The Great Question and the Plain Answer
A. Maclaren, D. D. Acts 16:30-31 And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?… The keeper of a Macedonian gaol was not likely to be a very nervous or susceptible person. And so the extraordinary state of agitation and panic into which this rough jailer was east needs some kind of explanation. Now do you think that the jailer's question was a piece of foolish superstition? I daresay some of you do, or some of you may suppose, too, that it was one very unnecessary for him or anybody to ask. So I want, in a very few words, to deal with these three things — the question that we should all ask, the answer that we may all take, the blessing that we may all have. I. THE QUESTION THAT WE SHOULD ALL ASK. I know that it is very unfashionable nowadays to talk about "salvation" as man's need. What is it to be saved? Two things; to be healed and to be safe. With both aspects the expression is employed over and over again in Scripture. It means either restoration from sickness or deliverance from peril. I venture to press upon everyone here these two considerations — we all need healing from sickness; we all need safety from peril. Mind, I am not talking about vices. I have no doubt you are a perfectly respectable man, in all the ordinary relations of life. Be honest with yourselves in asking and answering the question whether or not you have this sickness of sin, its paralysis towards good or its fevered inclination to evil. If salvation means being healed of a disease we have all got the disease; and whether we wish it or no, we want the healing. And what of the other meaning of the word? Salvation means being safe? Are you safe? Is anybody safe standing in front of that awful law that rules the whole universe, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap"? Somewhere and somehow, men will have to lie on the beds that they have made; to drink as they have brewed. If sin means separation from God, and separation from God means, as it assuredly does, death, then I ask you, and there is no need for any exaggerated words about it, Are we not in danger? and if salvation be a state of deliverance from sickness, and a state of deliverance from peril, do we not need it? Ah, I venture to say we need it more than anything else. You will not misunderstand me as expressing the slightest depreciation of other remedies that are being offered extensively now for the various evils under which society and individuals groan. We are wrong in our relation to God, and that has to be set right before we are fundamentally and thoroughly right. That is to say, salvation is our deepest need. Then how does it come that men go on, as so many of my friends here this evening have gone on, all their days paying no attention to that need? Is their any folly, amidst all the irrationalities of that irrational creature man, to be matched with the folly of steadily refusing to look forward and settle for ourselves the prime element in our condition — viz., our relation to God? A man is never so wise as when he says to himself, "Let me fairly know the whole facts of my relation to the unseen world in so far as they can be known here, and if they are wrong, let me set about rectifying them, if it be possible." II. That brings me to the next point here — viz., THE BLESSED, CLEAR ANSWER THAT WE MAY ALL TAKE. Paul and Silas were not nonplussed by this question, nor did they reply to it in the fashion in which many men would have answered it. Take a specimen. If anybody were to go with this question to some of our modern wise men and teachers, they would say, "Saved? My good fellow, there is nothing to be saved from. Get rid of delusions, and clear your mind of cant and superstition." Or they would say, "Saved? Well, if you have gone wrong, do the best you can in the time to come." Or if you went to some of our friends they would say, "Come and be baptized, and receive the grace of regeneration in holy baptism; and then come to the sacraments, and be faithful and loyal members of the Church which has apostolic succession in it." And some would say, "Set yourselves to work and toil and labour." And some would say, "Don't trouble yourselves about such whims. A short life and a merry one; make the best of it, and jump the life to come." Neither cold morality nor godless philosophy nor wild dissipation nor narrow ecclesiasticism prompted Paul's answer. He said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." What did that poor heathen man know about the Lord Jesus Christ? Next to nothing. How could he believe upon Him if he knew so little about Him? Well, you hear in the context that this summary answer to the question was the beginning and not the end of a conversation, which conversation, no doubt, consisted largely in extending and explaining the brief formulary with which it had commenced. But it is a grand thing that we can put the all essential truth into half a dozen simple words, and then expound and explain them as may be necessary. Mark, first, whom it is that we are to believe on. "The Lord," that is the Divine Name; "Jesus," that is the name of a man; "Christ," that is the name of an office. And if you put them all together, it is this, He on whom we sinful men may put our sole trust, and hope for our healing and our safety, is the Son of God, who came down upon earth to live our life and to die our death that He might bear on Himself our sins, and fulfil all that ancient prophecy and symbol had proclaimed as needful, and therefore certain to be done, for men. It is not a starved half Saviour whose name is only Jesus, and neither Lord nor Christ, faith in whom will save you. You must grasp the whole revelation of His nature and His power if from Him there is to flow the life that you need. And note what it is that we are to do with Jesus Christ. To "believe on Him" is a very different thing from believing Him. III. Lastly, consider THE BLESSING WE MAY ALL RECEIVE. This jailer about whom we have been speaking was a heathen when the sun set and a Christian when it rose. A sudden conversion, you say, and sudden conversions are always suspicious. I am not so sure about that: they may be or they may not be, according to circumstances. There are a great many things in this world that have to be done suddenly if they are ever to be done at all. And I, for my part, would have far more faith in a man who, in one leap, sprung from the depth of the degradation of that coarse jailer into the light and joy of the Christian life, than in a man who tried to get to it by slow steps. You have to do everything in this world worth doing by a sudden resolution, however long the preparation may have been which led up to the resolution. The act of resolving is always the act of an instant. And there is an immense danger that with some of you, if that change does not begin in a moment's resolve tonight, you will be further away from it than ever you were. The outcast jailer changed nationalities in a moment. You who have dwelt in the suburbs of Christ's kingdom all your lives — why cannot you go inside the gate as quickly? For many of us the gradual "growing up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" has been the appointed way. For some of us I verily believe this sudden change is the best. Some of us have a sunrise like the tropics, where the One moment is grey and cold, and next moment the seas are lit with the glory. Others of us have a sunrise like the poles, where a long, slow-growing light precedes the rising, and the rising itself is scarce observable. But it matters little as to how we get to Christ, if we are there. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? WEB: and brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"