The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1908, Page 57

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Che Lutheran Pioneer.

A MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

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PuBLISHED BY THE EVANGELICAL LuTHEeran SyNopDICAL ConFERENCE OF Nortit AMERICA.

R. A. BISCHOFF, Editor.

Entered at the Post Oflice at St. Louls, Mo., as second-class matter.

Vol. XXX.

Assurance.

You ask me how I know

That when all life below
Is past for me,

1, often stained by sin,

Shall meet heaven’s welcome in
To purity?

I answer, Not because

I keep God’s holy laws;
Alas! I fail.

No righteousness of mine

Before that court divine
Can then avail.

But One did say, “Believe
On me, and thus receive
My gift of life.”
* How can I trust my Lord,
Or honor His dear word,
If doubts are rife?

"Tis not that I am good;

That must be understood;
But I believe,

And, therefore, not to know

That I to Him shall go,
Would my Lord grieve.

It is not I who save,
Nor any worth I have;
Do you not see?
But I can be quite sure
I shall reach heaven so pure,

Beeause ’tis He!
Helen Hawley.

———_—_2--2—____—__

Saved by Christ’s Righteousness.

It is reported that many years ago, in the time
‘of the Cuban war, an American citizen, who lived
in Cuba, was arrested by the Spanish authorities

St. Louis, Mo., August, 1908.

as a spy. He was tried, pronounced guilty, sen-
tenced to death, and led forth to be shot. The sol-
diers stood ready to carry out the sentence of
death, when the American Consul rushed from the
crowd of spectators and threw around the doomed
man the flag of his country. Instantly the guns
were lowered, and he who was “as good as dead”
was saved, because he was wrapped in the flag of
a mighty nation, which was thus pledged for his
protection. The enemy would not dare to shoot,
for the balls could not touch the man’s body with-
out first piercing the American flag.

This may illustrate the way in which the sinner
is saved by Christ’s righteousness from everlasting
damnation. By nature man is “dead in trespasses
and sins,” “condemned already.” The broken Law
demands his punishment; for “cursed is every one
that continueth not in all things which are written
in the book of the Law to do them.” Sin demands
the payment of its wages in death; for “the wages
of sin is death.” Satan claims the poor wretched
sinner as belonging to him; for “he that committeth
sin is of the devil.” There is no help and no sal-
vation for the sinner among created beings. “None
of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor
give to God a ransom for him,” Ps. 49, 7.

The sinner’s only help and salvation is in Jesus,
who Himself knew no sin, but whom God “hath
made to be sin for us, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him,” 2 Cor. 5, 21. He
was “made under the Law to redeem them that
were under the Law,” by perfectly fulfilling all its
demands and enduring its curse in the sinners’
stead. The righteousness which He thus secured
for all is offered to every sinner in the Gospel. The
moment the convicted and ruined sinner believes