1 Corinthians 9:22

Paul’s great object was not merely to instruct and to improve, but to save. Anything short of this would have disappointed him; he wanted men to be renewed in heart, forgiven, sanctified—in fact, saved. Have our Christian labors been aimed at anything below this great point? Then let us amend our ways, for of what use will it be on the last great day to have taught and moralized men if they appear before God unsaved?

Blood-red will our skirts be if through life we have sought inferior objects and forgotten that men needed to be saved. Paul knew the ruin of man’s natural state and did not try to educate him but to save him; he saw men sinking to hell and did not talk of refining them but of saving them from the wrath to come.

To achieve their salvation, he gave himself up with untiring zeal to spreading the gospel, to warning and imploring men to be reconciled to God. His prayers were persistent and his labors incessant. To save souls was his consuming passion, his ambition, his calling. He became a servant to all men, toiling for his race, feeling a woe within him if he did not preach the gospel.

He laid aside his preferences to prevent prejudice; he submitted his will in things indifferent, and if men would only receive the gospel, he raised no questions about forms or ceremonies: the gospel was the one all-important business with him. If he might save some, he would be content. This was the crown for which he strove, the sole and sufficient reward of all his labors and self-denials.

Dear reader, have you and I lived to win souls at this noble rate? Are we possessed with the same all-absorbing desire? If not, why not? Jesus died for sinners; cannot we live for them? Where is our tenderness? Where is our love to Christ, if we do not seek his honor in the salvation of men? Oh, that the Lord would saturate us through and through with an undying zeal for the souls of men!