REFLECTIONS

HOW TRUE MANHOOD IS RESTORED

To help the seeker to a true faith in Jesus, I would remind him of the work of the Lord Jesus in the room and place and stead of sinners.

"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” (Rom 5:6). "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree." (I Peter 2:24). "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isa 53:6). "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." (I Peter 3:18).

Upon one declaration of Scripture let the reader fix his eye. "With His stripes we are healed" (Isa 53:5). God here treats sin as a disease, and He sets before us the costly remedy which He has provided.

I ask you very solemnly to accompany me in your meditations for a few minutes, while I bring before you the stripes of the Lord Jesus. The Lord resolved to restore us, and therefore He sent His only begotten Son, "very God of very God" that He might descend into this world to take upon Him­self our nature in order for our redemption. He lived as a man among men. In due time, after thirty years or more of obedience, the time came when He should do us the greatest service of all, namely, stand in our stead and bear "the chastisement of our peace" (Isa 53:5). He went to Gethsemane; and there at the first taste of our bitter cup, He sweat great drops of blood. He went to Pilate's hall and Herod's judgment-seat, and there He drank draughts of pain and scorn in our room and place. Last of all, they took Him to the cross and nailed Him there to die—to die in our stead.

The word stripes is used to set forth His sufferings, both of body and of soul. The whole of Christ was made a sacrifice for us. His whole manhood suf­fered. As to His body, it shared with His mind in a grief that never can be described. In the beginning of His passion, when He emphatically suffered instead of us, He was in an agony; and from His bodily frame a bloody sweat distilled so copiously as to fall to the ground.

It is a very rare occurrence that a man sweats blood. There have been one or two instances of it, and they have been followed by almost immediate death. But our Savior lived—lived after an agony which to anyone else would have proved fatal. Before He could cleanse His face from this dreadful crimson, they hurried Him to the high priest's hall. In the dead of night they bound Him and led Him away. Anon they took Him to Pilate and to Herod. These scourged Him, and their soldiers spat in His face and buffeted Him, and put on His head a crown of thorns.

Scourging is one of the most awful tortures that can be inflicted by malice. It was formerly the disgrace of the British army that the "cat" was used upon the soldier—a brutal infliction of torture. But to the Roman, cruelty was so natural that he made his common punishments worse than brutal. The Roman scourge is said to have been made of the sinews of oxen, twisted into knots, and into these knots were inserted slivers of bone and huckle-bones of sheep. Every time the scourge fell upon the bare back, "the plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows" (Psa. 129:3). Our Savior was called upon to endure the fierce pain of the Roman scourge; and this not as the finish of His punishment, but as a preface to crucifixion. To this His persecutors added buf­feting and plucking out the hair. They spared Him no form of pain.

In all His faintness, through bleeding and fasting, they made Him carry His cross until another was forced by the forethought of their cruelty to bear it, lest their victim should die on the road. They stripped Him, threw Him down, and nailed Him to the wood. They pierced His hands and His feet. They lifted up the tree with Him upon it and then dashed it down into its place in the ground, so that all His limbs were dislocated according to the lament of the psalmist, "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint (Psa. 22:14a).

He hung on the cross in the burning sun until the fever dissolved His strength, and He said, "My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death." (Psa. 22:14b-15). There He hung, a spectacle to God and men. The weight of His body was first sustained by His feet, until the nails tore through the tender nerves. Then the painful load began to drag upon His hands and rend those sensitive parts of His frame. How small a wound in the hand has brought on lockjaw! How awful must have been the torment caused by that dragging iron tearing through the delicate parts of the hands and feet!

Now were all manner of bodily pains centered in His tortured frame. All the while His enemies stood around, pointing at Him in scorn, thrusting out their tongues in mockery, jesting at His prayers, and gloating over His suf­ferings. He cried, "I thirst" (John 19:28), and then they gave Him vinegar min­gled with gall. After a while He said, "It is finished" (John 19:30). He had endured the utmost of appointed grief and had made full vindication to divine justice. Then, and not until then, He gave up the ghost.

Holy men of old have enlarged most lovingly upon the bodily sufferings of our Lord, and I have no hesitation in doing the same, trusting that trembling sinners may see salvation in these painful "stripes" of the Redeemer. To describe the outward sufferings of our Lord is not easy. 1 acknowledge that I have failed.

Christ's soul-sufferings, which were the soul of His sufferings, who can even conceive, much less express what they were? At the very first I told you that He sweat great drops of blood. That was His heart driving out its life-floods to the surface through the terrible depression of spirit which was upon Him. He said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death" (Mat 26:38). The betrayal by Judas and the desertion of the twelve grieved our Lord, but the weight of our sin was the real pressure on His heart. Our guilt was the olive-press which forced from Him the moisture of His life. No language can ever tell His agony in prospect of His passion. How little then can we conceive the passion itself?

When nailed to the cross, He endured what no martyr ever suffered. Mar­tyrs, when they have died, have been so sustained of God that they have rejoiced amid their pain. But our Redeemer was forsaken of His Father until He cried, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mat 27:46). That was the bitterest cry of all, the utmost depth of His unfathomable grief.

Yet it was necessary that He should be deserted because God must turn His back on sin and consequently upon Him who was "made to be sin for us" (2Co 5:21). The soul of the great Substitute suffered a horror of misery instead of that horror of hell into which sinners would have been plunged had He not taken their sin upon Himself and been made a curse for them. It is written, "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree" (Gal 3:13). But who knows what that curse means?

The remedy for your sins and mine is found in the substitutionary suffer­ings of the Lord Jesus and in these only. These "stripes" of the Lord Jesus Christ were on our behalf. Do you ask, "Is there anything for us to do, to remove the guilt of sin?" I answer: "There is nothing whatever for you to do. By the stripes of Jesus we are healed. All those stripes He has endured and left not one of them for us to bear."

"But must we not believe on Him?" Yes, certainly. If I say of a certain oint­ment that it heals, I do not deny that you need a bandage with which to apply it to the wound. Faith is the linen which binds the piaster of Christ's recon­ciliation to the sore of our sin. The linen does not heal; that is the work of the ointment. So faith does not heal; that is the work of the atonement of Christ.

"But we must repent," cries another. Assuredly we must and shall, for repentance is the first sign of healing. But the stripes of Jesus heal us and not our repentance. These stripes, when applied to the heart, work repentance in us. We hate sin because it made Jesus suffer.

When you intelligently trust in Jesus as having suffered for you, then you discover the fact that God will never punish you for the same offense for which Jesus died. His justice will not permit Him to see the debt paid, first by the Surety, and then again by the debtor. Justice cannot twice demand a rec­ompense. If my bleeding Surety has borne my guilt, then I cannot bear it. Accepting Christ Jesus as suffering for me, I have accepted a complete dis­charge from judicial liability. I have been condemned in Christ, and there is therefore now no condemnation to me anymore. This is the groundwork of the security of the sinner who believes in Jesus. He lives because Jesus died in his place and stead. He is acceptable before God because Jesus is accepted. The person for whom Jesus is an accepted Substitute must go free. None can touch him. He is clear.

O my hearer, will you have Jesus Christ to be your Substitute? If so, you are free. "He that believeth on him is not condemned.” (John 3:18). Thus "With His stripes we are healed.” (Isa 53:5).

From Around the Wicket Gate. By Charles H. Spurgeon  1834-1892

REFLECTIONS

The Loveliness of Christ

“It is the Lord’s kindness that He will take the scum

off us in the fire. Who knoweth how needful winnowing

is to us, and what dross we must want ere we enter into

the kingdom of God? So narrow is the entry to heaven,

that our knots, our bunches and lumps of pride, and selflove,

and idol-love, and world-love must be hammered off

us, that we may throng in, stooping low, and creeping

through that narrow and thorny entry.

O, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the

furnace of my Lord Jesus!

Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that

maketh deep furrows on my soul? I know He is no idle

husbandman, He purposeth a crop.

Crosses are proclaimed as common accidents to all

the saints, and in them standeth a part of our communion

with Christ.

How sweet a thing were it for us to learn to make

our burdens light by framing our hearts to the burden, and

making our Lord’s will a law.

It is not the sunny side of Christ that we must look

to, and we must not forsake Him for want of that; but must

set our face against what may befall us, in following on,

till He and we through the briers and bushes on the dry

ground. Our soft nature would be borne through the

troubles of this miserable life in Christ’s arms. And it is

His wisdom, who knoweth our mould, that His bairns go

wet-shod and cold-footed to heaven.

There is nothing but perfect garden-flowers in

heaven, and the best plenishing that is there is Christ.

It is not a smooth and easy way, neither will your

weather be fair and pleasant; but whosoever saw the

invisible God and the fair city, makes no reckoning of

losses or crosses. In ye must be, cost you what it will; stand

not for a price, and for all that ye have, to win the castle;

the rights of it are won to you, and it is disponed to you,

in your Lord Jesus’s Testament; and see what a fair legacy

your dying Friend, Christ, hath left you: and there wanteth

nothing but possession.

O! men’s souls have no wings, and therefore night

and day they keep their nest and are not acquaint with

Christ.

What can I say of Him?

Let us go and see.

I have little, little of Him; yet I long for more.”

-Samuel Rutherford  1600-1661  From The Loveliness of Christ  Published by Community Christian Ministries  Moscow, ID USA  Pages 10, 11. 

REFLECTIONS

Holiness Is Not Optional for the Redeemed

‘“Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”—2 Peter 1:4’

‘Banish for ever all thought of indulging the flesh if you would live in the power of your risen Lord. It were ill that a man who is alive in Christ should dwell in the corruption of sin. “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” said the angel to Magdalene. Should the living dwell in the sepulcher? Should divine life be immured in the charnel house of fleshly lust? How can we partake of the cup of the Lord and yet drink the cup of Belial? Surely, believer, from open lusts and sins you are delivered: have you also escaped from the more secret and delusive lime-twigs of the Satanic fowler? Have you come forth from the lust of pride? Have you escaped from slothfulness? Have you clean escaped from carnal security? Are you seeking day by day to live above worldliness, the pride of life, and the ensnaring vice of avarice? Remember, it is for this that you have been enriched with the treasures of God. If you be indeed the chosen of God, and beloved by Him, do not suffer all the lavish treasure of grace to be wasted upon you. Follow after holiness; it is the Christian’s crown and glory. An unholy church! It is useless to the world, and of no esteem among men. It is an abomination, hell’s laughter, heaven’s abhorrence. The worst evils which have ever come upon the world have been brought upon her by an unholy church. O Christian, the vows of God are upon you. You are God’s priest: act as such. You are God’s king: reign over your lusts. You are God’s chosen: do not associate with Belial. Heaven is your portion: live like a heavenly spirit, so shall you prove that you have true faith in Jesus, for there cannot be faith in the heart unless there be holiness in the life.’

‘“Lord, I desire to live as one

Who bears a blood-bought name,

As one who fears but grieving Thee,

And knows no other shame.”’

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon  June 26—Evening; page 357; Morning and Evening,  Hendrickson Publishers (Peabody, Massachusetts; 1993)

REFLECTIONS

Declension and Renewal

“Endeavour to enrich and enlarge your mind with more spiritual apprehensions of the personal glory, love, and fullness of Christ. All soul-declension arises from the admission of things into the mind contrary to the nature of indwelling grace. The world, - its pleasures, its vanities, its cares, its varied temptations, - these enter the mind, disguised in the shape often of lawful undertakings and duties, and draw off the mind from God, and the affections from Christ. These, too, weaken and deaden faith and love, and every grace of the indwelling Spirit: they are the “foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes.” Sol. Song ii.15. The world is a most hurtful snare to the child of God. It is impossible that he can maintain a close and holy walk with God, live as a pilgrim and sojourner, wage a constant and successful warfare against his many spiritual foes, and at the same time open his heart to admit the greatest foe to grace—the love of the world. But when the mind is preoccupied with Christ, filled with contemplations of his glory and grace and love, no room is left for the entrance of external allurements: the world is shut out, and the creature is shut out, and the fascinations of sin are shut out; and the soul holds a constant and undisturbed fellowship with God, while it is enabled to maintain a more vigorous resistance to every external attack of the enemy. And O, how blessed is the soul’s communion, thus shut in with Jesus! “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me.” “I would come in,” says the dear Lamb of God, “and dwell with you, and take up my abode with you, and sup with you, and you with me.” This is true fellowship! And O, sweet response of his own Spirit in the heart, when the believing soul exclaims, - “When Thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek!”  “Enter, Thou precious Jesus; I want none but Thee; I desire no company, and would hear no voice but Thine; I will have fellowship with none but Thee, - let me sup with Thee; yea, give me Thine own flesh to eat, and Thine own blood to drink.” Ah, dear Christian reader, it is because we have so little to do with Jesus—we admit him so seldom and so reluctantly to our hearts—we have so few dealings with him—travel so seldom to his blood and righteousness, and live so little upon his fullness, that we are compelled so often to exclaim, - “My leanness, my leanness!” But, if we be “risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God”; let us seek to know Christ more, to have more spiritual and enlarged comprehensions of his glory, to drink deeper into his love, to imbibe more of his Spirit, and conform more closely to his example.”

-Octavius Winslow  1808-78  Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul  Published by the Banner of Truth Trust   Carlisle, PA  2000.

REFLECTIONS

God's Limitless Love  

That ye...may be able to comprehend...what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge...Ephesians 3:17-19.

“O love of God, how strong and true! Eternal and yet ever new;

Uncomprehended and unbought, Beyond all knowledge and all thought.

O love of God, how deep and great! Far deeper than man’s deepest hate;

Self-fed, self-kindled like the light, Changeless, eternal, infinite.

O heav’nly love, how precious still, In days of weariness and ill,

In nights of pain and helplessness, To heal, to comfort, and to bless!

O wide embracing, wondrous love! We read thee in the sky above,

We read thee in the earth below, In seas that swell, and streams that flow.

We read thee best in him who came To bear for us the cross of shame;

Sent by the Father from on high, Our life to live, our death to die. Amen.

We read thy power to bless and save, e’en in the darkness of the grave;

Still more in resurrection light We read the fullness of thy might.

O love of God, our shield and stay Through all the perils of our way!

Eternal love, in thee we rest, for ever safe, for ever blest.”

-From a hymn by Horatius Bonar, 1861

REFLECTIONS

Mastering Ourselves Through God’s Word

“We desire to read the Bible, we want to study it, we want to read a commentary; but we do not feel like it at the moment, we think it is a bad thing to try to do these things when we do not feel at our best, and we had better put it off until we feel better, there will be a more appropriate opportunity later on. Or we have not the time, or we lack the opportunity. It is beyond dispute that most of us are living lives that are seriously lacking in discipline and in order and in arrangement. There are so many things that distract us. You start with your morning newspaper and then in a few hours comes your evening paper. I need not waste time in detailing all those things, the radio, the television and the things we have to do, meetings to attend, incidents here and there. The fact is that every one of us is fighting for his life at the present time, fighting to possess and master and live our own life.

Now the simple answer to that is, that it is sheer lack of discipline, it is sheer failure to order our life. It is no use complaining about circumstances. We all have time! If we have time to do these other things, we do have the time, and the whole secret of success is to take the time and insist that it is given to this matter of the soul instead of to these other things.

What is the treatment prescribed by the apostle for this condition? First and foremost he emphasizes “all diligence” (2 Peter 1:5). “Make every effort”—according to another translation. That is it—“make every effort.” Give all diligence, or as it is translated in the tenth verse, be more zealous than ever before to do these things. Here is the treatment then, the exercise of discipline and of diligence.

You have all the time there is!  ‘Redeeming the time, because the days are evil...Ephesians 5:16.’  We all have time! The whole secret of success is to take that time and give it to matters of the soul instead of to other things.  Lord, so many things do distract me from my study of your word, even things that seem good and important at the time. Enable me to discipline my life and order my time according to your priorities.”

- D. Martyn Lloyd Jones  From ‘Reflections-A Treasury of Daily Readings’  Published by Word Publishing  USA  1994  Page 273.   

REFLECTIONS

Prayer, our Gift and Duty, and Improvement  
 

“2. It is our duty to make use of this gift of the Spirit. Have you an ability to pray always freely given you by the Holy Ghost, why do you not pray always in private, in families, as occasions offer? Prayer is that singular duty, in which every grace is acted, every sin opposed, every blessing obtained; the whole of our obedience is concerned in it, and much of our present and future blessedness depends upon it. What difficulties and discouragements rise up against it, what aversions there is in corrupted nature to it, what distractions often attend it, is well known to the people of God. But to help us under our various infirmities; to give us freedom and confidence in coming to the throne; to enable us as children to cry, Abba, Father, the Holy Spirit is given to us. Who then can express the sin and folly of neglecting prayer? How does it grieve the Spirit, and injure our own souls! Can we go from day to day in the neglect of opportunities and occasions of prayer? How shall we answer this contempt of the Spirit’s gracious aid? Do carnal persons habitually live without prayer? Alas! They know not how to pray; but for those who have received this gift of the Spirit, enabling them to pray, and making it pleasant to the inner man-how great an aggravation is it to their sin! I press this duty of prayer the more, because the temptations and dangers of the present day particularly call for it. If we were to talk less and pray more, things would be better than they are in this world.

It is the duty of those who have received this gift, to cherish it, to stir it up, and improve it; it is freely bestowed, but it is carefully to be preserved. It is a gospel-talent given to be traded with, and thereby increased. And this is to be done

(1). By a constant consideration, and observation of ourselves, our own hearts and our spiritual state and condition. Our state in general, by reason of the depth and deceitfulness of our hearts, and the various changes in our frames (mental outlook or mood), together with the temptations that assault us will find us matter of examination all our days. To assist us in this, is a part of the work of the Spirit; and if we neglect our duty towards Him herein, how can we expect that He should continue to aid us? He who prays without a due consideration of the beginnings of temptation, the deceitful actings of indwelling sin, the risings of particular corruptions, with the occasions that give them advantage, must pray at random, “fighting uncertainly as one that beats the air;” but he who attends to this self-search and judgment, will have always in readiness the due matter of prayer, will be able to fill his mouth with arguments, and will thrive not only in the gift, but in the power and life of this duty.

(2). Constant searching of the scripture. This is the glass wherein we may take the best view of ourselves, because it represents both what we are, and what we ought to be; what we are in ourselves, what we are by the grace of God; what are our frames, actions and ways, and what is their defect in His sight. And a better instruction what to pray for, or how to pray, cannot be given us. And who is there, who almost at any time reading the Scripture with reverence of God, and subjection of conscience to Him, has not had some particular matter of prayer or praise effectually suggested to him? And Christians would find no small advantage by constantly turning what they read into prayer or praise; for hereby the instructions of the word would be more confirmed in their minds, and their hearts would be more engaged in the practice of them.

(3) Meditation on the glorious excellencies of God. The examples of prayer which we have in the Scripture, generally begin with some expressions of the names or titles of God; to which the remembrance of some mighty acts of His power is usually added. God has revealed His name unto us for this very purpose, that we might call upon Him by the name which He owns and takes to Himself. Hereby holy reverence and godly fear are excited. We are encouraged to come with boldness to the throne of grace. It is a throne of grace that God in Christ is represented to us upon; but yet it is a throne still, whereon majesty and glory reside: and God is always to be considered by us as on a throne. Hereby also faith and confidence are excited: for prayer is our betaking ourselves to God as our shield, our rock, and our reward. Wherefore frequent meditation on the holy excellencies of the divine nature, must needs be a useful preparation for prayer.

(4) Meditation on the mediation and intercession of Christ. To this end He is proposed to us, as abiding continually in the discharge of His priestly office, Heb. iv. 15, x. 19. And this is not only an encouragement to, and in, our supplications, but a means to increase and strengthen the grace and gift of prayer itself. For the mind is hereby ready to exercise itself about the effectual interposition of the Lord Christ at the throne of grace in our behalf. This has a principal place in the prayers of believers; and hereby we may try whether our faith be evangelical or not.”

-From The Holy Spirit  His Gifts and Power by John Owen (1616-1683)  Published by Kregel Publications  Grand Rapids, MI  1954  Pages 334-337.