What To Tell a Dying Friend – by Desmond Ford
Dec 27, 2015 2026
This is what you say to the dying man or woman…
You were ruined without asking for it; you were ruined in the first representative of the human race. But you have been redeemed without asking for it. You had nothing to do with that either. The Savior came, took all your sin, kept the law perfectly in his life, atoned for your breaking of it in his death and thus justified the world.
You were saved at the cross. Will you accept it? You were redeemed at the cross, legally. You are justified. Will you accept it?
God gives air; we must breathe it in. God gives sunshine, although we can hide from it. By shutting our eyes, our eyelids are as a sacrament of rebellion. We can shut our eyes if we wish against the truth of God.
So we tell our dying friend, look, all of us were ruined and we had nothing to do with it when our first parents rebelled, when they lost the indwelling Holy Spirit, so that we were born without it. So we were born bad, crooked, more crooked than any corkscrew – all of us.
There are only two classes of people in the world, respectable sinners and disreputable sinners. They are the only two types of people in the world. But we have been redeemed without asking for it by our Second Representative. He has taken all our guilt and has dealt with it, so that the whole world is legally justified. That is what it says – “justification came all men.”
It does not mean all men are saved. I must accept it. We don’t like accepting gifts sometimes; we would rather earn our way. You can’t earn the eternal, and you can’t earn the infinite. You have to take it as a gift or there is no way at all.
Will you accept it?
– Des Ford. Rom 8:27–32. Adapted from, “The News That Shook The World – Part 3.
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