopes with you and venture my whole substance, being, soul, and body with you.
This is your closing with Christ as your Priest, and this closing includes your renouncing your own righteousness.221 You can never—you will never—ever throw yourselves on Him alone until all your self-hopes222 have perished.
There are two things that are necessary in order for a sinner to come to Christ:
An utter despair of himself and all other things besides Christ
220Recall that, in Alleine’s time, sea voyages were still quite uncomfortable, accompanied with hardships, and were dangerous.
221In this context, renouncing one’s own righteousness means not pretending to present any supposed righteousness of our own to God as a means of meriting His favor. All supposed righteousness that is from ourselves is actually filthy and abominable to God because it is so blasted and infused with our sin. But when a person closes with Christ, his or her sin is reckoned as Christ’s and Christ paid the punishment for it on the cross. Moreover, God accounts Christ’s perfect righteousness to the sinner so that God looks at the sinner as clothed and covered with Christ’s perfect righteousness, which righteousness perfectly pleases the Heavenly Father; God is thus well pleased with the forgiven believer.
222self-hopes: any hope that we, ourselves, can earn or merit any favor, blessing, or forgiveness from God.
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