Have You Heard the Word of God? From the Written Word? From the Preached Word? From the Holy Spirit and Confessed; "What Shall We Do"?

A Devotional for April 2, 2025

That Just Might Change Your Life

From the Work of God From a Powerful Preacher!

(Picture: Peter preaching at Pentecost)

“What Shall We Do?”

“Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’”

Acts 2: 37.

How can . . . [a man] tell what it is to be saved that hath not in his conscience groaned under the burden of sin? Yes, it is impossible that he should ever cry out with all his heart, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”—that is, do to be saved. The man that hath no sores or aches cannot know the virtue of the salve. I mean, not know it from his own experience and therefore cannot prize, nor have that esteem of it, as he that hath received [the] cure. Clap a plaster [poultice] to a well place, and that does not make its virtue to appear. Neither can he to whose flesh it is so applied by that application [he] understands its worth. Sinners . . . that are not wounded with guilt and oppressed with the burden of sin; cannot—I will say it again—cannot know in this senseless condition of yours what it is to be saved.

Again, this word “saved,” as I said, concludes deliverance from the wrath of God. How, then, can he tell what it is to be saved that hath not felt the burden of the wrath of God? He—he that is astonished with and that trembles at the wrath of God—he knows best what it is to be saved (Acts 16:29).

But to come to the question—What is it to be saved? To be saved may either respect salvation in the whole or salvation in the parts of it or both. I think this text respects both—to wit, salvation completing, and salvation completed: For “to save” is a work of many steps. Or to be as plain as possible, “to save” is a work that hath its beginning before the world began and shall not be completed before it is ended.