Saved in Shanghai: How William R. Newell's Teaching on Romans Changed a Life

The following testimony is related by the Free Grace theologian William R. Newell in the Foreword of his book, Romans with Outline Lessons on The Acts (1925):

"In meetings held in Shanghai, China, the writer heard the testimony of a young German, who, after days of attending the lessons on Romans without finding peace (though himself a religious worker), stopped one day at the meeting door before entering, and said, 'This day I will pick me out a seat, and I will call it the sinner's seat, and will go down and sit down, putting away my righteousness, or any trust in my church membership, or my so-called Christian work; I will be an ordinary sinner and nothing else.' At the close of that meeting, this young man was praising God in public testimony. The moment he took the 'sinner's seat,' the Gospel, which seemed before so difficult, came, as he put it, 'like an anthem of silver bells right into my soul.'"[1]

This reminds me of what Martin Luther said in his commentary on Psalm 126:2, "the Gospel should be to us nothing else but joy and gladness"!

Reference:

[1] William R. Newell, Romans with Outline Lessons on The Acts (Toronto: J. I. C. Wilcox, 1925), no page number.