If You Are Old, Don’t Hold Back

At the Church in Toronto we have a good number of saints who have been following the Lord Jesus for many decades. And it is not uncommon for those who are older to just think that the younger generation can do their thing. But the article below should give us all renewed and refreshed perspective to be in the Gospel for our entire lives! ---Ian Brinksman.

By John Piper

I write this to encourage old people to come boldly to Christ. Come and offer him what remains of your life. Come with grateful confidence that he will receive you and gladly help you use the rest of your life to make much of him. Don’t waste what’s left. Don’t hold back, doubting that he is eager to help you.

Here is the way Jonathan Edwards argued with old sinners who thought it was too late.

Some may be ready to object, I have spent my youth and all the best of my life in sin, and I am afraid God will not accept of me, when I offer him only mine old age.

To this I would answer,

Hath God said anywhere, that he will not accept of old sinners who come to him? God hath often made offers and promises in universal terms; and is there any such exception put in?

Doth Christ say, All that thirst, let them come to me and drink, except old sinners?

Come to me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, except old sinners, and I will give you rest?

Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out, if he be not an old sinner?

Did you ever read any such exceptions anywhere in the Bible? And why should you give way to exceptions which you make out of your own heads, or rather which the devil puts into your heads, and which have no foundation in the word of God?

Indeed it is more rare that old sinners are willing to come, than others; but if they do, they are as readily accepted as any whatever.