esence of Him who alone can save and says, "God, be merciful unto me
a sinner."

This question implies, in the third place, not only that the man is
lost who asked it, but that there is a possibility of his being saved.
"What must I do to be saved?"--and here was a man conscious of being
lost, conscious of being sin scarred and stained and guilty, yet he
believes, and he is right in believing, that salvation is possible for
him. He believes that even he can be saved unto the uttermost. There
is such a thing as salvation and it is possible for me, even me, to lay
hold of it.

And you too must realize that, otherwise it will do you no good to
realize the fact that you are a sinner. It is not enough to know
yourself lost. You must also believe that you may be saved. It is not
enough to realize that you are weak: you must believe that is possible
for you to be strong. You must believe that even a fluctuating Simon
can be made into a rock. You must believe in the power of God to
remake men, otherwise for you the question is only a question of black
despair.

This question implies, in the fourth place, a willingness to be saved.
"What must I do to be saved?" This man is not asking this question to
gather material for a future argument. He is no speculator. He is no
trifler. He is not even asking it because he is intellectually
curious. He is not simply asking that he may know the conditions of
salvation. He is asking with the earnest purpose in his heart to meet
those conditions.

This question implies, in the fifth place, that while salvation is a
possibility for you, you must do something in order to obtain it.
"What must I do to be saved?" What sort of an answer would you expect
to a question like that? What did the apostle say? Did he say, "Do
nothing. Let the matter alone. Forget it. Drift?" That is what many
of us are doing. No, sir, he said nothing of the kind. He told this
man to do something. And this man knew, as you and I know, that if we
are ever saved we have got to do something in order to get saved.

I say every one of us knows that, and yet too few of us act as if it
were really true. We seem to think that salvation is something that we
are going to stumble upon by accident. We seem to think it is
something that we are going to receive with absolutely no effort on our
own part. We act as if we thought it might be slipped into our pockets
while we sleep or dropped into our coffin