Paid in Full

by Rev Greg Obong-Oshotse 4 September 2020

Text: John 19:30 “. . . he said, “It is finished” . . . bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832-1905) was born in Barnsley to a Methodist family; his father was a local preacher. At 21 he sailed for China and founded the China Inland Mission, eventually recruiting over 800 missionaries, despite stiff challenges and personal losses, including two wives and several children. How did he get saved?

One afternoon he went into an old warehouse with a Gospel tract Poor Richard. About 80 miles away his mother locked herself in her room for hours praying for the salvation of her only son. As he read he came across ‘the finished work of Christ’, recalled Christ’s last words on the Cross, “It is finished” (‘paid in full’), then thought, “If the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid, what is there left for me to do?” And with this dawned the joyful conviction, as light was flashed into my soul by the Holy Spirit, that there was nothing in the world to be done but to fall down on one’s knees, and accepting this Saviour and His salvation, to praise Him for evermore. Thus while my dear mother was praising God on her knees in her chamber, I was praising Him in the old warehouse to which I had gone alone to read at my leisure this little book.” Given out a tract lately?

A Hudson Quote “China is not to be won for Christ by quiet, ease- loving men and women ... The stamp of men and women we need is such as will put Jesus, China, [and] souls first and foremost in everything and at every time—even life itself must be secondary.”

​Prayer

Dear Father restore to us a passion for tract evangelism and for soul winning in Christ’s name. Amen