Many years ago in the hot summer time, a doctor, one of the famous Mayo brothers, was traveling across the Midwest when his automobile broke down. Seeing a farmhouse nearby, the noted surgeon trudged across a field and asked for help. While he was there, the kind farmer’s wife said, “Sir, you seem to be tired. Would you like to have a glass of cold buttermilk?” The doctor accepted the offer and thanked his hostess for her kindness.

 

Many years later this same woman was taken to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for a very critical operation. She finally began to recover and was taken home to her farm. In the days that followed, she and her husband worried about how they could pay the hospital bill, which they both knew would be very high.

 

One day the husband went down to the mailbox and brought back to the house a letter from Dr. Mayo. When they opened it they found a bill for almost $1500 with these words scrawled across the bottom: “Paid in full by two glasses of cold buttermilk.” The bill which the woman had not been able to pay was paid for her.

 

You may have heard that story before, I had. But it always makes me think of the wonderful Physician who paid a much greater debt for me. Surely, the two glasses of buttermilk were inadequate to pay the bill. The doctor gave her the gift. Christ gives me salvation. No act that I can perform is adequate to merit my salvation. But the two glasses of buttermilk evidenced the attitude of the woman...she wished to do right. The Great Physician is able to save me by His grace. If I am to be saved, it will be by grace and not on the strength of merit. But my attitude, my faith, must be shown by my willingness to obey His will. Compliance to the commands of the gospel are only as offering “two glasses of buttermilk” when compared to the wonderful gift being offered to me by Christ.

 

There are those who claim that when we expect all to obey Christ by repenting and being baptized, we are asking them to buy their salvation by their works. Surely that would be absurd. The gift of salvation is too great to be merited by such a simple act.

 

On the other hand, there are those who claim that baptism is meaningless and no act of obedience is necessary at all. For me to so believe would be equally, absurd. Suppose the kind farm woman had barred the door and called for her husband to drive Dr. Mayo off the farm with his shotgun. Do you believe he would have been disposed to give such a wonderful gift? Is that not what we do, when we say to Christ that His commands are non-essential, that they have no meaning?

 

Do we not bar the door and run off the Lord? How, then, can we expect Him to bestow such a wonderful gift?

 

No one questions the generosity, the grace, the gift, which Dr. Mayo gave to the lady because she showed a true spirit in offering the buttermilk. Surely no one should question that God is generous, that He saves by grace, that He bestows a great gift, when he accepts our obedience to His simple command to be baptized as evidence of our faith and at that point grants to us remission of sins (Acts 2.38).