How to Be Saved and How to Be Lost: The Way of Salvation and the Way of Condemnation Made as Plain as Day [Updated and Annotated]

by Reuben A. Torrey

The immediate purpose of this book is to make the way of salvation as plain as day to men, women, and children, with the expectation that many of those who read the book will see the way, will take it, will be saved at once, and will obtain eternal life immediately. The book goes out into the world for the same purpose that Jesus Christ came into it: to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10 AKJV). The average man or woman, even among well-educated people, does not know how to be saved.

When I was nineteen years old and a senior in Yale College, I was awakened to the fact that I needed salvation, but I was totally ignorant of how to get it. I groped in the deepest darkness. I had gone to perfectly orthodox churches every Sunday of my life ever since I was a very little boy; I had been years in the Sunday school and could quote whole chapters in the Bible. I had read the Bible every day of my life for six years and read it through at least once. I had taught a large Sunday school class, but I did not know what to do to be saved. I have reason to believe that what was true of me is equally true of the average man and woman and the average boy and girl today.

There is a holy God, an infinitely holy God, and when a man sins once, he is a guilty sinner before that holy God. His sins avert the face of that holy Being from him; his sin separates him from that holy God. The wrath of that holy God is kindled against him, even though that God loves him. Christ Jesus came into the world to save us from our guilt, to save us from the wrath of God, and to give our guilty consciences peace.

By His atoning death, Jesus Christ put away the sin that stood between you and God. By His atoning death, by the shedding of His blood, God’s wrath at my sin and at your sin was settled, and settled forever. By His death, my guilty conscience finds peace.

He saves from sin’s power. Our Lord’s own words bring this out with great clearness and force. He says in John 8:34 (ASV), Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant [slave] of sin. We all know this is true. How many of us know from bitterest experience the slavery of sin, the slavery of drunkenness, the slavery of lust, the slavery of the greed for gold, the slavery of a bad temper, the slavery of an unruly tongue, the slavery of a mean disposition, or the slavery of unclean thoughts.

Paul had known the bondage of sin, the awful, grinding slavery of sin. He gives us a page from his autobiography in chapter 7 of Romans. He tells us of how he had found the law of God and how earnestly he had tried to keep it but how utterly he had failed. He had tried to break away from sin. The struggle as described in Romans 7 was a hard one, a determined one, but it resulted in utter failure. Paul tells us that the more he tried to break away from sin, the more helpless he found himself, until, at last in utter despair, he cried, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Romans 7:24 AKJV). He felt like one chained forever to the dead, stinking body of sin, but when he cried, Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? he got his answer at once. You will find the answer in the next verse: I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:25).

Torrey is convinced that Romans 7 is about an unbeliever approaching faith in Christ

He will not save anyone who will not come to Him as a sinner, but He will save at once, freely and fully and forever, every man, woman, and child who will come to Him and confess that they are sinners and put their trust in Him as their Savior from the guilt and power of sin. He will save them freely, fully, and forever. Will you let Him save you? If any man, woman, or child goes out of here tonight unsaved, you will have no one to blame but yourself. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Let Him save you right now.

We notice first that this man was a moral man, a clean man in his personal habits. He could look right up into the face of God who knows our every act, our secret acts, which are done under cover of the night as well as our public acts which all see, and our secret thoughts, and he could say, “I am not an adulterer. I am a clean man morally.” It is a good thing to be able to say that. Some of you men here could not say that. God pity you. You might say it to me, but you could not say it to God; you would not dare. But this man could say it and say it to God, and yet he was not saved.

Interesting that he takes the man's boldness as evidence of his genuineness.

Some of you found a man who was backed into a corner. You had a little money to loan, but oh, how you squeezed your poor brother. Some of you needed to have work done, and you found a poor, starving fellow. You hired him to do a dollar’s worth of work for fifty cents, and even then, you called it charity.

globalization helps us pay the least amount of money to the poorest people. fairtrade may help, but who wants to pay a premium for shipping?

Then, today many “eminently respectable citizens” build up great business enterprises by crowding someone else out. Their vast fortunes are built upon the ruined business enterprises of others, upon broken hearts and desolated homes, and God only knows what else.

Competitive job postings mean that many qualified people won't get the job. Why not choose a career that actually needs more talent?

Many men think God must think well of them because men do. This is a great mistake, for Jesus Christ Himself tells us, God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God (Luke 16:15 AKJV). God does not see as men see, for men look merely upon the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. I once heard a distinguished liberal preacher in Chicago speak when he was preaching a funeral sermon over a man who was an upright man but not a Christian. The brilliant liberal preacher wanted to make it clear that this man had gone to heaven. Under these circumstances, I heard him say, “Any world will welcome a good citizen,” the intended implication being that heaven would welcome this man because he was a good citizen, even though he was not a Christian man. I am afraid this liberal preacher was not knowledgeable about the heavenly world and the conditions upon which one is welcomed there. Many citizens of Los Angeles, highly respected gentlemen like our friend the Pharisee of the text, do not stand the slightest chance of spending eternity in heaven unless they do something that they have never done yet.

Speaking to God, he said, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are (Luke 18:11 AKJV). Literally translated, what he said was, “I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men.” He divided society into two classes. He was in one class all alone, and all the rest of men were in the other class. He was good and all the rest of men were bad, and there he stands exclaiming, “I thank thee that I am not as the rest of men.”

This is truly a literal translation, but if this is how his parents, mentors, or peers brough him up, then they might be using it to describe those outside their group. Similarly, "Gentiles" means the nations, and Israel was a nation, but Israel was not among the Gentiles. The "world" is desperately wicked and doesn't know God, but that doesn't mean genuine Christians don't know God.

How many men there are who are building their hopes of heaven on their inability to discover any flaws in themselves. “I do not see what I need of Christ,” many are saying. Or, “I see no great sins in myself. Jesus Christ may do for the drunkard, the harlot, the thief, and the murderer, but what do I need of Him?” Well, let me tell you why you need Jesus Christ. You need Him to save you from being everlastingly damned. That is all, but that is enough, isn’t it? You talk quite like this Pharisee who, our Lord Jesus tells us, went down to his house unjustified, was lost, and is now in hell. Also, this Pharisee was a religious man. Every Pharisee was very religious, and this particular Pharisee was especially so. All Pharisees were often given to reading the Scriptures and other pious books. They were given to prayer and religious ceremonies. This particular Pharisee could tell the Lord how often he fasted every week; he fasted twice every week. He fasted far more frequently than the law required of him. He was also perfectly orthodox. The pharisaical party was the orthodox party.

Praying is good. Fasting is good. Orthodoxy is very good. But all of these put together won’t save anyone; they won’t keep anyone out of hell. No, in all this world’s history, they have never saved one single soul. Many depend upon these things as the foundation of their hope of heaven. “Oh, I am quite sure I will go to heaven,” many are saying, “for I pray every morning and every night; I read the Bible every day; I go to church every Sunday; I fast on Fridays and through Lent. I partake of Communion very often, and I am orthodox in my creed, very orthodox. I believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, in the virgin birth of our Lord, and in the deity of the Lord Jesus. I believe in the literal bodily resurrection, in the atonement by the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and in the premillennial coming of Christ. I also believe in endless punishment. Oh, I am safe.” Fine, very fine; but listen: All you have mentioned does not prove you are saved and headed for heaven. Religion is a good thing, a very good thing, but many men and women will be in hell who were very religious on earth and very orthodox too.

Believe God’s testimony about that blood – that by the shedding of Christ’s blood, your sins were all atoned for. Trust God to forgive you and save you tonight, because Jesus Christ died in your place. Do that, and you are sure to get to heaven. Who will do it right now?

This is a leap. If I already believed that my sins were atoned for, and then showed no fruit, how can I now take comfort in my sins having been atoned for? Is everyone's sin already paid for? If so, how is it anybody ends up in hell? How can Jesus say "you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell" when all their sins are going to be atoned for? How can the author say that orthodoxy doesn't save, when those people believe their sins are atoned for, and the author says their sins are atoned for? I hear it is only the sins of those who have believed that are atoned for. But if so, how am I to believe that my unforgiven sins are already forgiven?

But the moment he receives Jesus Christ, he instantly receives authority to become a child of God. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name (John 1:12 ASV). Any man or woman tonight can get the God-given right to become a child of God in an instant. All you have to do is receive Jesus Christ. What does it mean to receive Jesus Christ? We need to be very clear and very sure about this. The Greek word translated receive means simply “to take” or “to take to oneself,” to receive (or accept) what is offered. So to receive Jesus Christ means to take Jesus Christ to ourselves, to take Him to be to ourselves all that He came into this world to be to us.

In the third place, He came to be our divine Teacher and absolute Lord, who has a right to the absolute control of all our thoughts and desires and purposes and actions. In John 13:13 (ASV), our Lord Jesus is recorded as saying, Ye call me, Teacher, and, Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. Even in the Revised Version we don’t have an accurate translation of the Greek in this passage. What Jesus really said was, “Ye call me the Teacher, and the Lord; and ye say well; for so I am.” So to receive Him means to take Him to ourselves as the Teacher, the one and only absolutely authoritative Teacher. He is the One whom we shall believe rather than the whole world. If the world (every philosopher, scientist, university professor, sage, and poet) says one thing, and Jesus Christ says another, we shall believe Him instead of them. We shall believe the Lord, the One who is our divine and absolute Lord to whom we hand over unquestioningly and unhesitatingly the absolute control of all our conduct in every area of life. We will bow the knee and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11 AKJV).

Jesus Christ becomes his inerrantly authoritative Teacher, whom he will believe instead of the world, and to whom he unquestioningly and unhesitatingly surrenders the absolute control of all his conduct in every area of life. He will bow his knee confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord (Romans 10:9-10). The moment that anyone does this, that person gets the right and the authority, which God Himself bestowed upon him, to call himself God’s child. Anyone tonight who will do this, can become God’s child and become so at once.

We do not become children of God by praying, by reading the Bible, by turning over a new leaf, by quitting our sins, by doing good deeds, or by leading holy lives. As good as all these things are, we become children of God by the one simple act of receiving Jesus Christ, taking Him to be what He came into the world to be. As many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name.

If Jesus Christ is not our authoritative and final Teacher and our divine Lord, we are not and cannot become children of God. The right to sonship is in Jesus Christ, and you only get the right by receiving Him. If I put a thousand dollars in a package and then say to you, “Here, if you take that package you can have what is in it,” if you took the package, you would get that thousand dollars, but if you did not take the package, you would not get that thousand dollars, no matter how many other great and good things you might do. Now, God has put the right to sonship in a package, and that package is a person, Jesus Christ. If you take Him, you get it; if you refuse Him, you cannot get it, no matter how many other good things you may do.

Cornelius prayed for light. This appears from God saying to him, Thy prayer is heard. Send to Joppa, and fetch Simon, whose surname is Peter; who shall speak unto thee words, whereby thou shalt be saved (Acts 10:31; 11:13-14). Cornelius felt that he did not have the whole truth. He knew that he didn’t have peace. He knew that for all his excellencies of character, he was a sinner and needed pardon; he sought from God to find out where pardon could be found. Whoever desires to know the truth and whoever desires pardon, let him seek light from God, and let him ask God to point him to the One in whom pardon is to be found. That prayer will not save him, but it will lead him to the One who will save him.

Cornelius obeyed, step by step, the light as God gave him to see it. There are some who will not take one single step until God shows them the whole way. Such people never find the way. But if we are ready to take a step at a time as God indicates it to us, God will lead us on into the perfect day.

What's my next step?

The very first step that Cornelius was told to take was a test of faith;

Ah, how many of us refuse to obey God’s orders because we are so filled with the conceit of our own culture and our own superior position; therefore, we never get out of the fog and darkness into which our self-sufficiency has plunged us. We proudly refuse to obey God because we cannot understand the reasonableness of His commands, so we miss the path of unquestioning obedience to God that would lead us into the glorious light of the Son of God.

This!

saved. All that Cornelius heard you have heard time and again, and as far as hearing and knowing the truth are concerned, you have heard enough and already know enough to be saved. Then Cornelius took the decisive step. He believed in Jesus Christ, right there and then; he was saved at once. Will you take the same decisive step tonight, the simple step of believing on Christ Jesus, of whom it is conclusively proven that He died on the cross and thus made full atonement for sin? He secured pardon for all who would believe on Him, and He arose again and therefore has power to keep from the power of sin all those who put their trust in Him (Hebrews 7:25). Will you take that step?

Crying unto Him for pardon is the proof that we believe on Him; and so in crying unto Him, we are thereby justified. We are also told this in the very next verse to our text: How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? (Romans 10:14).

Take care you're not crying out to a false, antinomian Jesus, or Roman or Mormon Jesus. And what about all the evangelical heretics, apostates, and worldlings?

What does it mean to call upon the name of the Lord?

How loud do i have to be? How hearty? How zealous? How confident? With what heart? With what knowledge about the Lord?

Of course, the cry to the Lord Jesus that really gets salvation must be a real cry; it must be genuine; it must be sincere; it must be honest. I hear many call, “Lord Jesus, save me,” and they do not get saved. Why? Because the cry is not real; it is not genuine; it is not sincere; it is not honest; it is not earnest.

But they're told they are saved!

First of all, a real call upon the Lord Jesus implies a realization that we need salvation, a realization that we are sinners, and a realization that we are lost. No man is going to call upon the Lord for salvation in any real way if he does not realize that he needs to be saved. To call upon the Lord Jesus to save you when you do not know you are lost, or do not believe you are lost, is a mockery.

Many people, however, call upon the Lord Jesus today without any genuine realization that they are lost. Many cry, “Lord Jesus, save me.” But if you should ask them, “Do you really believe you are lost? Do you really believe you are a guilty sinner before a holy God? Do you really believe you are under the curse of the law of God which you have broken? Do you realize you are a slave to sin? Do you realize you are sinking down into an everlasting hell? Do you believe that you are a poor, vile, miserable, worthless, hell-deserving sinner?” they would likely flare up and say, “I am nothing of the kind; I am just as good as you are. I don’t believe that old worn-out superstition about human depravity and everlasting perdition and all that.” Well, then, you cannot genuinely call upon the Lord Jesus to save you, and you cannot be genuinely saved. You are mocking God when you do call upon the Lord for salvation when you do not really think you are lost, hopelessly lost, without the Lord Jesus. There is no more hideous mockery than for a man who does not believe that he is lost, to call on the Lord Jesus to save him.

Do you realize it fully? Do you believe on your heart? Do you feel the pain of a coming just punishment?

In the second place, a real calling upon the Lord Jesus to save implies a sincere desire for salvation. Many men call upon the Lord Jesus to save them who do not really desire to be saved; they think they do, but they don’t. I have seen men kneel down and cry, “Lord Jesus, save me,” and they did not want a bit to be saved. Perhaps they thought they did. They wished to be saved from hell, but that is not the essential point of salvation. Everybody wants to be saved from hell. Even the foulest infidels want to be saved from hell. Nobody wants to spend eternity in hell. But being saved from hell is not the essential thing in real salvation, and desiring merely to be saved from hell is not really desiring to be saved. Many desire to be saved from the trouble and misery that sin has gotten them into. There is not a person in the county jail that does not want to get out. But desiring to be saved from the consequences of sin is not a true desire for salvation.

A true desire for salvation is a desire for salvation from sin itself; that is the most important thing about it. The man who does not desire to give up all sin – not merely the sins that are getting him into trouble – does not really desire to be saved, and a call of such a person upon the Lord Jesus is a mockery and will do him no more good than whistling, “I want to be an angel.” This is why the cries of many of you for salvation do no good whatever. You don’t really wish to be saved from sin, but merely from the unpleasant consequences of sin. A man in Chicago was once lamenting to a friend of mine that he could not be saved. My friend answered bluntly, “You don’t want to be saved.” “Yes, I do,” the man answered with tears. “No, you don’t,” my friend insisted. Then he asked him, “Do you want to quit drinking?” The man was silent a while and then said, “I don’t know as I do.” That is the way with thousands. Others may wish to quit drinking, but there are other sins they do not wish to quit. Do you really desire to quit all sin, to quit doing ...

The desire for salvation must also be earnest; it must be a desire to be saved at any cost. When a man so earnestly desires salvation from the guilt, the power, and the consequences of sin that he is willing to pay any price to get it, he will get it, and not until then. God says in Jeremiah 29:13, Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. In the third place, a real calling upon the name of the Lord for salvation implies a throwing away of all confidence in anyone else and in anything else and everything else as a way of salvation.

Wealth, praise

If my cry to the Lord Jesus means anything, it means this: faith that Jesus can and will save me. This faith may not be very strong; it may not be very confident; it may be very weak, but there must be faith enough to call with some expectation, no matter how small, that we shall be saved. We may have to come to Jesus with just a little faith, like the man whose son was a demoniac, and he cried to Jesus, If thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us. Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

All any man needs to know in order to be saved is just enough to call on the name of the Lord Jesus. The skeptic may be saved this way. He may have many doubts, but if he believes he is lost, if he honestly desires to be saved, if he throws away confidence in everyone and everything else and has enough faith to call on the Lord Jesus, even though it be almost in despair, he can put this promise to a practical test: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

What about our confidence in things for temporal benefits? How do we throw away or confidence in money? Family? Military protection from foreign armies?

“I have sinned away the day of grace, and therefore I cannot be saved.”

I don't know what that means

“I have committed the unpardonable sin; therefore there is no hope for me.”

That's what Jesus says, no forgiveness for those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit

“But I have had so much light and sinned against it; there certainly can be no hope for me.”

This is starting to sound like me

“I have no feeling; my heart is as hard as a stone. Surely there is no hope for me.”

This is definitely me

Everyone who really believes on the Lord Jesus does rejoice with an exultant joy that is beyond all description.

Every true Christian knows that every one of his sins is forgiven. How does he know? Because the Bible says so in many places. It says in Acts 13:39 (ASV), By him every one that believeth is justified from all things. So we know it because God says so. But no one but the believer on Jesus Christ knows that his sins are all forgiven. If anyone who is not a believer on Jesus Christ says, “I know my sins are all forgiven,” he says what is not true. They don’t know it, and cannot know it, for it is not a fact; but a Christian knows it because the Word of God says so.

Before I came to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, I was one of the bluest men that ever lived. I would sit down by the hour and brood. I have never known what the blues mean since the day I really became a Christian, absolutely surrendered to God. I have had troubles. I have had losses. There have been times in my life when I have lost pretty much everything the world holds dear. I know what it is to have a wife and four children and to lose everything of a financial kind I had in the world and not know from meal to meal where the next meal was coming from. I was absolutely without resources, living from hand to mouth, from God’s hand to my mouth. I have known what it is to be with a wife and child in a foreign country where they spoke a strange language, and for some reason or other, supplies did not come, and I did not know anyone in the city well enough to turn to them for help, but I did not worry. I knew it was all in God’s hands, that it would all come out right somehow, and of course, it did come out right. The first time I ever visited London, thirty-nine years ago last September, I was planning to spend two weeks in England and then head to America. I expected to find money waiting for me when I reached London, and I reached London with a wife and child but not a letter and no money. But I said, “The letter and the money will come tomorrow or the next day.” My wife went and made some purchases, taking it for granted we would have money when the purchases came, bu...

True joy and trust! Who trusts Jesus like this?

He got under what he called “deep conviction of sin” and would come around for me to pray with him, and I would pray with him. He would cry to God to save him from the drink. The tears would roll down his cheeks; then he would ask me for a nickel or a dime to go down to Pullman to get a job, and I knew the money all went for whiskey. He kept this up for several years. He would not only hit me up for money but he’d hit the students up also. I suppose he got hundreds of dollars out of the students. He would cry and whine and snivel, and the tears would roll down his cheeks. He would profess repentance, then hit somebody up for money and go off and get drunk; he kept up that game for years.

Give to all who ask

He Himself tells us that there is only one unpardonable sin, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31-32), the deliberately attributing to the devil what you know to be the work of the Holy Spirit. And it is evident from our Lord’s words that the only reason that this sin is unpardonable is because the people who commit this sin are so hardened and determined in sin that they will not repent and have no desire to repent. So if anyone here has any desire to repent and be forgiven, it proves conclusively that you have not committed this one unpardonable sin.

So he's saying the Pharisees knew Jesus had the Holy Spirit?

myself. I know what it means to be driven to such desperation by heart agony that seemed so unendurable that I started to end my own life. I have known what it means to spring out of bed with a shriek of agony and despair in the middle of the night and cower on the floor in an agony that was a very hell on earth. In years gone by, I have said, “I know that there is a hell because I have been there.” But thank God that for years and years this glorious Lord Jesus has filled my whole soul day and night with a continuous rapturous joy amidst all sorts of trials and perils and losses on sea and land and in nearly every corner of the earth.

I have known many who were on the verge of insanity from sorrow, morbidness, and despair, whom I have led to Christ; they are radiantly happy people today. In order to get this fullness of joy, every Christian must make a full surrender to God. There is no fullness of joy for one who tries to serve the Lord Jesus Christ with one hand and holds fast to the world with the other hand. If we keep back anything from Jesus Christ, we will not get fullness of joy. Are you a professing Christian? Do you not have fullness of joy? There is something you are keeping back from God.

Furthermore, the unpardonable sin is a sin of which one may know definitely whether he has committed it or not. A great many fear that they have committed the unpardonable sin. They are not sure that they have. They are not at all clear as to what the one unpardonable sin may be. But the unpardonable sin is a sin of such a definite and clearly defined character that one may know with certainty whether he has committed it or not.

The Pharisees had seen the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ; they had seen His works of divine power and heard His words of divine grace. They had seen in these miracles clear evidence that Jesus was a teacher sent from God who spoke the very words of God (John 3:2) – that He was the Messiah, the Christ. They had been unwilling to accept Him as such, because of what it would cost them to accept Him. They had refused to accept or acknowledge Him as the Christ. But the evidence that He was the Christ was so overwhelming that at last, in their determination not to accept Him, they had deliberately attributed His works, which was of the Holy Spirit, to the devil. They had said, as recorded in this chapter in the immediate context, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils (Matthew 12:24 AKJV). In other words, they had deliberately attributed to the devil what was of the Holy Spirit. This, then, is the unpardonable sin, the only unpardonable sin, the deliberately ascribing to the devil what you distinctly know to be the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not merely the attributing to the devil what is the work of the Holy Spirit, but also what you distinctly know to be the work of the Holy Spirit.

To walk in the light is to walk in open confession of Christ, in obedience to His will as He reveals it in His Word, and to walk just as everyone who believes on His name (not merely professes to believe on His name) will walk.

If anyone here, no matter what you have been in the past, even though you have been the vilest moral leper, thug, gunman, most outrageous infidel or blasphemer, if any man, woman, or child will right here and now accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you will be cleansed. If you trust God to forgive you because Jesus died in your place, and if you will surrender to Him as your Lord and King and confess Him as such tonight, you can go out of here and prove the reality of your faith by walking in the light. You certainly will walk in the light if you really accept Him as your crucified and risen Savior. The instant you do this, the blood of Jesus will cleanse you from all sin and keep cleansing you to all eternity.

Do this