Are you just being selfish if you seek salvation?
Dear Friends,
That are some (usually liberal preachers who don’t believe in Christ themselves) who will charge you with being selfish if you seek salvation through Christ. Today’s devotional argues that only by seeking such salvation can you be unselfish. Think it over. God bless you.
Because of Calvary,
John Janney
Luke 18:9-14
Luke 18:9-14 English Standard Version (ESV)
The Pharisee and the Tax Collector
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed[a] thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Luke 18:9-14
“…There is nothing selfish in crying, with the publican, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’ If anybody says that it is selfish to pray for yourself so much, just ask him what he would do if he were drowning? Does anybody say that it is selfish for him to strike out and try to swim, or selfish to seize the lifebuoy that is thrown to him? If you were in a fire, and likely to be burned to death, would anybody call you selfish because you looked out for the fire-escape, and climbed on to it as soon as it touched your window? And when your very soul is in danger, it is a hallowed selfishness to seek first its salvation. If your own soul be lost, what can you do for the salvation of other people? If you perish, what benefit can you be to your fellow-men? Truly, this is a holy charity which ought to begin at home, and I do not believe that any man does really care for the souls of others who does not first and foremost care about his own soul. If you do not pray, ‘O visit me with thy salvation,’ I am sure that you do not pray, ‘O visit my wife with thy salvation. O visit my children with thy salvation.’ Therefore, keep to this personal prayer till it is answered, and when it is, then pray for all others as earnestly as you have prayed for yourself.”
[Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLIV, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1898), p. 584]
