During a recent visit to the town of Buxton, Derbyshire, I was asked by a Christian lady to visit a woman in whose spiritual welfare she was interested. One afternoon I called at the house, and in the course of conversation was amazed at her deplorable ignorance. On my enquiring if she was prepared for eternity, she replied that she did not know. Asked if she was a sinner, her response was, “Oh, yes; we are all sinners.”

             “God’s Word tells us that ‘The wages of sin is death’ (Rom. 6:23). Have you earned these wages?” “I don’t know,” she responded.

             “Have you been ‘born again’?” (John 3:3). “I have not.”

             “Have you been ‘converted’?” (Matt. 18:3). “No.”

             “Are you a hell-deserving sinner?” “No; I am not so bad as that.”

             “If, then, you are not a hell-deserving sinner, are you a heaven-deserving one?” “Yes; I believe I am.”

             “What! Do you mean to say that you deserve to go to heaven?” “I do.”

             “Why do you think so?” “Because I never did any harm in my life.”

             This woman is a representative of thousands of decent, respectable persons all over the land. They seem to be utterly unconcerned about their guilt and danger. Ask them if they expect to get to heaven, and they unhesitatingly declare that they “hope” or “expect” to reach it “at last.” Enquire the ground of their confidence, and they tell you that they “never did any harm,” and have tried to “do their duty.” They admit in a general way that they are “sinners,” but they don’t believe that they are hell-deserving sinners. Ask them how long it is since they were “born again,” “converted,” or “saved,” and they reply that they have not got “that length” yet.

             Is the reader “heaven-deserving” or “hell-deserving?” Surely you don’t believe that you have always been what you should have been, and always done what you should have done.

                “I know that I am a sinner.” Then, according to your admission, you deserve to be punished. All unsaved, unconverted sinners are lost and guilty, helpless and hell-deserving, for God’s Word declares that “The soul who sins, it shall die” (Ezek. 18:20). What, then, is to become of you? Can you pay the debt that you owe to God? Will future well-doing blot out the past? Surely not. Thank God, there is deliverance for you at this very moment. Christ died for “sinners” (Rom. 5:8), for the “ungodly” (5:6), for you (1 Tim. 2:6). On account of His “finished” work God’s claims have been fully met, and by simply believing on Him who did it all and paid it all, you may now pass from death unto life, from darkness into light (Rom. 10:9). Settle the important question now—“Are you heaven-deserving or hell-deserving; are you bound for heaven or Hell—WHICH?”