Christ Our Saviour

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. ACTS 4:12

The first wheel of the chariot is the one every Christian assumes he has already understood, and Simpson’s treatment of it is worth attention precisely because of how he came to it.

A boy who could not get in

He was raised in a rigorous Scottish Presbyterian home, catechised thoroughly, and made thoroughly wretched by it. He believed every doctrine he had been taught. He could not find peace in any of them. The difficulty was not intellectual. It was that he understood himself to be required to arrive at some condition — sufficient repentance, adequate sorrow, a certain quality of surrender — before he could come to Christ. And every time he examined himself he found the condition unmet. He drove himself into a physical collapse trying to produce it. What released him, at fifteen, was a sentence in an old Puritan book: that the first good work a man will ever perform is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He saw it. He had been trying to become fit to come, and the coming was the fitness. There was nothing to bring.

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. ROMANS 4:5

He was honest all his life that no great emotion accompanied this. He simply took what was offered, and afterwards became settled that Christ had received him. Feelings came later, and irregularly, and he never allowed them to be the foundation.

More than pardon

But Simpson’s distinctive emphasis lies elsewhere, and it shapes everything that follows in his teaching. Salvation, as he preached it, is not merely the cancelling of a debt. It is the impartation of a life.

He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. 1 JOHN 5:12

A man may be forgiven and remain what he was. If salvation were pardon only, the sinner would leave the courtroom acquitted and unchanged, facing the same future with the same nature. What Scripture describes is birth — a new category of existence, with a life in it that was not there before.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

This is why Simpson could move so naturally from the first wheel to the second. If salvation is the impartation of Christ’s life, then sanctification is not a separate programme requiring different machinery. It is the same life, further received.

Christ our salvation, not merely its author

Notice the grammar of the Fourfold Gospel again. Not Christ the giver of salvation, but Christ our Saviour — and Simpson pressed even that into the possessive.

The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation. EXODUS 15:2

Is become my salvation. Not has provided it. The Old Testament says this repeatedly, and Simpson would not let the phrase be flattened into a figure of speech. Christ does not stand outside us holding our salvation; He enters, and is it. The practical difference shows up when a believer sins. If salvation is a thing you were given, then failure raises the question of whether you still have it, and the anxious conscience spends its life auditing. If salvation is a Person who has taken up residence, the question changes entirely: not do I still possess it? but is He still there? — and He has answered that Himself.

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. JOHN 10:28

Free, and therefore urgent

One further note, because it explains the rest of Simpson’s life. The freeness of salvation did not make him casual about it. It made him frantic. A man who believes that salvation must be earned may reasonably conclude that most people will not manage it, and settle into resignation. A man who believes it is free, complete and available to anyone who will simply take it, cannot be calm about the fact that millions have never been told. Simpson’s missionary passion was not a separate enthusiasm bolted onto his theology. It was the direct consequence of what he believed about grace.

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? ROMANS 10:14

If you have carried a quiet suspicion that you must reach some standard before God will fully receive you, the sentence that freed a miserable fifteen-year-old in Ontario is worth sitting with. The first good work you will ever do is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything else follows. Nothing else precedes.

Assurance without feeling

Simpson’s own conversion supplies a useful lesson for a very common difficulty. He took Christ at fifteen and felt nothing. For some time afterwards he was troubled by the absence, because he had heard others describe a flood of joy at their conversion and could report no such thing. He concluded eventually that he had been looking for evidence in the wrong place. The New Testament grounds assurance not in the quality of an experience but in the reliability of a word.

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life. 1 JOHN 5:13

John says he wrote so that believers might know — and the instrument of that knowing is the thing written, not the emotion felt. Simpson’s counsel to the anxious was accordingly simple and unromantic. Do not examine your feelings to discover whether you are saved; examine what God has promised to those who come, and then determine whether you have come.

All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. JOHN 6:37

He noticed the double negative in that promise — in no wise — and regarded it as deliberate. The Lord appears to have anticipated exactly the person who would come and then doubt whether he had been received. None of this makes feeling worthless. Simpson had plenty of it later, and wrote hymns out of it. The point is one of foundation: emotion is a good deal more enjoyable than fact and a great deal less reliable, and a house built on it will move whenever its owner is tired, ill or discouraged.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name the condition you have been quietly trying to meet before you believe God fully accepts you. Then stop trying to meet it. 2. Check whether your assurance rests on feeling or on what God has said. If feeling, deliberately move the weight. 3. Consider whether you think of salvation as a transaction you received or a Person who lives in you. The second changes how you handle failure. 4. If you have never definitely taken Christ, do it now, in the plainest words you can manage. There is nothing to bring. 5. Let the freeness of the gospel produce urgency rather than complacency. Name one person who has never clearly heard it.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, I have spent years trying to become fit to come to You, and the coming was the fitness all along.

I bring nothing. I have nothing to bring. I take what You have offered because You have offered it, and not because I have qualified.

Be my salvation — not a gift held at a distance, but Yourself living in me.

And having received freely, let me not be calm about those who have never been told. Amen.