Horatius Bonar on the Anchor of our Soul part 3

Who is our anchor?

Jesus is the anchor. He has been at the bottom of the depths of wrath, and His strength was tried and found perfect. Nothing can keep your souls from being tossed but this only; for nothing else resists the storm of God’s wrath. Your duties are not the anchor: can they endure the fierce blast of Divine displeasure? Your feelings and frames are not the anchor: can they stand the sudden dash even of one wave from the world, far less from the Holy God? The Spirit’s work in you is not your anchor; it is the cargo, or the vessel stores, which the sure anchor preserves from damage. Some mourn and say, Ah, if I had sinned less I should have had less difficulty in finding peace. Now, are you not forging an anchor out of your supposed goodness? If you could put so many acts of holiness in the place of those many sins, you would straightway form an anchor out of these. Others say, Oh, if I could only see that I had faith, I should then be at rest. Now you are just trying to make your cable your anchor; for faith is the cable that connects the anchor with the soul. Instead of distressing yourself about your own faith, be occupied with observing the soundness and steadfastness of the anchor, and your soul will be no longer tossed.

The anchor must be something out of ourselves: not our duties, nor our saintship, nor our walk with God, nor our evidences of the Spirit’s work within us, nor our strength of love — not any, nor all of these together! The anchor of a ship is something that lies without, and by being without secures it. That which quiets and assures the uneasy conscience and troubled soul of a sinner, is what he hears in the glad tidings. It is something said or shown to him by God. It is something that tells him, not of the feelings of his own heart, but of the heart of God. It is something that shows him the face of God, that he may read there, “God is love.” The work of Jesus, or rather Jesus Himself, in this way becomes the sure “anchor of the soul.”

How sweet it is that our anchor is not of ourselves and does not rely on our performance.