Christ Sets The Captives Free!
A wealthy and philanthropic individual visits a prison and approaches the dungeon in which a wretched captive lies bound with chains and fetters, and strongly secured within walls, and doors, and bars. He proclaims loud to the captive that he has brought gold sufficient for a ransom on condition that the captive will liberate himself from his chains, burst open his prison doors, and come forth. "Alas," exclaims the wretched man, "your kindness does not reach my case. Unless your gold can effect my deliverance, it can be of no service to me. The offer of it on such terms can do me no good." Now, although there is a great difference between physical and spiritual inability, yet one serves to illustrate the other. Man by nature is as spiritually unable to believe in Christ as the prisoner is physically unable to break his chains and open the prison doors; so that all this boasted sufficiency of the atonement is only an empty offer of salvation on certain terms a...