Christ has declared His Father’s Name to you. If you know why it was, you know that you are living in a world guilty of the sin of rejecting Christ, and that He thus permitted Himself to be rejected that in Him you might be accepted; that He might pay the ransom price for your soul, and set you free. This He tells you, and declares that what He does, He does surely. Do you want security for it? You have the Word of God and the oath of God for it, “that by two immutable things wherein it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us.” Has God made such a declaration to you? O, wondrous intelligence! Then is He of inestimable value to your soul!
As a sinner you were lost, but, as a sinner, He has declared that there is hope―that there is joy―that there is salvation, and that He brings it to you. He does not wait for you to come for it, for then you would never receive it; but He brings it to you―He makes known the Father’s love―that “it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom;” that God the Father is pleased, satisfied, glorified; and He brings you to the same acknowledgment of satisfaction in Jesus, who lived for you, who died for you, who rose for you, and “who ever liveth to make intercession for you.” O, what a claim He has on you to live for Him! Can it be possible that you still love the world? that you are still fond of the world which hated Christ, and drove Him out of it? The world is the enemy of God. Will you then be its friend? Oh, may the Lord draw off our affections that are now drawn out and placed on the things of the world, and fix them on Himself―on Him who changes not, but is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever!”
J.N.D.