Jan 16
21
Regeneration is not a change of the old nature, but the introduction of
a new nature. It is the implanting of the nature of life of the second
Adam by the operation of the Holy Ghost, founded upon the accomplished
redemption of the Lord Jesus, and in full keeping with the Sovereign
will of God. Pastor Scott Richardson
Pharisees and Publicans both pour out their hearts before God, the one
bragging and the other begging. C.H. Spurgeon
Struggling against the power of sin?
How many poor souls are struggling against the power of sin, and yet never get any victory over it!
How many are daily led captive by . . .
the lusts of the flesh,
the love of the world,
and the pride of life,
and never get any victory over them!
How many fight and grapple with tears, vows,and strong resolutions against their besetting sins, who are still entangled and overcome by them again and again! Now, why is this?
Because they do not know the secret of spiritual strength against, and spiritual victory over them.
It is only by virtue of a living union with the Lord Jesus Christ—drinking into His sufferings
and death—and receiving out of His fullness, that we can gain any victory over . . .
the world, sin, death, or hell.
Sin is never really or effectually subdued in any other way.
It is not by legalistic strivings and earnest resolutions, vows, and tears—the vain struggle of ‘religious flesh’ to subdue ‘sinful flesh’—that can overcome sin.
But it is by a believing acquaintance with, and a spiritual entrance into the sufferings and sorrows of the Son of God—having a living faith in Him, and receiving out of His fullness supplies of grace and strength. J.C.Philpot
Jesus Christ and Him crucified
“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” 1 Corinthians 2:2
Jesus Christ and Him crucified, is the way in which God . . .
displays His perfections, unfolds His purposes, maintains His rights, confounds His foes, and secures His glory in the salvation of His people.
Jesus Christ and Him crucified, is the only way in which . . . death is destroyed, sin is conquered, righteousness is established, rebels are reconciled, saints are sanctified, and Heaven is opened!
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The only way a person can be accepted by God is by having a perfect sacrifice. That sacrifice is of God’s own providing. The Lord Jesus Christ is the sacrifice that God has provided, and what He provides, He will accept. Pastor Scott Richardson
He has rescued us!
(Charles Spurgeon)
“The human heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” Jer. 17:9
“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwells no good thing.” Romans 7:18
There is nothing in man by nature apart from God, which is not vile and deceitful.
If there is anything good in me, if I have been transformed by the renewing of my mind, if I am regenerate, if I have passed from death unto life, if I have been taken out of the family of Satan, if I am adopted into the family of God’s dear Son, if I am now no longer an heir of wrath, if I am a now a child of heaven, then all these things are of God, and in no sense,
and in no degree whatever, are they of myself! “For He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and has brought us into the Kingdom of His dear Son.” Colossians 1:13
The Gospel
(Octavius Winslow, “Morning Thoughts”)
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 wisdom, 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!
The revelations it makes, the facts it records, the doctrines it propounds, the effects is produces, proclaim it to be the “glorious gospel of the blessed God.”
We live encircled by SHADOWS . . . our friends are shadows, our comforts are shadows, our supports 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.
But the gospel . . . guides our perplexities, mitigates our griefs, sanctifies our sorrows, 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 “glad tidings of great joy,” to a poor, lost, ruined, tried, and tempted sinner!
“But God……”
by Jonathan Edwards-
“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually
immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the
kingdom of God. And that is what some of you WERE. BUT you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Col. 6:9-11)
For such WERE the some of you.
The case was just so with you as you have heard- you had such a wicked heart, you lived such a wicked life, and it would have been most just with God for ever to have cast you off.
BUT He has had mercy upon; he has made his glorious grace appear in your everlasting salvation.
You had no love to God; But yet He exercised unspeakable love to you. You have scorned God, and set light by Him; but so great a value has God’s grace set on you and your happiness, that you have been redeemed at the price of the blood of His own Son. You chose to be with Satan in his service; but yet God has made you a joint heir with Christ of His glory. You were ungrateful for past mercies; yet God not only continued those mercies, but bestowed unspeakably greater mercies upon you. You refused to hear when God called; yet God has manifested the infiniteness of that mercy in the exercises of it towards you.
You have rejected Christ, and set Him at nought; and yet He has become your Savior.
You have neglected your own salvation; but God has not neglected it.
You would have destroyed yourself but yet in God has been your help. But God has magnified His free grace towards you, and not to others.
Because He has chosen you, and it has pleased Him to set His love upon you.
PAID IN FULL!
from Spurgeon, “IT IS FINISHED!” (No. 421)
The satisfaction which Jesus rendered to the JUSTICE OF GOD was finished!
The debt was now, to the last farthing, all discharged.
The atonement and propitiation were made once for all, and forever, by the one offering made in Jesus’ body on the tree.
There was the cup, hell was in it, the Savior drank it — not a sip and then a pause; not a draught and then a ceasing, but he drained it till there is not a dreg left for any of his people.
The great ten-thonged whip of the law was worn out upon his back, there is no lash left with which to smite one for whom Jesus died.
The great cannonade of God’s justice has exhausted all its ammunition, there is nothing left to be hurled against a child of God.
Sheathed is your sword, O Justice! Silenced is your thunder, O Law!
There remains nothing now of all the griefs, and pains, and agonies which chosen sinners ought to have suffered for their sins, for Christ has endured all for his own beloved, and “it is finished.”
Christ has done what all the flames of the pit could not do in all eternity– Christ has paid the debt which all the torments of eternity could not have paid!
A lost and undone sinner? Winslow, “The Impenitent Sinner Warned”
No man shall value Christ, or His precious atonement, until he has been made to see and feel himself to be a lost and undone sinner.
Christ is precious only to the soul that feels…. its spiritual poverty, its vileness, its emptiness, its nothingness.
To such an individual, Jesus is everything. The deeper the Eternal Spirit leads him to an acquaintance with himself, the more precious is that Savior, whom he now finds to be the very Savior that he needs.
The daily discovery of…. indwelling corruption, inordinate affection, pride, self esteem, instability, love of the world, and the innumerable other forms which indwelling depravity assumes, endears to him the fountain that cleanses from all sin; he repairs afresh to it, washes again and again in it; and these daily applications to the atoning blood make sin increasingly sinful, and strengthen the panting of his soul for divine conformity.