Salvation before Calling – Charles Spurgeon

IN the olden times of imprisonment for debt, it would have been quite correct for you to step into the cell of a debtor, and say to him, I have freed you, if you had paid his debts and obtained an order for his discharge. Well, but he is still in prison. Yes; but you really liberated him as soon as you paid his debts. It is true he was still in prison, but he was not legally there, and no sooner did he know that the debt was paid, and that receipt was pleaded before proper authorities, than the man obtained his liberty. So the Lord Jesus Christ paid the debts of his people before they knew anything about it. Did he not pay them on the cross more than eighteen hundred years ago to the utmost penny? and is not this the reason why, as soon as he meets with us in a way of grace, he cries, “I have saved you; lay hold on eternal life.” We are, then, virtually, though not actually, saved before we are called.