Grace on every side equals “manifold grace.” God offers the gift and we receive it simply and thankfully. We are to become stewards, yes “house stewards,” monitoring the income and the outgo of this magnificent grace, to and from our soul. We operate in such a manner because grace must be what people learn about God, who’s policy toward mankind is and always has been supreme grace. “Sovereign grace” defines it also, the one and only operation that God performs towards men. See first Peter chapter 4, and verse 10. “Grace is God acting freely, according to his own nature as love, with no promises or obligations to fulfill, and acting righteously, of course , in view of the cross. “God acts toward whom, and how, He pleases. God has no debts to pay to mankind.” “Likewise, man has no conditions to fulfill for God to wait for. Grace is…
Category: <span>Personal God</span>
Whom He loves, He chastens. What of it? Chasten is from the Latin “castus”, “pure,” “chaste ;” and to chasten is, properly, to purify. Originally meant “to bring up a child, Hence, to instruct; To discipline or correct.” The word is not synonymous with punish, since it always implies an infliction which contemplates the subject’s amendment” Vincent “For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.” Hebrews 12:3 He that endured is Christ. As we consider Christ in his dying, suffering on our behalf, suffering for us and as us: it is a picture of love. It is a picture of justice, but justice suffered by another on our behalf. Christ was our substitute, dying in our place. And taking us with Him not only in death but in burial, resurrection, ascension and session. Our consideration of Him is…
At the cross I first saw the light and the burden of my heart rolled. away. It was there by Faith I received my sight, and now I am happy all the day. At a bloody cross, Jesus died for my sins. He bare our sins in his own body on a tree. He had become sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. God had laid on him the iniquity of us all. Surely he has borne our sorrow, and by his stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53, 1Peter 2:24, 2Corinthians 5:21. Let’s enumerate some benefits of the Cross. First, Matthew teaches Christ became a substitute for us — A vicar, as in the word vicarious — a deputy who acts in the place of another. “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to…
They tell me of a peace that passes understanding –a certain discernment, a spiritual insight, an intuitive state. In it abides happiness, joy, love, and well being. Imagination births this blessed sphere, God lives in it, sorrow is dismissed, the two cannot co-exist. Christmas ignites itself abroad it and excites good emotions; purity and blessedness. We are closing in on home. Fantasy? Not if we have ever been touched by an angel, or even a fellow person. Perhaps we have encountered the Christ and been swept off our toes into an euphoric joy. Doesn’t this “condition of being” pass understanding? But how real are these states of soul? Are they not dangerous? Answer: not if they are founded in the objective truth. Can there be falsehood in them? Yes because ” the Christian admits the universe has many miscellaneous parts, just as the sane man knows he is complex.” G.K.…
“As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.” Romans 14:1 -3 ESV Simple to the Christian, yet profound in application, the verses pertain to the faith-convictions of believers. Guard your faith, O Saint, but do not qualify brother or sister’s faith according to your personal prejudice. Neither scorn or dispise your counterpart. Paul applies this to food choices, observance of days, and then life and death of both weak and strong. “Henry Alford commentary remarks: there is, (even in Christianity), “a want of broad and independent principles, and a consequent bondage to prejudices.” Vincent adds, “Censoriousness is the peculiar…
Wishful thinking can be larger than life. Lets begin with one man’s observations about the atheist, the politician, and the diplomat. “The definitely concrete fact that they (the atheist), do not acknowledge God determines their knowledge of God. And the fact that they do not want to admit His existence, later gives them, in plenty, the means of legitimizing their desire. If the wish is ever father to the thought, it is abundantly so here. …how cheaply are thoughts and reasons to be had. …the history of philosophy might well be written as the history of wishes; and the history of history-writing as a history of wishful thinking; and indeed, the history of religions as the history of pious wishes. ” “The art of political and tactical speech in general — alike to the man in the street and for the official spokesman — invariably consists in seeking reasons for…
The subject of Biblical testing at the initiation of God is one of fleeting understanding. In fact, this author wrote a short commentary on “Job” a few years ago, only to wander, today, if there was any accuracy in the insight. I am thinking of writing a revision. I had discussed “Sense evaluation” as a target of God’s testing, which I still hold to be true. God’s servant in Isaiah 11: 3, judged not “after the sight of his eyes, neither reproved after the hearing of his ears.” — a prophetic passage pointing to Christ. The reference refers to temporal thinking which, again, God targets for exposure and ultimate removal. God seeks to orient us to the eternal. Our degree of Spiritual content through the intake of God’s Word reveals itself in the trial. In his booklet, “When Testings Come,” Dr. Carl H. Stevens writes that in tests. “God watches six…
And it came to pass, when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had made a raid upon the south, and upon Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag and burned it with fire; and had taken the women captives that were in it; both great and small: they had put none to death, but had carried them off, and went on their way. 1 Samuel 30:1-2 An adverse day, “So David and his men came to the city, and, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives.” 1Samuel 30:3 David lifted his voice and wept, And so too, all the people with him. Then, “…the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters.” Out of the bitter gash created in every man’s…
Galatians 5:13 instructs us, ” …brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.” In this profound verse, Paul addresses the Christian who has discovered the Precious Holy Spirit, the death of separation, the life of resurrection, the victory of ascension, the repose of being seated with Christ in glory. In a sense, Paul admonishes us as Spiritual men and women: Don’t use your liberty as a bondage maker by willfully reverting to the sphere of “non-liberty..’ The implication here carries a power house of truth. The Spiritual man has become a discerning person. also a will-deciding individual he or she choose their identity. They carefully must be wary of past identities. They must discern false identities. They must adhere to the parameters of their new identity in Christ. Paul summarizes the accepted identity, “in love…
On our Romans 7 discourse, Expositors comments, “…it is the cry of a human soul, if ever there was a personal cry. the passage betrays a kind of conflict far deeper and more mysterious than merely that of “I ought” with “I will not.” –It is a conflict of “I will” with “I will not”; of “I hate” with “I do.” Romans 7:19 illustrates this, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. “ Troublesome, the divided mind looks like this: On one hand, we want to do good. On the other hand, however, evil over-rules the good intentions, resulting in injurious or bad actions. Perhaps we determine harder to do the good we want. Before long we witness the weakness of our will as we surrender again to that troublesome, pernicious, destructive, baneful display. We need an…