Come to Christ for Eternal Life

Being a Christian is not about reading enough of the Bible to balance out our failures; it’s coming to Jesus Christ for eternal life. Today, Sinclair Ferguson visits the passage in Scripture that exposed his need for a Savior.

It’s Monday again here on Things Unseen. I’m sure you’ve seen those puzzle books that often seem to be printed on the cheapest quality paper. Sometimes you’ll see children or perhaps even older adults with them on, usually, long-haul flights or long train journeys. There’s sometimes a join-the-dots puzzle, and you try and guess the person or object as you join up the dots that seem to be randomly placed there on the page. I sometimes think life’s like that, isn’t it? Full of apparently isolated dots. But if you’re a Christian, you know they’re not accidental or random, and you know that the dots will eventually all make sense, even if it’s not clear what that final picture is going to be. But you begin to trace the line from one dot to another.

In some ways, passages of Scripture can be like those dots, for one way we sometimes are helped to catch a glimpse of God’s plan and pattern in our lives is to think of the specific verses or passages in Scripture that have made a special impression on us, to see them as divinely placed dots, if you will, and to watch them being joined up to give shape to your life. I know that for myself, looking back, I think I can see how God has, if you will, joined up the dots to give my own life shape. So, I thought this week I’d reflect on some of those passages, not because there’s anything special about my own experience, but partly because I’m thinking of great Bible passages, and also because I think this may be a way of encouraging you to do the same—to trace the Lord’s ways with you.

Both Scripture and the old masters of the spiritual life tell us that it’s important to remember God’s ways with us because when we remember His providential dealings with us, that helps us praise Him for His watch care over our lives, and it also helps us to trust Him when we’re not exactly sure what He is doing with us. It helps us to sing, “The Lord has brought me safe thus far, and He will bring me home.”

So, my first passage this week is John’s gospel, chapter 5, verses 39 to 40. I think I’ve mentioned before on the podcast that I began to read the Bible when I was eight or nine. My family didn’t go to church, but I was sent to the local Sunday school. And one of my teachers, who was a man called Jimmy Stewart, encouraged me to join a Bible reading society called the Scripture Union that had a program for reading through the Bible, I think every three years or so. So, I suppose I must have read the Bible twice, maybe, by the time I was fifteen. And about four or so months before my fifteenth birthday, I was reading in John 5, and some words seemed to leap off the page to me. I suppose I’d been a bit like the young Samuel—God was speaking through His Word, but I wasn’t really recognizing His voice. But then the words of Jesus I was now reading seemed to walk off the page, as though the Lord Himself was addressing me and saying, “Sinclair Ferguson, what I was saying to these people during My earthly ministry, I’m now saying to you as well.”

Here are the words: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” And that was exactly what I’d been doing: searching the Scriptures. In fact, I’d thought that this was what it meant to be a Christian—this and trying to do good things that would perhaps balance any failures in my life. Yes, I know, I was young, but I could read and wasn’t unintelligent. And it isn’t that the message of the Bible is obscure—after all, we speak about its perspicuity—it was that I was spiritually blind. I’d done exactly what those contemporaries of Jesus had done, even if perhaps not as intensively. I had repeated their mistake. I thought that reading and studying the Bible was how you qualified for eternal life. I knew about the Savior, but I’d never come to Him. I was actually spiritually dead.

It wasn’t that I doubted any of the articles of the Apostles Creed, for example. So, what I needed was not more Bible study notes, even if they were helpful; what I needed was to come to Christ and trust in Him. And now He was speaking to me through His Word. And in some ways, I think I can say those two verses changed everything. Of course, they were surrounded by much else in my life. And looking back, I realize that there were people who were praying for me and that the Lord was working in my heart and other ways too. He was, it felt, closing in on me.

Actually, the Bible’s teaching on God’s sovereign grace, even His election, seemed to be written on my story from the beginning. I felt as though, somehow, He had been pursuing me and drawing me when I wasn’t really pursuing Him, or certainly not seeing Him. So, I had still not trusted Christ, and that’s why the word of Jesus in John 5:39–40 arrested me and showed me what was missing. And in my mind, it marks the beginnings of everything that has followed in my life since.

You know, I think it’s altogether possible that someone might happen on this podcast who’s also reading the Bible and who’s thinking the way I thought back then. If that’s true of you, I hope my experience will be yours also soon and that perhaps you’ll hear the Lord Jesus saying through these very same words, “Friend, you’re missing the point.” I know that can be a hard thing to hear because it’s humbling, but do listen to the words of the Lord Jesus: “What you need to do is to come to Me and find eternal life.” I hope you’ll do that and I hope you’ll join us tomorrow on Things Unseen.