"Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)"—Rom. 10:6, 76But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) 7Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) (Romans 10:6‑7).
The reasonings of the heart are always at war with God's blessed declaration to us in His Word, and many a soul would find rest at once but for this “saying in the heart.”
Is it not a fact, a blessed fact, that the Son of God has come down; down from the heights of glory, to the many a soul would find rest at once but for this “saying in the heart” very depths of our ruined condition? Yes, praise His name! He has come down "to seek and to save that which was lost," and if we were sunk in sin, He in His wondrous love would go down into the "deep" where there was no "standing," where the judgment of God must rest upon Him, as our substitute, and there, forsaken of God, He made atonement, He died—"the just for the unjust," He "obtained eternal redemption." Is this all? nay; for, although your reasonings would never bring Christ down from above, nor bring Him up again from the dead, yet, now that the work is finished, and sin put away, God has raised Him from the dead and crowned Him with glory and honor. "The Lord is risen!" Glorious fact! He has come up again from the dead, and now seated at the right hand of God is "the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him." By faith, not reasoning, I see Jesus on the cross, bearing all my sins. I see Him now on the throne without my sins, and believe they are forever put away. Reader, can you say the same?
T. E. P.