Dear Friends,

Have you ever been on a trip and gotten confused as to which road to take. Frustrating? Yes! Deadly? No. But confusion about the way to heaven can lead to eternal disaster. Today’s devotional explains. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

• Isaiah 53:5

  Isaiah 53:5English Standard Version (ESV)
  5 But he was pierced for our transgressions;
  he was crushed for our iniquities;
  upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
  and with his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 53:5

“The healing of a sinner does not lie in himself, nor in what he is, nor in what he feels, nor in what he does, nor in what he vows, nor in what he promises. It is not in himself at all; but there, at Gabbatha, where the pavement is stained with the blood of the Son of God, and there, at Golgotha, where the place of a skull beholds the agonies of Christ. It is in his stripes that the healing lies. I beseech thee, do not scourge thyself: ‘With his stripes we are healed.’ I beg thee, do not think that, by some kind of spiritual mortification, or terror, or horror, into which thou art to force thyself, thou shalt be healed; thy healing is in his stripes, not in thine own; in his griefs, not in thy griefs. Come thou away to Christ; and even if thou art tempted to trust in thy repentance, I implore thee, do not make thy repentance into a rival of the stripes of Jesus, for so it would become an anti-Christ. When thine eye is full of tears, look through them to Christ on the cross, for it is not a wet eye that will save thee, but the Christ whom thou mayest see, whether thine eye be wet or dry. In the Christ upon the cross there are five wounds, but you have not to add even another one of your own to them.”
[Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLIII, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1897), p. 19]