MORNING THOUGHTS,
or
DAILY WALKING WITH GOD
NOVEMBER 1.
“Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” Romans
8:9
THE Spirit of Christ is the great convincer of sin. “He shall convince the
world of sin.” Have you thus received Him? Has He discovered to you the
moral leprosy of your nature, the exceeding sinfulness of sin? Do you know
anything of the conflict of which the apostle speaks in the seventh chapter
of this Epistle to the Romans—the law of the mind in battle with the law of
the members? And has this discovery led you to self-condemnation, to
self-renunciation, to lay your mouth in the dust before God? If this be so,
then the Spirit of Christ is a Spirit of conviction in you, and by this you
may know that you are Christ’s.
The Spirit of Christ leads to Christ. He is to the sinner what John was to
the Messiah—He goes before as the Forerunner of the Lord’s salvation. He
prepares the way, and heralds the coming of Jesus into the soul. This was
one specific object for which He was sent, and which entered essentially
into His mission—to lead men to Christ. Has He led you to Christ? Can you
say, “Christ is made unto me wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification,
and redemption”? What do you think of Christ? Is His blood precious? Does
His righteousness give you peace? Does His grace subdue your sins? Do you in
sorrow travel to His sympathy, in weakness take hold of His strength, in
perplexity seek His counsel, in all your steps acknowledge and wait for Him?
Is Christ thus all in all to you? Then you have the Spirit of Christ. This
we venture to assert for your encouragement. You may resort to Christ, and
there may be no sensible apprehension, no realizing touch, no manifested
presence; yet, if your heart goes out after Jesus, if your spirit travels
alone to Him, praying for His sympathy, panting for His grace, thirsting for
His love, and you are led to say, “Lord, the desire of my heart is to Your
name, and to the remembrance of You; I seem not to see You, to touch You, to
apprehend You; yet I come, and I find a heaven in coming; and for ten
thousand worlds I dare not, I could not, stay away”—then, dear reader, you
have the Spirit of Christ, and are Christ’s. Not only does the Spirit lead
to Christ, but He also conforms those thus led to the image of Christ. He
guides us to Christ, not for consolation and instruction only, but also for
assimilation. If we are humble, we have the Spirit of Christ—for He was
humble. If we are meek, we have the Spirit of Christ—for He was meek. If we
believe, we have the Spirit of Christ—for He lived a life of faith. If we
love God, we have the Spirit of Christ—for He was the incarnation of love.
If we are holy, we have the Spirit of Christ—for He was without sin. If we
are obedient, meek, and self-denying in suffering, silent in provocation,
submissive in chastisement, patient in tribulation, and rejoicing in hope,
then have we the Spirit of Christ, for He was all this. Thus the possession
of this immense, this indispensable blessing, comprises two grand
things—first, to become the subject of an actual and permanent in-being of
the Spirit; and second, to be assimilated in character and disposition to
the Savior. And while it is most certain, that if the first-mentioned
blessing is attained, the second follows, yet it is to the second we are to
look as the fruit and evidence of the first. The question, “Am I Christ’s?”
hinges upon the answer to the question, “Have I the Spirit of Christ?”
NOVEMBER 2.
“If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is
he whom the Father chastens not?” Hebrews 12:7
AS our chastenings are marks of our sonship, equally so are our
consolations. The kindly view the Spirit gives of our Father’s
dispensations—the meek submission of the will, the cordial acquiescence of
the heart, and the entire surrender of the soul to God, which He creates,
supplies us with indisputable ground for drawing a conclusion favorable to
the reality of our being the children of God. There is a depth of sympathy
and a degree of tenderness in God’s comforts, which could only flow from the
heart of a father—that Father, God Himself. “As a father pities his
children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him.” Sweet to know that the
correction and the consolation, the wounding and the healing, flow from the
same heart, come from the same hand, and bears each a message of love and a
token of sonship. Is the God of all comfort sustaining, soothing, and
quieting your oppressed, chafed, and sorrowful heart? Oh, it is the Spirit’s
witness to your adoption. Bending to your grief, and associating Himself
with every circumstance of your sorrow, He seeks to seal on your softened
heart the deeper, clearer impress of your filial interest in God’s love. And
oh, if this overwhelming bereavement—if this crushing stroke—if the
bitterness and gloom of this hour, be the occasion of the Spirit’s gentle,
gracious lifting you from the region of doubt and distress, as to your
sonship, into the serene sunlight of your Father’s love, so that you shall
question, and doubt, and deny no more your acceptance in the Beloved, and
your adoption into His family, will you not kiss the rod, and love the hand,
and bless the heart that has smitten? Do not forget that the inward seal of
adoption is testified by the outward seal of sanctification, and that if the
Spirit of Christ is in your heart, the fruits of the Spirit will be
exhibited in your life. Then, thus meek, and gently, and lowly, like the
Savior, separated from the world, that you live not, and joy not, as the
world does—in the secret chamber of your soul you shall often hear the voice
of God, saying, “I will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and
daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
NOVEMBER 3.
“Sanctify them through your truth: your word is truth.” John 17:17
“HOW may I know,” is the anxious inquiry of many, “that sin is being
mortified in me?” We reply—by a weakening of its power. When Christ subdues
our iniquities, He does not eradicate them, but weakens the strength of
their root. The principle of sin remains, but it is impaired. See it in the
case of Peter. Before he fell, his easily besetting sin was self-confidence:
“Although all shall be offended, yet will not I.” Behold him after his
recovery, taking the low place at the feet of Jesus, and at the feet of the
disciples too, meekly saying, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I
love You.” No more self-vaunting, no more self-confidence: his sin was
mortified through the Spirit, and he became as another man. Thus often the
very outbreak of our sins may become the occasion of their deeper discovery
and their more thorough subjection. Nor let us overlook the power of the
truth, by the instrumentality of which the Spirit mortifies sin in us:
“Sanctify them through Your truth.” The truth as it is in Jesus, revealed
more clearly to the mind, and impressed more deeply on the heart, transforms
the soul into its own divine and holy nature. Our spiritual and experimental
acquaintance, therefore, with the truth—with Him who is essential truth—will
be the measure of the Spirit’s mortification of sin in our hearts. Is the
Lord Jesus becoming increasingly precious to your soul? Are you growing in
poverty of spirit, in a deeper sense of your vileness, weakness, and
unworthiness? Is pride more abased, and self more crucified, and God’s glory
more simply sought? Does the heart more quickly shrink from sin, and is the
conscience more sensitive to the touch of guilt, and do confession and
cleansing become a more frequent habit? Are you growing in more love to all
the saints—to those, who, though they adopt not your entire creed, yet love
and serve your Lord and Master? If so, then you may be assured the Spirit is
mortifying sin in you. But oh, look from everything to Christ. Look not
within for sanctification; look up for it from Christ. He is as much our
“sanctification” as He is our “righteousness.” Your evidences, your comfort,
your hope, do not spring from your fruitfulness, your mortification, or
anything within you; but solely and entirely from the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Looking unto Jesus” by faith, is like removing the covering and opening the
windows of a conservatory, to admit more freely the sun, beneath whose light
and warmth the flowers and fruits expand and mature. Withdraw the veil that
conceals the Sun of Righteousness, and let Him shine in upon your soul, and
the mortification of all sin will follow, and the fruits of all holiness
will abound.
NOVEMBER 4.
“But of him are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom.” 1
Corinthians 1:30
TO survey the effects of this manifold wisdom on individual character will
exalt our views of Christ as the wisdom of God. To see a man “becoming a
fool that he may be wise”—his reason bowing to revelation—his knowledge and
attainments laid beneath the cross—his own righteousness
surrendered—“counting all things but loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord”—and as a little child receiving the
kingdom of God; oh, how glorious does appear in this the wisdom of God, the
light of which shines in Jesus’ face! Behold how determined is the Father,
in every step of His grace, to humble the creature, and to exalt, magnify,
and crown his co-equal Son, Lord of all!
We see Jesus the mediatorial Head of all wisdom and counsel to the Church.
“It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell.” “In whom,”
says the same apostle, “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
He is the “Wonderful Counselor,” of whom it was thus prophesied, “the spirit
of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the
spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the
Lord.” O divine and precious truth! unutterably precious to a soul having no
resources adequate to the great purposes of knowing self, Christ, and God;
of salvation, sanctification, and guidance.
Reader, are you wanting the “wisdom that is profitable to direct” you at
this moment? Acquaint now yourself with Jesus, in whom all the treasures of
this wisdom are hid. What is His language to you? The same which Moses, the
great legislator, spoke to the people of Israel: “The cause that is too hard
for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it.” What a cheering invitation
is this! A greater than Moses speaks it, and speaks it to you. You find your
case baffling to human wisdom, too difficult for the acutest skill of
man—take it, then, to Jesus. How sweetly He speaks—“bring it unto me.” One
simple exercise of faith upon His word will remove all that is difficult,
make simple make simple all that is complex, and lucid all that is dark in
your case. With Him nothing is impossible. To Him all is transparent.
Knowing the end from the beginning, there can be nothing unforeseen in it to
His mind; by His prescience all is known, and by His wisdom all is provided
for. His precious promise is, “I will bring the blind by a way that they
knew not: I will lead them in a path that they have not known. I will make
darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I
do unto them, and not forsake them.” Thus is Jesus “made of God unto us
wisdom,” that all our perplexities may be guided, and all our doubts may be
solved, and all our steps may be directed, by one on whom the anointing of
the “spirit of wisdom and understanding” rests “without measure;” and who,
from experience, is able to lead, having trod every step before us. “And
when he puts forth His own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow
Him.” “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that gives to all men
liberally:” let him repair to Christ, whom God has set up from everlasting,
“to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly
places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.”
NOVEMBER 5.
“For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are
the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the
presence of God for us.” Hebrews 9:24
IS it a privilege to be borne upon the affectionate and believing prayers of
a Christian friend? Ah, yes! precious channels of heavenly blessing are the
intercessions of the Lord’s people on our behalf. But there is a Friend
still closer to the Fountain of mercy, still nearer and dearer to the
Father, than your dearest earthly friend; it is Jesus, “who ever lives to
make intercession for them who come unto God by Him.” Oh, how precious is
that declaration upon which in any assault, or trial, or perplexity, you may
calmly and confidently repose: “I have prayed for you”! Yes, when from
confusion of thought, or pain of body, or burning fever, you can not pray
for yourself, and no friend is near to be your mouth to God, then there is
one, the Friend of friends, the ever-skillful Advocate and never-weary
Intercessor—no invocating saint, nor interceding angel—but the Son of God
himself, who appears in the presence of God moment by moment for you. Oh,
keep, then, the eye of your faith immovably fixed upon Christ’s
intercession; He intercedes for weak faith, for tried faith, for tempted
faith—yes, for him who thinks he has no faith. There is not a believer who
is not borne upon His heart, and whose prayers and needs are not presented
in His ceaseless intercession. When you deem yourself neglected and
forgotten, a praying Savior in heaven is thinking of you. When you are tried
and cast down, tempted and stumble, the interceding High Priest at that
moment enters within the holiest, to ask on your behalf strength,
consolation, and upholding grace. And when sin has wounded, when guilt
distresses, and unbelief beclouds, who is it that stands in the breach, that
makes intercession, that removes the darkness, and brings back the smile of
a forgiving Father?—the Lord Jesus, the interceding Savior. Oh, look up,
tried and assaulted believer! you have a Friend at court, an Advocate in the
chancery of heaven, an Intercessor curtained within the holiest of holies,
transacting all your concerns, and through whom you may have access to God
with boldness.
NOVEMBER 6.
“Verily I say unto you, Among those who are born of women there has not
risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in
the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” Matthew 11:11
IF there are degrees of glory—and we see no reason to question the fact—we
believe that those degrees will be graduated, not by the strength or
capacity of the intellect, but according to the measure and standard of
holiness which the believer attained in this life. If glory is the
perfection of grace, then it follows, that proportioned to the degree of
grace here will be the degree of glory hereafter. If the great and grand
perfection of God be His holiness, then the more clearly I approximate to
that holiness, the more deeply must I partake of the glory of God, and the
higher must be my degree of glory. It is acquaintance with, and conformity
to, God’s moral, and not His intellectual being, that will constitute the
highest source of our happiness in heaven. That our enlarged intellectual
capacity will be a vast inlet to expanded views of God we do not dispute;
but it will be the conformity of our moral nature to His that will
constitute and augment our perceptions of glory. Were we asked to pass
through the Church of God, and from its various communions select the
individual whom we should regard as the richest heir of glory, whose degree
of happiness would, perhaps, transcend that of the glorified philosopher, we
should, it may be, find him the inmate of some obscure hut, dwelling amid
lonely poverty, sickness, and neglect; yet holding communion with God, so
filial, so endearing, and so close, as to present to our eye his soul’s
uplifted and soaring pinions, “as the wings of a dove covered with silver,
and her feathers with yellow gold.” We should go to him whose heart thus
breathing after holiness, whose spirit thus imbibing more and more of the
mind of Christ, who in this lowly and suffering school was learning more
deeply of God, and what God is, and who thus was gathering around him the
beams of that glory whose unclouded visions were so soon to burst upon his
view; and we would unhesitatingly point to him as the man whose degree of
glory will be transcendently great—grace enriching and encircling him with
more glory than gift. Do you, my reader, desire to be a star of the first
magnitude and luster in heaven? then aim after a high degree of grace on
earth. The nearer your present walk with God, the nearer will be your future
proximity to God. The closer your resemblance to Christ, the deeper your
holiness, the more spiritual and heavenly-minded you become on earth, be
assured of this, the higher and the more resplendent will be your glory in
heaven. As the ungodly man is treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath,
and is growing more and more meet for hell; so the godly man is laying up
glory against the day of glory, and is growing more and more meet for
heaven. We need not speculate and surmise about the future. Let the child of
God be careful as to his degrees towards fitness for glory, and he may
calmly and safely leave his degrees of glory to the period when that glory
shall be revealed.
NOVEMBER 7.
“God has not cast away his people which he foreknew.” Romans 11:2
IN this place the word “foreknew” assumes a particular and explicit meaning.
In its wider and more general application it must be regarded as referring
not simply to the Divine prescience, but more especially to the Divine
prearrangement. For God to foreknow is, in the strict meaning of the phrase,
for God to foreordain. There are no guesses, or conjectures, or
contingencies with God as to the future. Not only does He know all, but He
has fixed, and appointed, and ordered “all things after the counsel of His
own will.” In this view there exists not a creature, and there transpires
not an event, which was not as real and palpable to the Divine mind from
eternity as it is at the present moment. Indeed, it would seem that there
were no future with God. An Eternal Being, there can be nothing prospective
in His on-looking. There must be an eternity of perception, and
constitution, and presence; and the mightiest feature of His character—that
which conveys to a finite mind the most vivid conception of His grandeur and
greatness—is the simultaneousness of all succession and variety and events
to His eye. “He is of one mind; and who can turn Him?” But the word
“foreknew,” as it occurs in the text, adds to this yet another, a more
definite, and to the saints, a more precious signification. The
foreknowledge here spoken of, it will be observed, is limited to a
particular class of people, who are said to be “conformed to the image of
God’s Son.” Now this cannot, with truth, be predicated of all creatures. The
term, therefore, assumes a particular and impressive signification. It
includes the everlasting love of God to, and His most free choice of, His
people to be His especial and peculiar treasure. We find some examples of
this: “God has not cast away His people which He foreknew.” Here the word is
expressive of the two ideas of love and choice. Again, “Who verily was
foreordained (Greek, foreknown) before the foundation of the world.” “Him
being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.”
Clearly, then, we are justified in interpreting the phrase as expressive of
God’s especial choice of, and His intelligent love to, His Church—His own
peculiar people. It is a foreknowledge of choice—of love—of eternal grace
and faithfulness.
NOVEMBER 8.
“He also did predestinate.” Romans 8:29
THIS word admits of but one natural signification. Predestination, in its
lowest sense, is understood to mean the exclusive agency of God in producing
every event. But it includes more than this: it takes in God’s
predeterminate appointment and fore-arrangement of a thing beforehand,
according to His divine and supreme will. The Greek is so rendered: “For to
do whatever Your hand and Your counsel determined beforehand to be done.”
Again, “Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.” It is here
affirmed of God, that the same prearrangement and predetermination which men
in general are agreed to ascribe to Him in the government of matter, extends
equally, and with yet stronger force, to the concerns of His moral
administration. It would seem impossible to form any correct idea of God,
disassociated from the idea of predestination. And yet how marvelously
difficult is it to win the mind to a full, unwavering acquiescence in a
truth which, in a different application, is received with unquestioning
readiness! And what is there in the application of this law of the Divine
government to the world of matter, which is not equally reasonable and fit
in its application to the world of mind? If it is necessary and proper in
the material, why should it not be equally, or more so, in the spiritual
empire? If God is allowed the full exercise of a sovereignty in the one, why
should He be excluded from an unlimited sovereignty in the other? Surely it
were even more worthy of Him that He should prearrange, predetermine, and
supremely rule in the concerns of a world over which His more dignified and
glorious empire extends, than that in the inferior world of matter He should
fix a constellation in the heavens, guide the gyrations of a bird in the
air, direct the falling of an autumnal leaf in the pathless desert, or
convey the seed, borne upon the wind, to the spot in which it should grow.
Surely if no fortuitous ordering is admitted in the one case, on infinitely
stronger grounds it should be excluded from the other. Upon no other basis
could Divine foreknowledge and providence take their stand than upon this.
Disconnected from the will and purpose of God, there could be nothing
certain as to the future; and consequently there could be nothing certainly
foreknown. And were not Providence to regulate and control people, things,
and events—every dispensation in fact—by the same preconstructed plan, it
would follow that God would be exposed to a thousand contingencies
unforeseen, or else that He acts ignorantly, or contrary to His will. What,
then, is predestination but God’s determining will?
Now all this will apply with augmented beauty and force to the idea of a
predestinated Church. How clearly is this doctrine revealed! “According as
He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world.” “Whose names
are written in the book of life, from the foundation of the world.” “Elect
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” “Who has saved us, and
called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to
His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the
world began.” What an accumulation of evidence in proof of a single doctrine
of Scripture! Who but the most prejudiced can resist, or the most skeptical
deny, its overwhelming force? Oh, to receive it as the word of God! To admit
it, not because reason can understand, or man can explain it—for all truth
flowing from an infinite source must necessarily transcend a finite mind—but
because we find it in God’s holy word. Predestination must be a Divine
verity, since it stands essentially connected with our conformity to the
Divine image.
NOVEMBER 9.
“To be conformed to the image of his Son.” Romans 8:29
NO standard short of this will meet the case. How conspicuous appears the
wisdom and how glorious the goodness of God in this—that in making us holy,
the model or standard of that holiness should be Deity itself! God would
make us holy, and in doing so He would make us like Himself. But with what
pencil—dipped though it were in heaven’s brightest hues—can we portray the
image of Jesus? The perfection of our Lord was the perfection of holiness.
His Deity, essential holiness; His humanity without sin, the impersonation
of holiness; all that He was, and said, and did, was as coruscations of
holiness emanating from the Fountain of essential purity, and kindling their
dazzling and undying radiance around each step He trod. How lovely, too, His
character! How holy the thoughts He breathed, how pure the words He spoke,
how humble the spirit He exemplified, how tender and sympathizing the
outgoings of His compassion and love to man! “The chief among ten thousand,
the altogether lovely.” Such is the believer’s model. To this he is
predestinated to be conformed. And is not this predestination in its highest
form? Would it seem possible for God to have preordained us to a greater
blessing, to have chosen us to a higher distinction? In choosing us in
Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy, He has
advanced us to the loftiest degree of honor and happiness to which a
creature can be promoted—assimilation to His own moral image. And this forms
the highest ambition of the believer. To transcribe those beauteous
lineaments which, in such perfect harmony and lovely expression, blended and
shone in the life of Jesus, is the great study of all His true disciples.
But in what does this conformity consist? The first feature is a conformity
of nature. And this is reciprocal. The Son of God, by an act of divine
power, became human; the saints of God, by an act of sovereign grace, become
divine. “Partakers of the Divine nature.” This harmony of nature forms the
basis of all conformity. Thus grafted into Christ, we grow up into Him in
all holy resemblance. The meekness, the holiness, the patience, the
self-denial, the zeal, the love, traceable—faint and imperfect indeed—in us
are transfers of Christ’s faultless lineaments to our renewed soul. Thus the
mind that was in Him is in some measure in us. And in our moral conflict,
battling as we do with sin and Satan and the world, we come to know a little
of fellowship with His sufferings, and conformity to His death. We are here
supplied with a test of Christian character. It is an anxious question with
many professors of Christ, “How may I arrive at a correct conclusion that I
am among the predestinated of God?—that I am included in His purpose of
grace and love?—that I have an interest in the Lord’s salvation?” The
passage under consideration supplies the answer—conformity to the image of
God’s Son. Nothing short of this can justify the belief that we are saved.
No evidence less strong can authenticate the fact of our predestination. The
determination of God to save men is not so fixed as to save them be their
character what it may. Christ’s work is a salvation from sin, not in sin.
“According as He has chosen us in Him, before the foundation of the word,
that we should be holy.” In other words, that we should be conformed to the
Divine image. That we should be like Christ—like Christ in His Divine
nature—like Christ in the purity of His human nature—like Christ in the
humility He exemplified, in the self-denial He practiced, in the heavenly
life He lived; in a word, in all that this expressive sentence
comprehends—“conformed to the image of His Son.” And as we grow day by day
more holy, more spiritually-minded, more closely resembling Jesus, we are
placing the truth of our predestination to eternal life in a clearer,
stronger light, and consequently the fact of our salvation beyond a
misgiving and a doubt. In view of this precious truth, what spiritual heart
will not breathe the prayer, “O Lord! I cannot be satisfied merely to
profess and call myself Your. I want more of the power of vital religion in
my soul. I pant for Your image. My deepest grief springs from the discovery
of the little real resemblance which I bear to a model so peerless, so
divine—that I exemplify so little of Your patience in suffering; Your
meekness in opposition; Your forgiving spirit in injury; Your gentleness in
reproving; Your firmness in temptation; Your singleness of eye in all that I
do. Oh, transfer Yourself wholly to me.”
NOVEMBER 10.
“That he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” Romans 8:29
THE Son of God sustains to us the relation of the Elder Brother. He is
emphatically the “Firstborn.” In another place we read, “Forasmuch then as
the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took
part of the same.” He is the “Brother born for adversity.” Our relation to
Him as our Brother is evidenced by our conformity to Him as our model. We
have no valid claim to relationship which springs not from a resemblance to
His image. The features may be indistinctly visible, yet one line of
holiness, one true lineament, drawn upon the heart by the Holy Spirit,
proves our fraternal relationship to Him the “Firstborn.” And how large the
brotherhood!—“many brethren.” What the relative proportion of the Church is
to the world—how many will be saved—is a question speculative and
profitless. But this we know—the number will be vast, countless. The one
family of God is composed of “many brethren.” They are not all of the same
judgment in all matters, but they are all of the same spirit. The unity of
the family of God is not ecclesiastical nor geographical, it is spiritual
and essential. It is the “unity of the Spirit.” Begotten of one Father, in
the nature of the Elder Brother, and through the regenerating grace of the
one Spirit, all the saints of God constitute one church, one family, one
brotherhood—essentially and indivisibly one. Nor is this relationship
difficult to recognize. Take an illustration. Two brethren in the Lord of
widely different sections of the Church, and of much dissonance of sentiment
on some points of truth, meet and converse together. Each wonders that, with
the Word of God in his hand, the other should not read it as he reads it,
and interpret it as he interprets it. But they drop the points of
difference, and take up the points of agreement. They speak of Christ—the
Christ who loves them both, and whom they both love. They talk of the one
Master whom they serve; of their common labors and infirmities, trials and
temptations, discouragements, failures, and success; they talk of the heaven
where they are journeying; of their Father’s house, in which they will dwell
together for ever; they kneel in prayer; they cast themselves before the
cross; the oil of gladness anoints them; their hearts are broken, their
spirits are humbled, their souls are blended; they rise, and feel more
deeply and more strongly than ever, that they both belong to the same
family, are both of the “many brethren,” of whom the Son of God is the
“Firstborn,” the Elder Brother. Oh, blessed unity! What perfect harmony of
creed, what strict conformity of ritual, what sameness of denominational
relation, is for a moment to be compared with this? Have you, my reader,
this evidence that you belong to the “many brethren”?
NOVEMBER 11.
“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”
Galatians 6:14
CONFORMITY to the death of Christ can only be obtained by close, individual,
realizing views of the cross. It is in the cross sin is seen in its
exceeding sinfulness. It is in the cross the holiness of God shines with
such ineffable luster. This is the sun that throws its light upon these two
great objects—the holiness of God, the sinfulness of the sinner. Veil this
sun, remove the cross, blot out the Atonement, and all our knowledge of
holiness and sin vanishes into distant and shadowy views. Faith, dealing
much and closely with the cross of Christ, will invariable produce in the
soul conformity to His death. This was the great desire of the apostle:
“That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship
of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.” This was the
noble prayer of this holy man. He desired crucifixion with Christ; a
crucifixion to sin, to indwelling sin, to sin in its every shape—to sin in
principle, sin in temper, sin in worldly conformity, sin in conversation,
sin in thought, yes, sin in the very glance of the eye. He desired not only
a crucifixion of sin, of one particular sin, but of all sin; not only the
sin that most easily beset him, the sin that he daily saw and felt, and
mourned over, but the sin that no eye saw but God’s—the sin of the
indwelling principle; the root of all sin—the sin of his nature. This is to
have fellowship with Christ in His sufferings. Jesus suffered as much for
the subduing of the indwelling principle of sin, as for the pardon of the
outbreakings of that sin in the daily practice. Have we fellowship with Him
in these sufferings? There must be a crucifixion of the indwelling power of
sin. To illustrate the idea: if the root be allowed to strengthen and
expand, and take a deeper and firmer grasp, what more can we expect than
that the tree will shoot upward and branch out on either hand? To cut off
the outward branches is not the proper method to stay the growth of the
tree: the root must be uncovered, and the axe laid to it. Outward sins may
be cut off, and even honestly confessed and mourned over, while the
concealed principle, the root of the sin, is overlooked, neglected, and
suffered to gather strength and expansion.
That the inherent evil of a believer will ever, in his present existence, be
entirely eradicated, we do not assert. To expect this would be to expect
what God’s Word has not declared; but that it may be greatly subdued and
conquered, its power weakened and mortified, this the Word of God leads us
to hope for and aim after. How is this to be attained? Faith dealing
frequently and closely with Christ—the atoning blood upon the conscience—the
“fountain opened” daily resorted to—the believer sitting constantly at the
foot of the cross, gazing upon it with an eye of steady, unwavering
faith—“looking unto Jesus.” In this posture sin, all sin—the sin of the
heart, the sin of the practice—is mourned over, wept over, confessed,
mortified, crucified. Let the reader again be reminded that all true
crucifixion of sin springs from the cross of Christ.
NOVEMBER 12.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 5:3
CULTIVATE above all spiritual conditions, most assiduously, prayerfully,
earnestly, and fervently, poverty of spirit. Rest not short of it. This is
the legitimate fruit and the only safe evidence of our union to Christ and
the indwelling of the Spirit in our hearts. Nothing can suffice for it.
Splendid talent, versatile gifts, profound erudition, gorgeous eloquence,
and even extensive usefulness, are wretched substitutes for poverty of
spirit. They may dazzle the eye, and please the ear, delight the taste, and
awake the applause of man, but, dissociated from humiliation of mind, God
sees no glory in them. What says He? “To this man”—to him only, to him
exclusively—“will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit,
and trembles at my word.” We may think highly of gifts, but let us learn
their comparative value and true place from the words of our Lord, spoken in
reference to John: “Verily I say unto you, Among them which are born of
women, there has not risen a greater than John the Baptist: “notwithstanding
he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” Behold the
true position which Christ assigns to distinction of office, of place, and
of gifts—subordinate to lowliness of spirit. This is their proper rank; and
he who elevates them above profound self-abasement, deep lowliness of
spirit, sins against God, impeaches His wisdom, and denies the truth of His
word. But how shall we adequately describe this blessed state? How draw the
portrait of the man that is “poor, and of a contrite spirit”? Look at him as
he appears in his own apprehension and judgment—“the chief of sinners”—“less
than the least of all saints”—“though I be nothing.” Prostrate, where others
exalt him; condemning, where others approve him; censuring, where others
applaud him; humbling himself, where others have put upon him the greatest
honor. Confessing in secret, and in the dust before God, the flaws, the
imperfections, and the sins of those things which have dazzled the eyes, and
awoke to trembling ecstasy the souls of the multitude. Look at him in the
place he assumes among others—taking the low position; in honor preferring
others; washing the disciples’ feet; willing to serve, rather than be
served; rejoicing in the distinction, the promotion, the gifts, the
usefulness, and the honor put upon his fellow-saints; and ready himself to
go up higher at his Master’s bidding. Look at him under the hand of
God—meek, patient, resigned, humbled, drinking the cup, blessing the hand
that has smitten, justifying the wisdom, the love, and the gentleness which
mark the discipline, and eager to learn the holy lessons it is sent to
teach. Look at him before the cross—reposing all his gifts, attainments, and
honors at its foot, and glorying only in the exhibition it presents of a
holy God pardoning sin by the death of His Son, and as the hallowed
instrument by which he becomes crucified to the world, and the world to him.
NOVEMBER 13.
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden
is light.” Matthew 11:29, 30
HOW shall we array, in their strongest light, before you, the motives which
urge the cultivation of this poverty of spirit? Is it not enough that this
is the spiritual state on which Jehovah looks with an eye of exclusive,
holy, and ineffable delight? “To this man I will look.” Splendid gifts,
brilliant attainments, costly sacrifices, are nothing to me. “To this man
will I look, that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembles at my
word.” To this would we add, if you value your safe, happy, and holy walk—if
you prize the manifestations of God’s presence—the “kisses of His mouth,
whose love is better than wine”— the teaching, guiding, and comforting
influence of the Holy Spirit, seek it. If you would be a “savor of Christ in
every place”—if you would pray with more fervor, unction, and power—if you
would labor with more zeal, devotedness, and success, seek it. By all that
is dear, and precious, and holy, by your own happiness, by the honor of
Christ, by the glory of God, by the hope of heaven, seek to be found among
those who are “poor and of a contrite spirit,” who, with filial, holy love,
tremble at God’s word, whom Jesus has pronounced blessed here, and meet for
glory hereafter. And though in approaching the Great High Priest, you have
no splendid and costly intellectual offerings to present, yet with the royal
penitent you can say, “You desire not sacrifice, else would I give it: you
delight not in burned offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a
broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” “This, Lord, is
all that I have to bring You.” Avoid a spurious humility. True humility
consists not in denying the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, in
under-rating the grace of God in our souls, in standing afar off from our
heavenly Father, and in walking at a distance from Christ, always doubting
the efficacy of His blood, the freeness of His salvation, the willingness of
His heart, and the greatness of His power to save. Oh no! this is not the
humility that God delights to look at, but is a false, a counterfeit
humility, obnoxious in His sight. But to “draw near with a true heart, in
full assurance of faith,” in lowly dependence upon His blood and
righteousness; to accept of salvation as the gift of His grace; to believe
the promise because He has spoken it; gratefully and humbly to acknowledge
our calling, our adoption, and our acceptance, and to live in the holy,
transforming influence of this exalted state, giving to a Triune God all the
praise and glory; this is the humility which is most pleasing to God, and is
the true product of the Holy Spirit.
NOVEMBER 14.
“My son, give me your heart.” Proverbs 23:26
THE human heart is naturally idolatrous. Its affections once supremely
centered in God: but now, disjoined from Him, they go in quest of other
objects of attachment, and we love and worship the creature rather than the
Creator. The circle which our affections traverse may not indeed by a large
one; there are, perchance, but few to whom we fully surrender our heart; no,
so circumscribed may the circle be, that one object alone shall attract,
absorb, and concentrate in itself our entire and undivided love—that one
object to us as a universe of beings, and all others comparatively
indifferent and insipid. Who cannot see that, in a case like this, the
danger is imminent of transforming the heart—Christ’s own sanctuary—into an
idol’s temple, where the creature is loved, and reverenced, and served more
than He who gave it. But from all idolatry our God will cleanse us, and from
all our idols Christ will wean us. The Lord is jealous, with a holy
jealousy, of our love. Poor as our affection is, He asks its complete
surrender. That He requires our love at the expense of all creature
attachment, the Bible nowhere intimates. He created our affections, and He
it is who provides for their proper and pleasant indulgence. There is not a
single precept or command in the Scriptures that forbids their exercise, or
that discourages their intensity. Husbands are exhorted to “love their
wives, even as Christ loved His church.” Parents are to cherish a like
affection toward their children, and children are bound to render back a
filial love not less intense to their parents. And we are to “love our
neighbors as ourselves.” Nor does the word of God furnish examples of
Christian friendship less interesting and devoted. One of the choicest and
tenderest blessings with which God can enrich us, next to Himself, is such a
friend as Paul had in Epaphroditus, a “brother and companion in labor, and
fellow-soldier;” and such an affectionate friendship as John, the loving
disciple, cherished for his well-beloved Gaius, whom he loved in the truth,
and to whom, in the season of his sickness, he thus touchingly poured out
his heart’s affectionate sympathy: “Beloved, I wish above all things that
you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.” Count such a
friend and such friendship among God’s sweetest and holiest bestowments. The
blessings of which it may be to you the sanctifying channel are immense. The
tender sympathy—the jealous watchfulness—the confidential repose—the
faithful admonition—above all, the intercessory prayer, connected with
Christian friendship, may be placed in the inventory of our most inestimable
and precious things.
It is not therefore the use, but the abuse, of our affections—not their
legitimate exercise, but their idolatrous tendency—over which we have need
to exercise the greatest vigilance. It is not our love to the creature
against which God contends, but it is in not allowing our love to Himself to
subordinate all other love. We may love the creature, but we may not love
the creature more than the Creator. When the Giver is lost sight of and
forgotten in the gift, then comes the painful process of weaning. When the
heart burns its incense before some human shrine, and the cloud as it
ascends veils from the eye the beauty and the excellence of Jesus, then
comes the painful proves of weaning. When the absorbing claims and the
engrossing attentions of some loved one are placed in competition and are
allowed to clash with the claims of God, and the service due from us
personally to His cause and truth, then comes the painful process of
weaning. When creature devotion deadens our heart to the Lord, lessens our
interest in His cause, congeals our zeal and love and liberality, detaches
us from the public means of grace, withdraws from the closet, the Bible, and
the communion of saints, thus propagating leanness of soul, and robbing God
of His glory, then comes the painful process of weaning. Christ will be the
first in our affections—God will be supreme in our service—and His kingdom
and righteousness must take precedence of all other things.
NOVEMBER 15.
“In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins,
according to the riches of his grace.” Ephesians 1:7
LET not the reader be satisfied to rest upon the mere surface of the truth,
that Christ has made an atonement for sin; this may be believed, and yet the
full blessedness, peace, and sanctification of it not enjoyed. Any why?
Because he enters not fully into the experience of the truth. Shall we not
say, too, because his views of sin rest but on the surface of sin’s
exceeding sinfulness? Deep views of sin will ever result in deep views of
the Sacrifice for sin; inadequate knowledge of sin, inadequate knowledge of
Christ; low views of self, high views of Christ. Be satisfied, then, not to
rest upon the surface of this wondrous truth. The completeness of Christ’s
atonement arises from the infinite dignity of His Person: His Godhead forms
the basis of His perfect work. It guarantees, so to speak, the glorious
result of His atonement. It was this that gave perfection to His obedience,
and virtue to His atonement: it was this that made the blood He shed
efficacious in the pardon of sin, and the righteousness He wrought out
complete in the justification of the soul. His entire work would have been
wanting but for His Godhead.
The pardon of a believer’s sins is an entire pardon: it is the full pardon
of all his sins. It were no pardon to him, if it were not an entire pardon.
If it were but a partial blotting out of the thick cloud—if it were but a
partial canceling of the bond—if it were but a forgiveness of some sins
only, then the gospel were no glad tidings to his soul. The law of God has
brought him in guilty of an entire violation. The justice of God demands a
satisfaction equal to the enormity of the sins committed and of the guilt
incurred. The Holy Spirit has convinced him of his utter helplessness, his
entire bankruptcy. What rapture would kindle in his bosom at the
announcement of a partial atonement—of a half Savior—of a part payment of
the debt? Not one throb of joyous sensation would it produce. On the
contrary, this very mockery of his woe would but deepen the anguish of his
spirit. But, go to the soul, weary and heavy laden with sin, mourning over
its vileness, its helplessness, and proclaim the gospel. Tell him that the
atonement which Jesus offered on Calvary was a full satisfaction for his
sins. That all his sins were borne and blotted out in that awful moment.
That the bond which divine justice held against the sinner was fully
cancelled by the obedience and sufferings of Christ, and that, appeased and
satisfied, God was “ready to pardon.” How beautiful will be the feet that
convey to him tidings so transporting as these! And are not these statements
perfectly accordant with the declarations of God’s own word? Let us
ascertain: what was the ark symbolical of, alluded to by the apostle in the
ninth chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews, which contained the manna,
Aaron’s rod, and the tables of the covenant, over which stood the Cherubim
of glory, shadowing the mercy-seat? What, but the entire covering of sin?
For, as the covering of the ark did hide the law and testimony, so did the
Lord Jesus Christ hide the sins of His chosen, covenant people—not from the
eye of God’s omniscience, but from the eye of the law. They stand legally
acquitted. So entire was the work of Jesus, so infinite and satisfactory His
obedience, the law of God pronounces them acquitted, and can never bring
them into condemnation. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who
are in Christ Jesus.” “Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died.” How
could the apostle, with any truth, have made a declaration so astounding,
and uttered a challenge so dauntless as this, if the point we are now
endeavoring to establish were not strictly as we affirm it to be?
NOVEMBER 16.
“Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all
and upon all those who believe.” Romans 3:22
THE righteousness wrought out by the incarnation, obedience, sufferings, and
death of Christ, is a most glorious righteousness. It took in the whole law
of God. It did not soften down or ask for a compromise of its claims. It
took the law in its utmost strictness, and honored it. It gave all the law
demanded, all it could demand. And what stamped this righteousness with a
glory so great? what enabled the Redeemer to offer an obedience so
perfect?—what, but that He was God in our nature! The Law-giver became the
Law-fulfiller. The God became the Substitute—the Judge became the Surety.
Behold, then, the justification of a believing sinner! He stands accepted in
the righteousness of Christ, with full and entire acceptance. What says the
Holy Spirit? “In the Lord shall all the seed of Israel by justified, and
shall glory.” “And by Him (the Lord Jesus) all that believe are justified
from all things, from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.”
“And you are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and
power.” “Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might
sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might
present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any
such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” “He has made
Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him.” Mark the expression, “made the righteousness
of God”! So called because the righteousness which Christ wrought out was a
divine righteousness—not the righteousness of a created being, of an angel,
or of a superior prophet, else it were blasphemy to call it “the
righteousness of GOD.” Oh no! the righteousness in which you stand, if you
are “accepted in the Beloved,” is a more costly and glorious righteousness
than Adam’s, or the highest angel’s in glory: it is “the righteousness of
God.” The righteousness of the God-man—possessing all the infinite merit,
and glory, and perfection of Deity. And what seems still more incredible,
the believer is made the righteousness of God in Christ. So that beholding
him in Christ, the Father can “rest in His love, and rejoice over Him with
singing.” Is it not then, we ask, a perfect, a complete justification? what
can be more so? Do not the passages we have quoted prove it? Can any other
meaning be given to them, without divesting them of their beauty and obvious
sense? Would it not be to turn from God’s word, to dishonor and grieve the
Spirit, and to rob the believer of a most influential motive to holiness,
were we to take a less expanded view of this subject than that which we have
taken? Most assuredly it would. Then let the Christian reader welcome this
truth. If it is God’s truth—and we humbly believe we have proved it to be
so—it is not less his privilege than his duty to receive it.
NOVEMBER 17.
“To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has made us accepted in
the beloved.” Ephesians 1:6
THE holy influence which a believer is called to exert around him will be
greatly augmented, and powerfully felt, by an abiding realization of his
full and entire acceptance in Christ. The child of God is “the salt of the
earth,” “the light of the world,” surrounded by moral putrefaction and
darkness. By his holy consistent example, he is to exert a counteracting
influence. He is to be purity where there is corruption, he is to be light
where there is darkness. And if his walk is consistent, if his life is holy,
his example tells, and tells powerfully, upon an ungodly world. Saints of
God catch, as it were, the contagion of his sanctity. The worldling
acknowledges the reality of the gospel he professes, and the bold skeptic
falls back abashed, and feels “how awful goodness is!” What, then, will so
elevate his own piety, and increase the power of his influence, as a
realization of his justification by Christ? Oh how this commends the
religion of Jesus! We will suppose a Christian parent surrounded by a large
circle of unconverted children. They look to him as to a living gospel: they
look to him for an exemplification of the truth he believes: they expect to
see its influence upon his principles, his temper, his affections, his whole
conduct. What, then, must be their impression of the gospel, if they behold
their parent always indulging in doubts as to his acceptance, yielding to
unbelieving fears as to his calling? Instead of walking in the full
assurance of faith, saying with the apostle, “I know whom I have
believed”—instead of living in the holy liberty, peace, and comfort of
acceptance, there is nothing but distrust, dread, and tormenting fear. How
many a child has borne this testimony, “the doubts and fears of my parent
have been my great stumbling-block”! Oh, then, for the sake of those around
you—for the sake of your children, your connections, your friends, your
domestics—realize your full, free, and entire acceptance in Christ.
Is it any marvel, then, that in speaking of His beloved and justified
people, God employs in His word language like this: “You are all fair, my
love: there is no spot in you.” “He has not beheld iniquity in Jacob,
neither has He seen perverseness in Israel”? Carry out this thought. Had
there been no iniquity in Jacob? had there been no perverseness in Israel?
Read their histories, and what do they develop but iniquity and perverseness
of the most aggravated kind? And yet, that God should say He saw no iniquity
in Jacob, and no perverseness in Israel, what does it set forth but the
glorious work of the adorable Immanuel—the glory, the fitness, the
perfection of that righteousness in which they stand “without spot, or
wrinkle, or any such thing”? In themselves vile and worthless, sinful and
perverse, deeply conscious before God of possessing not a claim upon His
regard, but worthy only of His just displeasure, yet counted righteous in
the righteousness of another, fully and freely justified by Christ. Is this
doctrine startling to some? Is it considered too great a truth to be
received by others? Any other gospel than this, we solemnly affirm, will
never save the soul! The obedience, sufferings, and death of the God-man,
made over to the repenting, believing sinner, by an act of free and
sovereign grace, is the only plank on which the soul can safely rest—let it
attempt the passage across the cold river of death on any other, and it is
gone! On this it may boldly venture, and on this it shall be safely and
triumphantly carried into the quiet and peaceful haven of future and eternal
blessedness. We acknowledge the magnitude of this doctrine; yet it is not to
be rejected because of its greatness. It may be profound, almost too deeply
so for an angel’s mind—the cherubim may veil their faces, overpowered with
its glory, while yet with eager longings they desire to look into it—still
may the weakest saint of God receive it, live upon it, walk in it. It is “a
deep river, through which an elephant might swim, and which a lamb may
ford.”
NOVEMBER 18.
“And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as
silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my
name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say,
The Lord is my God.” Zechariah 13:9
THE believer often commences his spiritual journey with shallow and
defective views of the perfect fitness and glory of the Redeemer’s
justifying righteousness. There is, we admit, a degree of
self-renunciation—there is a reception of Christ—and there is some sweet and
blessed enjoyment of His acceptance. Yet his views of himself, and of the
entire, absolute, supreme necessity, importance, and glory of Christ’s
finished work, are as nothing compared with his after experience of both.
God will have the righteousness of His Son to be acknowledged and felt to be
everything. It is a great work, a glorious work, a finished work, and He
will cause His saints to know it. It is His only method of saving sinners;
and the sinner that is saved shall acknowledge this, not in his judgment
merely, but from a deep heartfelt experience of the truth, “to the praise of
the glory of His grace.”
It is, then, we say, in the successive stages of his experience, that the
believer sees more distinctly, adores more profoundly, and grasps more
firmly, the finished righteousness of Christ. And what is the school in
which he learns his nothingness, his poverty, his utter destitution? the
school of deep and sanctified affliction. In no other school is it learned,
and under no other teacher but God. Here his high thoughts are brought low,
and the Lord alone is exalted. Here he forms a just estimate of his
attainments, his gifts, his knowledge, and that which he thought to be so
valuable he now finds to be nothing worth. Here his proud spirit is abased,
his rebellious spirit tamed, his restless, feverish spirit soothed into
passive quietude; and here, the deep humbling acknowledgment is made, “I am
vile!” Thus is he led back to first principles. Thus the first step is
retaken, and the first lesson is relearned. The believer, emptied entirely
of self, of self-complacency, self-trust, self-glorying, stands ready for
the full Savior. The blessed and eternal Spirit opens to him, in this
posture, the fitness, the fullness, the glory, the infinite grandeur of
Christ’s finished righteousness; leads him to it afresh, puts it upon him
anew, causes him to enter into it more fully, to rest upon it more entirely;
breaks it up to the soul, and discloses its perfect fitness to his case. And
what a glory he sees in it! He saw it before, but not as he beholds it now.
And what a resting-place he finds beneath the cross! He rested there before,
but not as he rests now. Such views has he now of Christ—such preciousness,
such beauty, such tenderness he sees in Immanuel—that a new world of beauty
and of glory seems to have opened before his view. A new Savior, a new
righteousness, appear to have been brought to his soul. All this has been
produced by the discipline of the covenant—the afflictions sent and
sanctified by a good and covenant God and Father. Oh, you tried believers!
murmur not at God’s dispensations; repine not at His dealings. Has He seen
fit to dash against you billow upon billow? Has He thought proper to place
you in the furnace? Has He blasted the fair prospect—dried up the
stream—called for the surrender of your Isaac? Oh, bless Him for the way He
takes to empty you of self, and fill you with His own love. This is His
method of teaching you, schooling you, and fitting you for the inheritance
of the saints in light. Will you not allow Him to select His own plan—to
adopt His own mode of cure? You are in His hands; and could you be in
better? Are you now learning your own poverty, destitution, and
helplessness? and is the blood and righteousness of Jesus more precious and
glorious to the eye of your faith? Then praise Him for your afflictions, for
all these cross dispensations are now, yes, at this moment, working together
for your spiritual good.
NOVEMBER 19.
“Charity suffers long, and is kind; charity envies not; charity boasts not
itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her
own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil; rejoices not in iniquity, but
rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things.” 1 Corinthians 13:4—7
TRUE Christian love will excite in the mind a holy jealousy for the
Christian reputation of other believers. How sadly is this overlooked by
many professors! What sporting with reputation, what trifling with
character, what unveiling to the eyes of others the weaknesses, the
infirmities, and the stumblings of which they have become cognizant, marks
many in our day. Oh! if the Lord had dealt with us as we have thoughtlessly
and uncharitably dealt with our fellow-servants, what shame and confusion
would cover us! We should blush to lift up our faces before men. But the
exercise of this divine love in the heart will constrain us to abstain from
all envious, suspicious feelings, from all evil surmisings, from all wrong
construing of motives, from all tale-bearing—that fruitful cause of so much
evil in the Christian Church—from slander, from unkind insinuations, and
from going from house to house retailing evil, and making the imperfections,
the errors, or the doings of others the theme of idle, sinful
gossip—“busy-bodies in other men’s matters.” All this is utterly
inconsistent with our high and holy calling. It is degrading, dishonoring,
lowering to our character as the children of God. It dims the luster of our
piety. It impairs our moral influence in the world. Ought not the character
of a Christian professor to be as dear to me as my own? And ought I not as
vigilantly to watch over it, and as zealously to promote it, and as
indignantly to vindicate it, when unjustly aspersed or maliciously assailed,
as if I, and not he, were the sufferer? How can the reputation of a believer
in Jesus be affected, and we not be affected? It is our common Lord who is
wounded—it is our common salvation that is injured—it is our own family that
is maligned. And our love to Jesus, to His truth, and to His people, should
caution us to be as jealous of the honor, as tender of the feelings, and as
watchful of the character and reputation, of each member of the Lord’s
family, be his denomination what it may, as of our own. “Who is weak,” says
the apostle, “and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?” Oh how
graciously, how kindly does our God deal with His people! Laying His hand
upon their many spots, He seems to say, “No eye but mine shall see them.”
Oh! let us in this particular be “imitators of God, as dear children.” Thus
shall we more clearly evidence to others, and be assured ourselves, that
have “passed from death unto life.”
NOVEMBER 20.
“God, who quickens the dead.” Romans 4:17
THE commencement of spiritual life is sudden. We are far from confining the
Spirit to a certain prescribed order in this or any other part of His work.
He is a Sovereign, and therefore works according to His own will. But there
are some methods He more frequently adopts than others. We would not say
that all conversion is a sudden work. There is a knowledge of sin,
conviction of its guilt, repentance before God on account of it; these are
frequently slow and gradual in their advance. But the first communication of
divine light and life to the soul is always sudden—sudden and instantaneous
as was the creation of natural light—“God said, Let there be light, and
there was light.” It was but a word, and in an instant chaos rolled away,
and every object and scene in nature was bathed in light and glory—sudden as
was the communication of life to Lazarus—“Jesus cried with a loud voice,
Lazarus, come forth!” it was but a word, and in an instant “he that was dead
came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes.” So is it in the first
communication of divine light and life to the soul. The eternal Spirit says,
“Let there be light,” and in a moment there is light. He speaks again, “Come
forth,” and in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the dead are raised.
Striking illustrations of the suddenness of the Spirit’s operation are
afforded in the cases of Saul of Tarsus and of the thief upon the cross. How
sudden was the communication of light and life to their souls! It was no
long and previous process of spiritual illumination—it was the result of no
lengthened chain of reasoning—no labored argumentation. In a moment, and
under circumstances most unfavorable to the change, as we should
think—certainly, at a period when the rebellion of the heart rose the most
fiercely against God, “a light from heaven, above the brightness of the
sun,” poured its transforming radiance into the mind of the enraged
persecutor; and a voice, conveying life into the soul, reached the
conscience of the dying thief. Both were translated from darkness into
light, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” How many who read this
page may say, “Thus it was with me!” God the Eternal Spirit arrested me when
my heart’s deep rebellion was most up in arms against Him. It was a sudden
and a short work, but it was mighty and effectual. It was unexpected and
rapid, but deep and thorough. In a moment the hidden evil was brought to
view—the deep and dark fountain broken up; all my iniquities passed before
me, and all my secret sins seemed placed in the light of God’s countenance.
My soul sank down in deep mire—yes, hell opened its mouth to receive me.”
Overlook not this wise and gracious method of the blessed Spirit’s operation
in regeneration. It is instantaneous. The means may have been simple;
perhaps it was the loss of a friend—an alarming illness—a word of reproof or
admonition dropped from a parent or a companion—the singing of a hymn—the
hearing of a sermon—or some text of Scripture winged with his power to the
conscience; in the twinkling of an eye, the soul, “dead in trespasses and
sins,” was “quickened” and translated into “newness of life.” Oh blessed
work of the blessed and Eternal Spirit! Oh mighty operation! Oh inscrutable
wisdom! What a change has now passed over the whole man! Overshadowed by the
Holy Spirit, that which is begotten in the soul is the divine life—a holy,
influential, never-dying principle. Truly he is a new creature, “old things
are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” For this change let it
not be supposed that there is, in the subject, any previous preparation.
There can be no preparation for light or life. What preparation was there is
chaos? What preparation was there in the cold clay limbs of Lazarus? What in
Paul? What in the dying thief? The work of regeneration is supremely the
work of the Spirit. The means may be employed, and are to be employed, in
accordance with the Divine purpose, yet are they not to be deified. They are
but means, “profiting nothing” without the power of God the Holy Spirit.
Regeneration is His work, and not man’s.
NOVEMBER 21.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that hears my word, and believes on him
that sent me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation;
but is passed from death unto life.” John 5:24
IF, then, the first implantation of the divine life in the soul is sudden;
the advance of that work is in most cases gradual. Let this be an
encouragement to any who are writing hard and bitter things against
themselves in consequence of their little progress. The growth of divine
knowledge in the soul is often slow—the work of much time and of protracted
discipline. Look at the eleven disciples—what slow, tardy scholars were
they, even though taught immediately from the lips of Jesus; and “who
teaches like Him?” They drank their knowledge from the very Fountain. They
received their light directly from the Sun itself. And yet, with all these
superior advantages—the personal ministry, instructions, miracles, and
example of our dear Lord—how slow of understanding were they to comprehend,
and how “slow of heart to believe,” all that He so laboriously, clearly, and
patiently taught them! Yes, the advance of the soul in the divine life, its
knowledge of sin, of the hidden evil, the heart’s deep treachery and
intricate windings, Satan’s subtlety, the glory of the gospel, the
preciousness of Christ, and its own interest in the great salvation, is not
the work of a day, nor of a year, but of many days, yes, many years of deep
ploughing, long and often painful discipline, of “windy storm and tempest.”
But this life in the soul is not less real, nor less divine, because its
growth is slow and gradual: it may be small and feeble in its degree, yet,
in its nature, it is the life that never dies. How many of the Lord’s
beloved ones, the children of godly parents, brought up in the ways of God,
are at a loss, in reviewing the map of their pilgrimage, to remember the
starting-point of their spiritual life. They well know that they left the
city of destruction—that by a strong and a mighty arm they were brought out
of Egypt; but so gently, so imperceptibly, so softly, and so gradually were
they led—“first a thought, then a desire, then a prayer”—that they could no
more discover when the first dawning of divine life took place in their
soul, than they could tell the instant when natural light first broke upon
chaos. Still it is real. It is no fancy that he has inherited an evil
principle in the heart; it is no fancy that that principle grace has
subdued. It is no fancy that he was once a child of darkness; it is no fancy
that he is now a child of light. He may mourn in secret over his little
advance, his tardy progress, his weak faith, his small grace, his strong
corruption, his many infirmities, his startings aside like “a broken bow,”
yet he can say, “Though I am the ‘chief of sinners,’ and the ‘least of all
saints’—though I see within so much to abase me, and without so much to
mourn over, yet this ‘one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I
see.’ I see that which I never saw before—a hatefulness in sin, and a beauty
in holiness; I see a vileness and emptiness in myself, and a preciousness
and fullness in Jesus.” Do not forget, then, dear reader, that feeble grace
is yet real grace. If it but “hungers and thirsts,” if it “touches but the
hem,” it shall be saved.
NOVEMBER 22.
“Leaning upon her Beloved.” Solomon’s Song, 8:5
WHAT more appropriate, what more soothing truth could we bring before you,
suffering Christian, than this? You are sick—lean upon Jesus. His sick ones
are peculiarly dear to His heart. You are dear to Him. In all your pains and
languishings, faintings and lassitude, Jesus is with you; for He created
that frame, He remembers that it is but dust, and He bids you lean upon Him,
and leave your sickness and its issue entirely in His hands. You are
oppressed—lean upon Jesus. He will undertake your cause, and committing it
thus into His hands, He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,
and your judgment as the noonday. You are lonely—lean upon Jesus. Sweet will
be the communion and close the fellowship which you may thus hold with Him,
your heart burning within you while He talks with you by the way. Is the
ascent steep and difficult? lean upon your Beloved. Is the path strait and
narrow? lean upon your Beloved. Do intricacies and perplexities and trials
weave their network around your feet? lean upon your Beloved. Has death
smitten down the strong arm and chilled the tender heart upon which you were
used to recline? lean upon your Beloved. Oh! lean upon Jesus in every
strait, in every want, in every sorrow, in every temptation. Nothing is too
insignificant, nothing too mean, to take to Christ. It is enough that you
want Christ, to warrant you in coming to Christ. No excuse need you make for
repairing to Him; no apology will He require for the frequency of your
approach; He loves to have you quite near to Him, to hear your voice, and to
feel the confidence of your faith and the pressure of your love. Ever
remember that there is a place in the heart of Christ sacred to you, and
which no one can fill but yourself, and from which none may dare exclude
you. And when you are dying, oh! lay your languishing head upon the bosom of
your Beloved, and fear not the foe, and dread not the passage; for His rod
and His staff, they will comfort you. On that bosom the beloved disciple
leaned at supper; on that bosom the martyr Stephen laid his bleeding brow in
death; and on that bosom you, too, beloved, may repose, living or dying,
soothed, supported, and sheltered by your Savior and your Lord.
NOVEMBER 23.
“God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he
should repent: has he said, and shall he not do it? Or has he spoken, and
shall he not make it good?” Numbers 23:19
GOD has done the utmost which His infinite wisdom dictated, to lay the most
solid ground for confidence. He has made all the promises of the covenant of
grace absolute and unconditional. Were faith simply to credit this, what
“strong consolation” would flow into the soul! Take, for example, that
exceeding great and precious promise, “Call upon me in the day of trouble: I
will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” What a sparkling jewel, what a
brilliant gem is this! How many a weeping eye has caught the luster, and has
forgotten its misery, as waters that pass away! While others, perhaps,
gazing intently upon it, have said, “This promise exactly suits my case, but
is it for me? is it for one so vile as I? Who by my own indiscretion and
folly and sin have brought this trouble upon myself? May such an one call
upon God, and be answered?” What is this unbelieving reasoning, but to
render this divine and most exhilarating promise, as to any practical
influence upon your mind, of none effect? But the promise stands in God’s
word absolute and unconditional. There is not one syllable in it upon which
the most unworthy child of sorrow can reasonably found an objection. Is it
now with you a “day of trouble”?—God makes no exception as to how, or by
whom, or from where your trouble came. It is enough that it is a time of
trouble with you—that you are in sorrow, in difficulty, in trial—God says to
you, “Call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you.” Resign, then,
your unbelief, embrace the promise, and behold Jesus showing Himself through
its open lattice. Take yet another glorious promise, “Him that comes unto me
I will in no wise cast out.” “This is just the promise that my poor, guilty,
anxious heart needs,” exclaims a trembling, sin-distressed soul; “but dare I
with all my sin, and wretchedness, and poverty, take up my rest in Christ?
What! may I, who have been so long an enemy against God, such a despiser of
Christ, such a neglecter of my soul, and scoffer at its great salvation,
approach with a trembling yet assured hope that Christ will receive me, save
me, and not cast me out?” Yes! You may. The promise is absolute and
unconditional, and, magnificent and precious as it is, it is yours. “Him
that comes unto me I will in no wise cast out. Satan shall not persuade me,
sin shall not prevail with me, my own heart shall not constrain me, yes,
nothing shall induce me, to cast out that poor sinner who comes to me,
believes my word, falls upon my grace, and hides himself in my pierced
bosom: I will in no wise cast him out.”
NOVEMBER 24.
“Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away:
for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart,
I will send him unto you.” John 16:7
THERE is no sorrow of the believing heart of which the Holy Spirit is
ignorant, to which He is indifferent, or which His sympathy does not
embrace, and His power cannot alleviate. The Church in which He dwells, and
whose journeyings he guides, is a tried Church. Chosen in the furnace of
affliction, allied to a suffering Head, its course on earth is traced by
tears, and often by blood. Deeply it needs a Comforter. And who can compute
the individual sorrows which may crowd the path of a single traveler to his
sorrowless home? What a world of trial, and how varied, may be comprised
within the history of a single saint! But if sorrows abound, consolation
much more abounds, since the Comforter of the Church is the Holy Spirit.
What a mighty provision, how infinite the largess, the God of all
consolation has made in the covenant of grace for the sorrows of His people,
in the appointment of the Third Person of the blessed Trinity to this
office! What an importance it attaches to, and with what dignity it invests,
and with what sanctity it hallows, our every sorrow! If our heavenly Father
sees proper in His unerring wisdom and goodness to send affliction, who
would not welcome the message as a sacred and precious thing, thus to be
soothed and sanctified? Yes, the Spirit leads the sorrowful to all comfort.
He comforts by applying the promises—by leading to Christ—by bending the
will in deep submission to God—and by unveiling to faith’s far-seeing eye
the glories of a sorrowless, tearless, sinless world. And oh, who can
portray His perfection as a Comforter? With what promptness and tenderness
He applies Himself to the soothing of each grief—how patiently He instructs
the ignorant—how gently He leads the burdened—how skillfully He heals the
wounded—how timely He meets the necessitous—how effectually He speaks to the
mourner! When our heart is overwhelmed within us, through the depth and foam
of the angry waters, He leads us to the Rock that is higher than we.
He leads to glory. There He matures the kingdom, and perfects the building,
and completes the temple He commenced and occupied on earth. No power shall
oppose, no difficulty shall obstruct, no contingency shall thwart the
consummation of this His glorious purpose and design. Every soul graced by
His presence, every heart touched by His love, every body sanctified as His
temple, He will lead to heaven. Of that heaven He is the pledge and the
earnest. While Jesus is in heaven, preparing a place for His people, the
Spirit is on earth, preparing His people for that place. The one is maturing
glory for the Church, the other is maturing the Church for glory.
NOVEMBER 25.
“What? know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is
in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought
with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which
are God’s.” 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20
AS a temple of the Holy Spirit, yield yourself to His divine and gracious
power. Bend your ear to His softest whisper—your will to His gentlest
sway—your heart to His holy and benign influence. In not hearkening to His
voice, and in not yielding to His promptings, we have been great losers.
Often has He incited to communion with God, and because the time was not
seasonable, or the place not convenient, you stifled His persuasive voice,
resisted His proffered aid, and, thus slighted and grieved, He has retired.
And lo! when you have risen to pray, God has covered Himself as with a cloud
that your prayer could not pass through. Oh, seek to have an ear attuned to
His softest accents, and a heart constrained to an instant compliance with
His mildest dictates. The greatest blessing we possess is the possession of
the Spirit.
And oh, to be Christ’s—to be His gift, His purchase, His called saint, His
lowly disciple—what an inestimable privilege! But how may we be quite sure
that this privilege is ours? If we have the Spirit of Christ, we are in very
deed Christians. It is the superscription of the King, the mark of the
Shepherd, the Lord’s impress of Himself upon the heart. And how sanctifying
this privilege! “Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh, with its
affections and lusts.” “Let every one that names the name of Christ depart
from iniquity.” And if we are Christ’s now, we shall be Christ’s to all
eternity. It is a union that cannot be dissolved. Every believer in Jesus is
“sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our
inheritance.” And as we have the earnest of the inheritance, we shall as
assuredly possess the inheritance itself. The Spirit of Christ is an active,
benevolent Spirit. It bore the Savior, when He was in the flesh, from
country to country, from city to city, from house to house, preaching His
own gospel to lost man. “He went about doing good.” If we have the Spirit of
Christ, we shall be prompted to a like Christian love and activity on behalf
of those who possess not the gospel, or who, possessing it, slight and
reject the mercy. The Spirit of Christ is essentially a missionary Spirit.
It commenced its labor of love at Jerusalem, and from that its center,
worked its way with augmenting sympathy and widening sphere until it
embraced the world as the field of its labor. Ah! that we manifest so little
of this Spirit, ought to lead us to deep searchings of heart, and stir us up
to earnest prayer: “Lord, make me more earnest for the salvation of souls,
for the advancement of Your kingdom. Grant me this evidence of being
Your—the possession of Your Spirit, constraining me to a more simple and
unreserved consecration of my talents, my substance, my rank, my influence,
my time, myself, to the establishment of Your truth, the advancement of Your
cause, and thus to the wider diffusion of Your glory in the earth.”
NOVEMBER 26.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to
His abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 1 Peter 1:3
TO be sensible of this amazing power in the soul is to be born again—to be
raised from the grave of corruption—to live on earth a heavenly, a
resurrection-life—to have the heart daily ascending in the sweet incense of
love and prayer and praise, where its risen Treasure is. It possesses, too,
a most comforting power. What but this sustained the disciples in the early
struggles of Christianity, amid the storms of persecution, which else had
swept them from the earth? They felt that their Master was alive. They
needed no external proof of the fact. They possessed in their souls God’s
witness. The truth authenticated itself. The three days of His entombment
were to them days of sadness, desertion, and gloom. Their sun had set in
darkness and in blood, and with it every ray of hope had vanished. All they
loved, or cared to live for, had descended to the grave. They had now no arm
to strengthen them in their weakness, no bosom to sympathize with them in
sorrow, no eye to which they could unveil each hidden thought and struggling
emotion. But the resurrection of their Lord was the resurrection of all
their buried joys. They now traveled to him as to a living Savior, conscious
of a power new-born within them, the power of their Lord’s resurrection.
“Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord.” But is this truth
less vivifying and precious to us? Has it lost anything of its vitality to
quicken, or its power to soothe? Oh, no! truth is eternal and immutable.
Years impair not its strength, circumstances change not its character. The
same truths which distilled as dew from the lips of Moses, which awoke the
seraphic lyre of David, which winged the heaven-soaring spirit of Isaiah,
which inspired the manly eloquence of Paul, which floated in visions of
sublimity before the eye of John, and which in all ages have fed, animated,
and sanctified the people of God, guiding their counsels, soothing their
sorrows, and animating their hopes, still are vital and potent in the
chequered experiences of the saints, hastening to swell the cloud of
witnesses to their divinity and their might. Of such is the doctrine of
Christ’s resurrection. Oh, what consolation flows to the Church of God from
the truth of a living Savior—a Savior alive to know and to heal our
sorrows—to inspire and sanctify our joys—to sympathize with and supply our
need! Alive to every cloud that shades the mind, to every cross that chafes
the spirit, to every grief that saddens the heart, to every evil that
threatens our safety or imperils our happiness! What power, too, do the
promises of the gospel derive from this truth! When Jesus speaks by these
promises, we feel that there is life and spirit in His word, for it is the
spoken word of the living Savior. And when He invites us to Himself for
rest, and bids us look to His cross for peace, and asks us to deposit our
burdens at His feet, and drink the words that flow from His lips, we feel a
living influence stealing over the soul, inspiriting and soothing as that of
which the trembling evangelist was conscious, when the glorified Savior
gently laid His right hand upon him, and said, “Fear not: I am the first and
last: I am he that lives, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore,
Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.” Is Jesus alive? Then let what
else die, our life, with all its supports, consolations, and hopes, is
secure in Him. “Because I live, you shall live also.” A living spring is He.
Seasons vary, circumstances change, feelings fluctuate, friendships cool,
friends die, but Christ is ever the same. Oh, the blessedness of dealing
with a risen, a living Redeemer! We take our needs to Him—they are instantly
supplied. We take our sins to Him—they are immediately pardoned. We take our
griefs to Him—they are in a moment assuaged.
NOVEMBER 27.
“Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of
corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Romans 8:21
THEY are already in possession of a liberty most costly and precious. Is it
no true liberty to stand before God accepted in the Beloved? Is it no
liberty to draw near to Him with all the confidence of a child reposing in
the boundless affection of a loving father? Is it no liberty to travel day
by day to Jesus, always finding Him an open door of sympathy the most
exquisite, of love the most tender, and of grace the most overflowing? Is
it, in a word, no real liberty to be able to lay faith’s hand upon the
everlasting covenant, and exclaim, “There is now no condemnation”? Oh, yes!
This is the liberty with which Christ has made us free. But the glorious
liberty of the children of God is yet to come. Glorious it will be, because
more manifest and complete. Including all the elements of our present
freedom, it will embrace others not yet enjoyed. We shall be emancipated
from the body of sin and of death. Every fetter of corruption will be
broken, and every tie of sense will be dissolved. All sadness will be chased
from our spirit, all sorrow from our heart, and all cloud from our mind.
Delivered from all sin, and freed from all suffering, we shall wander
through the many mansions of our Father’s house, and tread the star-paved
streets of the celestial city, repose beneath the sylvan bowers of the upper
Paradise, and drink of the waters, clear as crystal, that flow from beneath
the throne—our pure, and blissful, and eternal home—exulting the in the
“glorious liberty of the children of God.” How striking and solemn is the
contrast between the present and the future state of the believer and the
unbeliever! Yours, too, unregenerate reader, is a state of vanity. But,
alas! it is a most willing subjection, and the bondage of corruption which
holds you is uncheered by one ray of hope of final deliverance. What a
terrible and humiliating bondage—a willing slave to sin and Satan! All is
vanity which you so eagerly pursue. “The Lord knows the thoughts of man,
that they are vanity.” Were it possible for you to realize all the schemes
of wealth and distinction, of pleasure and happiness, which now float in
gorgeous visions before your fevered fancy, still would your heart utter its
mournful and bitter complaint, “All is vanity and vexation of spirit.” Oh,
turn you from these vain shadows to Jesus, the substance of all true wealth,
and happiness, and honor. That fluttering heart will never find repose until
it rests in Him. That craving soul will never be satisfied until it be
satisfied with Christ. At His feet then cast you down, and with the tears of
penitence, the reliance of faith, and the expectation of hope, ask to be
numbered among the adopted, who shall before long be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
NOVEMBER 28.
“As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” Acts 13:48
THERE can be nothing in the Bible adverse to the salvation of a sinner. The
doctrine of predestination is a revealed doctrine of the Bible; therefore
predestination cannot be opposed to the salvation of the sinner. So far from
this being true, we hesitate not most strongly and emphatically to affirm,
that we know of no doctrine of God’s word more replete with encouragement to
the awakened, sin-burdened, Christ-seeking soul than this. What stronger
evidence can we have of our election of God than the Spirit’s work in the
heart? Are you really in earnest for the salvation of your soul? Do you feel
the plague of sin? Are you sensible of the condemnation of the law? Do you
come under the denomination of the “weary and heavy laden”? If so, then the
fact that you are a subject of the Divine drawings—that you have a felt
conviction of your sinfulness—and that you are looking wistfully for a place
of refuge, affords the strongest ground for believing that you are one of
those whom God has predestinated to eternal life. The very work thus begun
is the Spirit’s first outline of the Divine image upon your soul—that very
image to which the saints are predestinated to be conformed.
But while we thus vindicate this doctrine from being inimical to the
salvation of the anxious soul, we must with all distinctness and earnestness
declare, that in this stage of your Christian course you have primarily and
mainly to do with another and a different doctrine. We refer to the doctrine
of the Atonement. Could you look into the book of the Divine decrees, and
read your name inscribed upon its pages, it would not impart the joy and
peace which one believing view of Christ crucified will convey. It is not
essential to your salvation that you believe in election; but it is
essential to your salvation that you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. In
your case, as an individual debating the momentous question how a sinner may
be justified before God, your first business is with Christ, and Christ
exclusively. You are to feel that you are a lost sinner, not that you are an
elect saint. The doctrine which meets the present phase of your spiritual
condition is, not the doctrine of predestination, but the doctrine of an
atoning Savior. The truth to which you are to give the first consideration
and the most simple and unquestioning credence is, that “Christ died for the
ungodly”—that He came into the world to save sinners—that He came to call,
not the righteous, but sinners to repentance—that in all respects, in the
great business of our salvation, He stands to us in the relation of a
Savior, while we stand before Him in the character of a sinner. Oh, let one
object fix your eye, and one theme fill your mind—Christ and His salvation.
Absorbed in the contemplation and study of these two points, you may safely
defer all further inquiry to another and a more advanced stage of your
Christian course. Remember that the fact of your predestination, the
certainty of your election, can only be inferred from your conversion. We
must hold you firmly to this truth. It is the subtle and fatal reasoning of
Satan, a species of atheistical fatalism, to argue, “If I am elected I shall
be saved, whether I am regenerated or not.” The path to eternal woe is paved
with arguments like this. Men have cajoled their souls with such vain
excuses until they have found themselves beyond the region of hope! But we
must rise to the fountain, by pursuing the stream. Conversion, and not
predestination, is the end of the chain we are to grasp. We must ascend from
ourselves to God, and not descend from God to ourselves, in settling this
great question. We must judge of God’s objective purpose of love concerning
us, by His subjective work of grace within us. In conclusion, we earnestly
entreat you to lay aside all fruitless speculations, and to give yourself to
prayer. Let reason bow to faith, and faith shut you up to Christ, and Christ
be all in all to you. Beware that you come not short of true conversion—a
changed heart, and a renewed mind, so that you become a “new creature in
Christ Jesus.” And if as a poor lost sinner you repair to the Savior, all
vile and guilty, unworthy and weak as you are, He will receive you and
shelter you within the bosom that bled on the cross to provide an atonement
and an asylum for the very chief of sinners.
NOVEMBER 29.
“But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is
not after man. For I neither received it of men, neither was I taught it,
but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Galatians 1:11, 12
THE great and distinctive truth thus so broadly, emphatically, and
impressively stated is the divinity of the gospel—a truth, in the firm and
practical belief of which the Church of God needs to be established. The
gospel is the master-work of Jehovah, presenting the greatest display of His
manifold wisdom, and the most costly exhibition of the riches of His grace.
In constructing it He would seem to have summoned to His aid all the
resources of His own infinity; His fathomless mind, His boundless love, His
illimitable grace, His infinite power, His spotless holiness—all contributed
their glory, and conspired to present it to the universe as the most
consummate piece of Divine workmanship. It carries with it its own evidence.
The revelations it makes, the facts it records, the doctrines it propounds,
the effects is produces, speak it to be no “cunningly devised fable,” of
human invention and fraud, but what it truly is, the “revelation of Jesus
Christ,” the “glorious gospel of the blessed God.” What but a heart of
infinite love could have conceived the desire of saving sinners? And by what
but an infinite mind could the expedient have been devised of saving them in
such a way—the incarnation, obedience, and death of His own beloved Son?
Salvation from first to last is of the Lord. Here we occupy high vantage
ground. Our feet stand upon an everlasting rock. We feel that we press to
our heart that which is truth—that we have staked our souls upon that which
is divine—that Deity is the basis on which we build: and that the hope which
the belief of the truth has inspired will never make ashamed. Oh, how
comforting, how sanctifying is the conviction that the Bible is God’s word,
that the gospel is Christ’s revelation, and that all that it declares is as
true as Jehovah Himself is true! What a stable foundation for our souls is
this! We live encircled by shadows. Our friends are shadows, our comforts
are shadows, our defenses are shadows, our pursuits are shadows, and we
ourselves are shadows passing away. But in the precious gospel we have
substance, we have reality, we have that which remains with us when all
other things disappear, leaving the soul desolate, the heart bleeding, and
the spirit bowed in sorrow to the dust. It peoples our lonely way, because
it points us to a “cloud of witnesses.” It guides our perplexities, because
it is a “lamp to our feet.” It mitigates our grief, sanctifies our sorrow,
heals our wounds, dries our tears, because it leads us to the love, the
tenderness, the sympathy, the grace of Jesus. The gospel reveals Jesus,
speaks mainly of Jesus, leads simply to Jesus, and this makes it what it is,
“glad tidings of great joy,” to a poor, lost, ruined, tried, and tempted
sinner.
NOVEMBER 30.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God
unto salvation to every one that believes.” Romans 1:16
TO what but the divinity of its nature are we to attribute the miraculous
success which has hitherto attended the propagation of the gospel? Systems
of religious opinion have risen, flourished for a while, then languished and
disappeared. But the gospel, the most ancient, as it is the most sublime of
all, has outlived all other systems. It has beheld the rise and the fall of
many, and yet it remains. What religion has ever encountered the fierce and
persevering opposition which Christianity has endured? Professed friends
have endeavored to corrupt and betray it. Avowed enemies have sworn utterly
to annihilate it. Kings and legislatures have sought to arrest its progress,
and to banish it from the earth. The fires of persecution have consumed its
sanctuaries and its preachers; and behold! it yet lives! The “divinity
within” has kept it. He who dwelt in the bush has preserved it. Where are
the French Encyclopedists—the men of deep learning and brilliant genius, of
moving eloquence, caustic wit, and untiring energy, who banded themselves
together with a vow to exterminate Christ and Christianity? Where is the
eloquent Rosseau, the witty Voltaire, the ingenious Helvetius, the
sophistical Hume, the scoffing D’Alembert, and the ribaldist Paine? Their
names have rotted from the earth, and their works follow them. And where is
the Savior, whom they sought to annihilate? Enthroned in glory, robed in
majesty, and exalted a Prince and a Savior, encircled, worshiped, and adored
by countless myriads of holy beings, the crown of Deity on His head, and the
scepter of universal government in His hand, from whose tribunal they have
passed, tried, sentenced, and condemned, while He yet lives, “to guard His
Church and crush His foes.” And where is the gospel, which they confederated
and thought to overthrow? Pursuing its widening way of mercy through the
world; borne on the wings of every wind, and on the crest of every billow,
to the remotest ends of the earth, destroying the temples and casting down
the idols of heathenism, supplanting superstition and idolatry with
Christian sanctuaries and Christian churches; softening down the harshness
of human barbarism, turning the instruments of cruelty into implements of
husbandry; above all, and the grandest of all its results, proclaiming to
the poorest, neediest, vilest of our race, salvation—full, free salvation by
Christ—the pardon of the greatest sins by His atoning blood, the covering of
the greatest deformity and unworthiness by His justifying righteousness, and
the opening of the kingdom of heaven to all that believe. Thus is the
glorious gospel now blessing the world. It goes and effaces the stains of
human guilt, it gives ease to the burdened conscience, rest to the laboring
spirit, the sweetest comfort under the deepest sorrow, dries the mourner’s
tear, exchanges the “garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness,” and all
because it speaks of Jesus. Oh, this gospel were no glad tidings, it were no
good news, did it not testify of Jesus the Savior. He that sees not Christ
the sum, the substance, the wisdom, the power of the gospel, is blind to the
real glory of the word. He that has never tasted the love of Jesus is yet a
stranger to the sweetness of the truth.
Yes! the gospel is divine! it is of God’s own creation. He gave the word,
and great is the company of those who preach it. Infidelity may oppose, and
infidels may scorn it; false professors may betray, and sworn enemies may
assail it; yet it will survive, as it has done, the fiercest assaults of men
and of devils; like the burning bush it will outlive the flame, and like the
rock of the ocean it will tower above the storm—God, who originated and who
guards it, exclaiming to all their rage, “Hitherto shall you come, but no
farther; and here shall your proud waves be stayed.”