Light for the Pilgrim Path: Selected Passages From the Writings of William Kelly

It is of the living God as such, in His character of preserver of men, that Job speaks (ch. 7:20). His providential care and government are before us wherein nothing escapes His notice. So He clothes the herbage of the field and nourishes the birds of heaven which sow not nor reap nor gather into granaries. So He makes His sun rise on evil and good and sends rain on just and unjust. How much more prized are not His own than many sparrows, even the hairs of their heads being all numbered!

No Christian could forget for a moment the infinite privilege of eternal life and redemption, of heavenly hope and everlasting glory, but, in the presence of these unseen and eternal things, he might, to his own great loss as well as the Lord's dishonor, overlook the constant daily and special care of God in the ordinary matters of this life. [16]

The Savior God

Ever since the Apostle Paul was sent forth on his mission [of preaching], the greatest impulse was given and that full development which we find written in his Epistles. It was embodied in Christ, who died, rose and was glorified in heaven, but the Holy Spirit was given in order that God's Word as to this might be manifested, and manifested it was in Paul's preaching beyond all others, "according to the command of God our Savior." For never before did this title "God our Savior" receive such an illustration; never again can it be after such a sort, even when the glory shall be a defense, a cloud of smoke by day and a shining flame by night, upon every dwellingplace, upon mount Zion and upon her assemblies.

And it is all the more glorious, because it is a secret known only to faith, and preached therefore, instead of being established in power and visible display. Therefore it is now a "commandment of God our Savior." When glory dwells in the land of Israel, as it surely will under Messiah, and the new covenant is literally enjoyed by the earthly people, there will be no room for any such commandment.

It will then be the day for the triumph of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, on the downfall of Satan's power. It will be a day, not so much for testimony by the Word, and hence for faith, as the manifestation of divine power and glory in the subduing of all adversaries by the Son of Man reigning over all peoples, nations and languages. Then too shall the world know that the Father sent His Son and loved those who now believe on Him during His rejection, when they behold them perfect in one and displayed in the same glory as was given to their Lord. [18]

God and Father

God as God is judge of sin, rather than the Father, as such. God needs atonement. Sin is hateful and intolerable to His nature.

The Father brings in quite another range of facts, truths, thoughts and feelings. It is His gracious relation to the Son, and now by grace to the family of faith. [28]

The Trinity

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all." 2 Corinthians 13:14

The Trinity in Unity

The unity of God is the foundation truth of the Old Testament, as it was the central testimony for which the Jewish people were responsible in a world everywhere else given over to idolatry.

But during the Jewish economy, God, though known to be One, was not known as He is.

It was only Jesus who made Him truly known, as we see by that act of incomparable grace in which He was fulfilling all righteousness when baptized of John in Jordan. There, as the Holy Spirit descended on Him, the Father from heaven proclaimed Him to be His beloved Son. The Trinity stood revealed. It is in the Persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit that God, the one God, is really known. Without Jesus this was impossible; when He takes the first step, the Trinity in unity shines out-love and light, wherein is no darkness at all. How infinite is our debt to the Word made flesh, who deigned to tabernacle with us, only-begotten Son who declared God and revealed the Father! [16]

Knowledge of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit

The Lord Jesus has given us the knowledge of God His Father as He knew Him, generally in the days of His flesh, fully in His resurrection and ascension, that we might know Him as His Father and our Father, His God and our God, in the new creation consequent on His atoning death.

Is anything so wonderful, gracious and practical as the truth now made fully known? It could not be till He came who knew it Himself perfectly and died and rose and ascended that we might be brought, as far as is possible, into His relationships, and have the Holy Spirit given to know it in this day ( John 14:20).

Such is Christian knowledge of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. As the Father is revealed, so the Son reveals, and this only in its living reality by the Holy Spirit. It is the full revelation of God, confessed in our baptism, and needed, as it ought to be enjoyed, every step of the way till our pilgrimage closes in His coming to take us on high, that where He is, we also may be. [22]

The Work of the Trinity

We have the will of God as the source of our salvation, the Savior's work as the efficacious means, and the no-less-indispensable witness of the Holy Spirit as the unfailing power of bringing our souls into the possession and knowledge of the blessing. Thus each Person of the Godhead has His appropriate place, and all contribute to this end, as worthy of God as it is needed by man. [19]

The Person of Christ

"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in God's form, thought it not an object of rapine to be on an equality with God; but emptied Himself taking a bondman's form, being come in men's likeness; and being found in figure as a man, humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Philippians 2:5-8

Christ the True God

Is there any creature in the world so indebted to loving care as a human babe? But Christ even then was the true God just as much as when He raised Lazarus or any other from the dead. And when He died He was just the same, though on the opposite side of circumstances. He could not cease to be true God; this was not touched, nor at all affected by His dying. Even in a man the soul and the spirit are not affected by death; it is but severing the link between the body and the inner man.

So for the Lord Jesus: He was always the Son. Jesus Christ no doubt was His name after He became man; but He is over all, God blessed forever, Amen, just as truly as the Father and the Holy Spirit, who never became incarnate. [23]

David's Lord

Christ might and did become David's Son, but He was also David's Lord, as our Lord Himself put the case to the Jews, and unanswerably, because their lips were held fast in unbelief. But faith here answers at once. He was God equally with the Father. Where else then should He sit but at God's right hand? Surely none the less because man or Israel would have none of Him. [19]

Image of the Invisible God

Christ is never said to be the likeness of the invisible God, because it might imply that He was not really God. This would be fatally false, for He is God (and without it God's glory and redemption are vain), but yet He is the image of the invisible God, because He is the only Person of the Godhead that has declared Him (see John 1:18). The Holy Spirit does not manifest God. He does manifest His power, but not Himself, but Christ is "the image of the invisible God." He has presented God in full perfection; He is the truth objectively. He who has seen Him has seen the Father. He was always the Word, the One who made God manifest. [14]

The Son of His Love

Lord Jesus, 'tis our joy to know

Thy love, that rests upon us now,

Is ours forevermore;

Not this the manner of vain man-

Thou lovest as God only can

Ages and ages o'er.

Before a creature lived or died,

Before God's sons rejoicing cried

At sight of all things made,

Man was the object of Thy heart,

With him to take Thy destined part,

By Satan undismayed.

O blessed Lord, Thy love did then

Pass angels by for sons of men,

For beings of the dust!

Thyself the Father's chief delight,

Eternal Wisdom, Life and Light,

How worthy of all trust!

Yet man, alas! a rebel turned

And soon with every evil burned,

The slave of Thy worst foe;

How wondrously this drew Thy love

To reconcile with God above

Our alien hearts, we know!

Lord, 'tis the virtue of Thy blood

To wash us spotless for our God:

Was ever love like this?

Yea, Thou would'st have us now enjoy

The tidings glad without alloy,

Waiting for heavenly bliss.

But far, far more: Thy love that came

So low to bear sin's doom and shame

Has raised us to Thy height;

For Thou hast made us one with Thee,

In heavenly glory all shall see

When Thou dost come in might.

Fellowship With the Father and the Son

Only the Father knows perfectly the Son. He therefore appreciates the Son as He deserves. This we dare not say, though we have the Son, and love Him and delight in Him, and all this by the Spirit of God in our measure. And this is fellowship with the Father in the Son Jesus Christ.

But how have we fellowship with His Son? It is in the Father, who is His Father and our Father. The Son was in eternal relationship as such with the Father, and He was pleased in communion with His Father's will and grace to make Him known to us as our Father (compare John 20:17). It was not enough to show us the Father. This would have sufficed the Apostle Philip, but not divine love. He would be our Father and have us His children, and so we are now, and thus have fellowship with the Son by grace, as the Father has the Son in the rights of Deity.

Thus we have fellowship with the Father in the possession of the Son, and fellowship with the Son in the possession of the Father. How could our joy but be full? [23]

The Athanasian Creed

He who denies the supreme deity of Jesus, or His perfect humanity, is guilty of the deepest affront to God, who gave His Son in infinite love and has sent the Spirit to uphold and testify His glory.

There is nothing in the Athanasian creed objectionable on this score. I believe it to be a singularly sound production, though not meaning by this that I should think it right to subscribe to it. I have long done with endorsing the dogmas of men, however excellent in themselves.

At the same time, while not willing to bind myself to human definitions of faith, I am of opinion that, put forward merely as an exposition of truth on the human and divine natures in the Person of Christ, it is admirable though perhaps too scholastic in form.

As for the outcry about damnatory clauses, it is all a mistake. Our Lord Himself says, "He that believeth not shall be damned." Does the Athanasian creed go farther than this? [31

His Perfect Humanity

"We have not a high priest unable to sympathize with our infirmities, but tempted as He hath been in all things alike apart from sin." Hebrews 4:15

The Virgin Mary

The nature of the Lord Jesus was holy and in no wise sinful. He was therefore born in a manner altogether singular. Without doubt He was born of the Virgin, but not this made Him sinless, for the Virgin was in herself sinful like any other. She was, however, a believer of remarkable simplicity too and purity of character, yet she needed a Savior, and she had the same Savior as we in her own Son. But well she knew that her Son was unlike any other son in the way in which He became flesh. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit. He, not she, was therefore immaculate. It is as well to adhere to the truth, for in daring to add to revealed truth, superstition only invents a falsehood which gives Christ's unique place to another, and God will surely judge the blasphemy. [23]

Firstborn of All Creation

Here (Col. 1:15), as elsewhere (Psalm 89:27), the title of firstborn is taken in the sense of dignity rather than of mere priority of time. Adam was the first man, but he was not nor could be the firstborn. How could Christ, so late in His birth here below, be said to be the firstborn? The truth is that if Christ became a man and entered the ranks of creation, He could not be anything else. He is the Son and Heir. Just so we are now by grace said to be the church "of the firstborn," although there were saints before the church. It is a question of rank, not of date. Christ is truly firstborn of all creation. [14]

The Accessible Christ

The way of the Lord Jesus was as far as possible from that of the potentates in the East particularly, who affect honor and glory by keeping even their grandees at a distance. It was death, as all know, of old without a summons to approach "the great king." Life depended on his holding out the golden scepter that they might touch it and live. But here the Higher than the highest came down in humiliation of grace to the least and lowest. Never sinner that came to Him did He reject. He touched as well as healed the leper. He wept at the grave of him whom He raised from the dead. Who was as accessible as He always and to all? But what opportunities of seeing with their eyes, of looking on Him, and even of handling Him, He gave those expressly chosen "that they might be with Him"! Impossible to doubt that the Holy One of God was veritable Man. [23]

Christ's Humanity

Looked at in the light of God's Word, Christ's humanity was as real as ours (which itself differs not a little from human nature as it came from God); its state was totally different from Adam's either in integrity or in ruin.

In its singularly blessed source and character, as in its practical development, there was that which, even on the human side of His Person, contra-distinguished Christ from Adam, whether in or outside Paradise. Was the agency of the Holy Spirit in His generation a small matter? And what of the fact that in Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell?

There was nothing in Adam innocent that could be represented by the oil mixed with the fine flour [for the meat offering] any more than by the subsequent anointing with oil; nor was he at any time (as Christ always was) simply and solely in his life an offering to God, from which the salt of the covenant was never lacking.

In the type of the Pentecostal saints, spite of their wondrous privileges, in that meat offering unto Jehovah, the two wave-loaves were expressly baken with leaven, and hence necessarily had their accompanying sacrifice for a sin offering (Lev. 23:15-21): firstfruits indeed to be offered, but not to be burnt (as was the oblation that represented Christ) on the altar for a sweet savor. [32]

The Atoning Work of Christ

"If the blood of goats and bulls and a heifer's ashes sprinkling the defiled sanctifieth for the purity of the flesh, by how much rather shall the blood of the Christ, who by the eternal Spirit offered Himself spotless to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve [or, worship] a living God?" Hebrews 9:13-14

Jesus Forsaken of God

The Lord Jesus had glorified the Father all His life, but now it was a question of glorifying God in His death, for God is the Judge of sin. It was not a question with the Father as such, but with God as God touching sin. He who had glorified the Father in a life of obedience glorified God in the death in which that very obedience was consummated, and not merely this: Evil was laid on Him in whom all was good, and they met. What a meeting!

Yes, God was there, not the Approver of what was good only, but the Judge of all evil laid upon that blessed head. It was God forsaking the faithful, obedient Servant; yet it was His God: This would— could—never be given up, for, on the contrary, He even then firmly holds to it. "My God, My God," yet He has to add now, "Why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

It was the Son of the Father, but as Son of Man necessarily that He so cried out, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Then, and then only, did God desert His one unswerving Servant, the Man Christ Jesus.

Nevertheless we bow before the mystery of mysteries in His Person-God manifest in flesh. Had He not been man, of what avail for us? Had He not been God, all must have failed to give to His suffering for sins the infinite worth of Himself. This is atonement. And atonement has two parts in its character and range. It is expiation before God; it is also substitution for sins. [39]

The Work of the Lord Jesus on Earth

The work of the Lord Jesus on earth is-and what can be so great?-to take away the sin of the world: not only the sins of us who believe, but the sin of the world.

When, then, will the sin that the Lamb died to take away from the world be clean and forever banished from it? In the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwells righteousness. It will not vanish away till then. [49]

Propitiation

Leviticus 16 is the main ground of the New Testament references as to atonement or propitiation, and one and the same term is used there of all the work of that great day.

The substance of the atonement or propitiation was the sacrifice offered to God. The slaying of the victim, the carrying in of the blood, and the dismissal of the confessed sins (to say nothing of the incense at an early point and of the burnt offerings at the close) were each and all aspects of the same one work.

The atoning work of Christ is a whole and "finished" here below, as Himself said.

When the Christian looks at Christ on the cross, given in infinite love, yet withal abandoned of God, His God, drinking the cup His Father gave Him, suffering infinitely for sins, sin itself judged on His Person-there it is that both conscience and heart rest by faith according to the fullest revelation of the Word. He believes without hesitation that all was made good there and then. He does not limit the work any more than the Person of our adorable Savior: It immediately penetrated heaven and is the ground of a reconciled universe for eternity. [43]

Atonement and Reconciliation

The atonement is that aspect of Christ's work which is toward God, to put away sin by suffering the divine judgment of it in His own Person; reconciliation, contrariwise, is toward us, to bring us back in Christ unto God. Both are most true; to confound them is to lose much and weaken all, and what is more serious, it is more or less to misrepresent the character of God, as if He were turned by Christ from an angry Judge into a loving Father. God is love as truly as He is light. It is what He is, not what He is made. [12]

The Purification of Sins

The purification of sins effected by a divine Person is not limited and cannot fail, but it necessarily can take effect on none that hear the gospel unless they believe: God would be consenting to the dishonor of the Son if He made light of men's unbelief. The purification of sins is by Christ before He sat down at God's right hand.

What an attestation is that seat of His to the perfection and completeness of that work He undertook! What more glorious for the humbled Messiah? What more blessed in its fruit for the believer? A sacrifice to God, He gave Himself up for us.

[19]

The Sufferings of Christ

"Searching what or what sort of time the Spirit of Christ that was in them did indicate when testifying beforehand the sufferings that were for Christ, and the glories after them." 1 Peter 1:11

Sufferings on the Cross

In the Lord's sufferings on the cross there are depths found there only, but these are not and could not be put before us as a pattern, seeing that they pertain exclusively to Him who bore our sins in His own body and was made sin for us, meeting that judgment of God, which no man nor angel nor creature nor new creature could share with Him. [12]

The Sin-Bearer

Which of us could be so confident for eternal salvation as to rely on his own memory in laying his sins on Jesus? How awful to have presumed fatally in such a case! How blessed, even apart from that danger, to have the certainty that God does perfectly for the believer what he himself could only do imperfectly! What grace on His part, and what pitiful consideration of our shortcoming! He who could not but feel abhorrent every act of self-will, every uprising of independency and rebellion, caused the vile mass of iniquity to light on His head who is its infinitely suffering Sin-Bearer, willing because Jehovah willed it in a grace which is His prerogative, to save the lost. [31]

The Virtue of Christ's Sacrifice

On that very cross where man slew the Lord Jesus, God by Him wrought redemption. His love rose above the world's enmity and now sends the glad tidings of His grace to His enemies: Such is the virtue of Christ's sacrifice, that it can bring to God the foulest without spot or stain. Yet so much more ruinous will it be for those that believe not. Far better to be a heathen that never heard the gospel than to be a christened man neglecting so great salvation. The day will come when the new heavens and new earth will display the reconciling power of Christ's sacrifice, for every trace of sin will then have vanished from the world. [19]

The Resurrection of Christ

"We were buried therefore with Him by baptism unto death, that as Christ was raised out of the dead by the glory of the Father, so also we should walk in newness of life." Romans 6: 4

The Resurrection of Christ

Christ's resurrection is the display of God's glory as regards man, the fullest answer to all unbelief, and the knell of Satan's power.

Never was a truth better attested. If Thomas illustrated the difficulties even of believers, Saul of Tarsus is the best sample of opposition on the part of earthly religion. But he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, and the sight of a risen, ascended Lord becomes the end of his old life (closed in grace by God's judgment in the cross), the beginning of what was new and everlasting. [10]

The Red Sea and the Jordan

In the Red Sea we have Christ dead and risen for us; in the Jordan we have our death and resurrection with Him: the one ushering us into the world as the dreary waste of our pilgrimage; the other putting us in view of our heavenly blessing, which we have then to appropriate by victory over Satan. The distinction is as clear as it is important, though both are true of the Christian now.

All the time the church is here below, our conflict goes on with spiritual wickednesses in heavenly places; when the actual casting out by God's providential power takes place, we shall not be here, but above. [12]

A Living Hope

Every saint from the beginning had life in the Son of God: impossible to live to God, as all did, without life in Him. But now the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ wrought in a more triumphant way in Him who as Sin-Bearer entered the dark portals of the grave which closed on all others, and so glorified God that He could not but raise Him from among the dead in virtue of a life which death could in no wise touch, so complete that henceforth we belong not to death, but rather death to us. Thus did God beget us again through Christ's resurrection out of the dead. [21]

God's Promise in Isaac

In Genesis 22 Isaac is ready to be offered as a sacrifice, and Abraham did not know till the last moment but that his son was to die. For three days Isaac was, as it were, under the sentence of death. Abraham had confidence in God, who had promised that in Isaac he should possess the land, and he was, therefore, certain that in this very Isaac the promise must be accomplished. It was not a question of Sarah having another son, but of this son, his only son. He was perfectly assured, therefore, that God would raise him up and give him back again to be the head of the Jewish family. A beautiful type this is of God's sparing not His own Son. Abraham had as good as offered up his son, and God not only gave Isaac back again, but then and there He gave the promise, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Thus it is in Christ risen from the dead that our blessing comes. [91

Christ, the Glorified One

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, but where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; but we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit." 2 Corinthians 3:17-18

The Gospel of the Glory

Paul is the only one who characterizes his gospel as the glorious gospel. When the Apostle uses that phrase, he does not say "glorious" merely as we use it; he means the gospel of the glory. And the true force of that expression is this: It is the gospel of Christ glorified at the right hand of God. It is the glad tidings that we have a Savior who is risen and glorified. We are called to all the effects of His glory as well as of His death upon the cross. [9]

Christ's Glory and Triumph

It is the constant principle of God that He is always the first to come down. We require to be lifted up and have nothing of our own to come down from. Christ, being God, was the only man who had glory proper to Himself and above all creature-hood. He descended first into the lower parts of the earth. His very humiliation is the proof of His own personal dignity. From His natural supremacy, so to speak, He descends first to do His work here below. "He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things."

Thus we have here a most magnificent sight of our Savior. The Holy Spirit gives us the grand sweep of His glory and triumph, who condescended to be a man and a servant. He that is gone up now is the same that first came down, and who only would go up again into glory when He had completely put away all that must have forever kept us from Him. But He came down to put it away and would not return on high till it was done. He so loved us, with a love according to the glorious counsels of God, that our sins, gross and fatal as they were, only gave Him the opportunity to show what God is, and is to us, in His own Person. And now it is a question of God's righteousness, not only to Him but to us, because of Him. [12]

The Transfiguration

A sight more marvelous than any miracle, a scene more impressive and august than any other vision on earth, a living miniature of the future kingdom more instructive, vivid and glorious than any prophecy could present was there given to saintly eyes and ears, that it might be divinely recorded and strengthen the hearts of the faithful.

What drew out the display of His glory in the kingdom before the time of its establishment was to strengthen His own in taking up the cross and following the Master, for the disciples, like the unbelieving brethren, like Christendom too, looked for progress and triumph and overlooked faith and love put to the proof in suffering with Christ, the pattern of all holy endurance. Hence the Lord told them plainly of His own sufferings and the glories after these.

As there was so much to try the disciples in His yet-to-be-deepened humiliation, what could be more gracious on His part, or more suited to their need, than to grant chosen ones of the twelve, who were to be alone with Him in His anguish, to be also with Him beholding so unexampled a foretaste! For here were the great elements of the coming kingdom.

It is the exalted Man, made both Lord and Christ after man crucified and slew Him. Here He is seen as He will reign in power that all shall see, with the dead saints raised and the living changed, answering to the two glorified men. There will be also the righteous in their natural bodies, like the three honored disciples made free of the blissful vision. [22]

Love and Glory

The world will gather from our being in the glory with the Lord Jesus that we were loved with the same love wherewith the Lord Jesus was loved. Glory expresses itself outwardly, but love goes deeper still and brings one into the scene where the Father reveals Himself in His beloved Son. This is what I may call an intimate family scene outside the world, the heavenly rest and home. It is not merely brightness, glory, majesty or power. All these things will have their full display, but there is something deeper than all and which lies at the root of all. It is the love which, though it be the least entered into, yet at the same time was really before all and that to which all will turn. It is the highest of all, and it is eternal. The kingdom may terminate-the love never. The display before the world will have a beginning and an end. But as the love will never end, so it always was in the bosom of God the Father. [12]

Blessed by the Greater

"Now apart from all dispute the less is blessed by the better." Hebrews 7:7

After the Order of Melchizedek

Melchizedek was a personage, a king-priest, so great in dignity that Abraham gave him a tenth of the spoils at an epoch when God had just crowned himself with singular honor. From this is deduced the undeniable inference, according to a style of teaching which no pious or intelligent Israelite would question, that not Levi only but his priestly sons, the house of Aaron, entitled to tithe their brethren by the law, paid tithes in the person of Abraham to Melchizedek-to one who derived no succession and was absolutely void of genealogical link with the tribe, the priestly family or the lineal chief of them all.

There stood the fact in the foundation book of holy Scripture and of that law to which even the incredulous party of Sadducees clung tenaciously. It was no question of a new revelation or of a doubtful reading or of an interpretation that could be challenged. In the plainest terms God had revealed a fact, the bearing of which may never have dawned on any until the Holy Spirit now applied it to Christ so unexpectedly.

Melchizedek blessed Abraham with all publicity, and in the most special manner he blessed Abraham on the part of God Most High and blessed God Most High on the part of Abraham. But beyond controversy, all gainsaying apart, "the less is blessed by the better."

So in Luke 2 Simeon blessed Joseph and Mary but ventured not to bless the Babe, even when in another sense he blessed and gave thanks to God. In that Babe his eyes had seen God's salvation, as in like spirit, though with beautifully suited difference of act, the magi from the east fell down and worshipped not the mother but the young Child, and, opening their treasures, offered unto Him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh (Matt. 2). Well had it been for men and women of the West had they pondered the lesson, instead of lapsing into idolatry. [19]

Our Great High Priest

"Now a chief point in connection with the things said is: We have such a high priest who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man." Hebrews 8:1-2

Our Great Priest

In heaven itself Christ now appears before the face of God for us, who through His sacrifice have no more conscience of sins, as He there is the proof that we are perfected unbrokenly. He is above to maintain us, spite of our weakness and exposure here, according to the cleansing of His blood and the nearness it confers on those who believe.

Hence we are told to "approach with a true heart, in full assurance of faith." Never could we deserve such a privilege. His glory and His work alone entitle us, but they do so completely, and we honor Him and appreciate the grace of God by approaching not with fear or hesitation but with a true heart in full assurance of faith. God Himself has wrought by His Son and in the Spirit, that we might be fully blessed even here and enjoy already this access to Himself in the sanctuary. [19]

Christ's Present Work

Since the cross, Christ is occupying Himself in heaven about the church; He is taking care of its members, working by the Holy Spirit, and applying the Word of God. And all is connected with Himself, because the whole starting point is Christ's love to the church. He is sanctifying and cleansing now by the washing of water by the Word, but we know that our sins were put away by His blood. [12]

Christ's Intercession

Although we have the purging of sins through Christ, we are in a place of temptation where, through ignorance and weakness and a thousand things that may arise, we are in constant peril of turning aside and slipping. What is to become of us then? What is to sustain and carry us through? God reveals the blessed Priest who cares for the soul-One who has the full confidence of God the Father-who has given the most entire satisfaction to Him-One who is seated at the right hand of God and who there is unceasingly occupied with our need, on the ground that we belong to God and are already redeemed and have no more conscience of sin.

Faith receives and asks of God what He intends to be our strength and comfort in the midst of our weakness and dangers. His answer is that Christ is there to plead our cause, as surely as the Spirit is here to render us sensible of it. And it is through Christ's intercession at the right hand of God that we are brought to feel our need and failures, for we never judge it without getting moral blessing through that judgment. All power of Christ resting on us is in proportion to the depth of the moral estimate produced in our souls by the Spirit of God in answer to the intercession of Christ, and it is part of Christ's intercession for us that we are made to feel, when we have in mind and fact gone astray. [12]

The Minister of the Sanctuary

"We have such a High Priest" to maintain us consistently with all that God is and loves as fully revealed, and with Christ's work already wrought and perfect, to sustain us in our weakness, to sympathize with our every trial and pang. His position declares His unique and incomparable dignity, His intimate nearness to God in glory. His seat is at "the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens."

There has Christ taken His seat. It is calm and permanent intimacy where no believer can dispute the greatness and the power and the glory any more than the love and tender interest and unfailing support.

He is "Minister of the Holies." It is the house of heavenly worship and divine glory in its fullest reality and grandeur. Therein Christ ministers according to the nicest consideration of the living God, as the sole Person suited to Him and to us equally and in perfection, true God and real man, who obeyed unto death (yea, of the cross), that God's honor should be retrieved and His love meet with a love like His own who died for our sins when we were as powerless and ungodly, and thus again proved divine love to the uttermost no less than holiness and righteousness. Such is the Minister of the Holies, that God in the heavens and the saints on the earth should be adequately conciliated, even in the time of our present infirmity and exposure to temptation. [19]

Aaron's Rod That Budded

Aaron's rod alone buds, blossoms and bears fruit. That rod of the high priest accordingly becomes the characteristic of the chosen priesthood.

The Lord in this significant way showed that the way to lead the children of Israel through the wilderness was not to be by such an act of delivering power as brought them out of Egypt. This would not suffice for Him or them. Thus had they been led by a mighty hand into the wilderness, but what could bring them through the wilderness? The grace of priesthood, in the figure of the power of an endless life, which bears fruit out of death, as set forth by the wonderful token of it thenceforward laid up in the holiest of all, at least in the desert-Aaron's rod that budded.

So we see in our Lord Jesus. How could the Son of God fail as Priest any more than as Savior, or in any other way whatever? It is a question of His saving the saints of God, of bringing them safe through in presence of a power opposing itself to God's purpose about them and from all the consequences of their weakness here below. He is always living to make intercession for them. [42]

The Sympathy of Christ

`Jesus therefore, when He saw her weeping, and the Jews that came with her weeping, was deeply moved in spirit, and troubled Himself, and said, Where have ye laid him? They say to Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept." John 11:33-35

The Sympathy of Christ

The sympathy of Christ is associated with His priesthood on high. He sympathizes not with sin, not with sinners as such, but with the suffering saints of God. At the same time the Holy Spirit looks back upon Christ's own experience when He was upon earth. He was tempted, but then the temptation was not in any way from within. There was in Him no propensity to evil that answered to the trial of Satan, but, on the contrary, all that the enemy found was dependence on God, simple unwavering faith in His Word, never a carnal working, as in our hearts.

He "knew no sin." Hence, in order to guard against error on so holy and delicate a theme, it is necessary that we should hold fast the truth of Christ's Person as God has revealed it. [32]

Christ's Sympathy Not With Sin

Christ sympathizes with us in our holy, not in our unholy, temptations. For our unholiness He died; the cross alone has met it fully in God's sight. Had there been in fact the least inward taint of sin, His sensibility of evil had been impaired, His sufferings diminished, and His sympathy hindered, to say nothing of the deadly wound to His Person, unfitted by such an evil nature to be a sacrifice for sin. [19]

Our Advocate

The Advocate is Jesus Christ the righteous. That is very significant. More than that: "And He is the propitiation." Notice the double ground. First, the advocacy is founded upon His being the righteous One. We had no righteousness; He is the righteous One, and from God made to us, not only wisdom, but righteousness. Second, He is the propitiation for our sins, and He was sent by God the Father for this very end. He bore all that was necessary to expiate our sins in divine judgment once for all. But as Advocate He meets the Christian's sin that interrupted his enjoyment of communion with the Father and with the Son.

Oh, how sad, beloved brethren, when we slight that communion, so as not to feel these interruptions, to which any levity of word or deed in our folly exposes us! But "we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." [231

The Holy Spirit

"I will request the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete, that He may be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it beholdeth Him not, nor knoweth Him; but ye know Him, because He abideth with you, and shall be in you." John 14:16-17

The Comforter

The word "Comforter" sometimes fails to give an adequate notion of what it is that our Lord Jesus really meant us to gather from thus speaking of the Holy Spirit. We might very naturally draw from it that the term was in relation to sorrow-that it intimated a person who would console us in the midst of the distresses of this lower world. And, indeed, the Holy Spirit does console us and comfort us. But this is only a very small part of the functions here conveyed by the word Paraclete.

This is the very word our Lord employed.

It is One who is absolutely and infinitely competent to undertake for us whatever He could do in our favor, whatever was or might be the limit of our need, whatever our want in any difficulty, whatever the exigencies of God's grace for the blessing of our souls.

Such the Holy Spirit is now; it never was known before, and it will never be known again. The personal presence of the Spirit here below as an answer to the glory of Christ at the right hand of God-such a state of things never can be repeated. [29]

Flesh and Spirit

The Christian is characterized, not by flesh (that is, human nature fallen, estranged from God), but the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is an indwelling Person, who acts in and with the believer.

All were alike in the same state, "in flesh," as born of Adam, but those according to the Spirit mind the things of the Spirit, things which eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither has it entered the heart of man to consider, things which God has prepared for those that love Him. [8]

The Sword of the Spirit

After the complete means of defense (given in Ephesians 6), the sword of the Spirit follows as the instrument of offensive energy against the adversary, even God's Word. How wisely it is thus placed in the last place of all will be apparent to the instructed mind! Indeed, if there be not this order known practically, the Word is made a mere toy of or perhaps a scourge for self (rather than to have the character of the sword of the Spirit); it is misused and powerless. Handled in the Spirit, what deliverance it works! What disabling of adversaries and what a detector of Satan! [12]

Help to Our Weakness

The blessed Spirit of God will not be severed from our weakness, now that He deigns to take His abode in us because of Christ's redemption. Even he who could work signs and miracles did not differ from his brethren by exemption from infirmity. Rather was Paul, the greatest of apostles, more than any other sensible of it.

It was not otherwise with the perfect pattern of all excellency in man here below. "Jesus wept." He was deeply pained, sighing sorely in His spirit. He knew what to say and what to do, conscious that the Father always heard Him. But we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself pleads for us with groanings unutterable.

Wondrous grace! The Spirit associates Himself with our groaning, and the Searcher of the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit. [8]

The Spirit and the Church

"Using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, even as ye were also called in one hope of your calling." Ephesians 4:3-4

The Spirit for Worship

In John 4 it is to a depraved woman, that had lost her character, to whom no one would care to speak except-wonderful to say-the Son of God, that the Lord brings out the great truth of the gift of the Spirit: no longer merely acting morally on the soul or quickening, but Himself dwelling in the heart, the Holy Spirit the power of divine fellowship and worship. What a joy! the Holy Spirit dwelling in believers, the Father seeking such to worship Him. Do you know this? Or are you still trammeled by what is now passed, what once existed and then had the sanction of God? by the rule of a past dispensation for an earthly people? by rites which no longer have the slightest value in His sight who reveals Himself as Father? The day of forms and ceremonies is entirely gone.

How often people say, We do not attach importance to such things! The truth is that they are now a very bad thing and contrary to God's actual order. It is not only that fine sights and sounds should not be an object in worship, but it is a positive sin to seek or admit them. It is, in principle, a going back to idolatry and a condemned world. [12]

Keeping the Unity of the Spirit

The unity of the Spirit is something already made by the Spirit which we have to maintain or observe. It is not merely that we are to have feelings of love towards our fellow-Christians. This might be in a thousand different bodies, but if ever so well heeded, this would not be keeping "the unity of the Spirit." What is meant then? The unity of the Holy Spirit, which is already formed, embraces all the members of Christ. And where are the members of Christ to be found? In one sense, thank God, everywhere; in another, alas! anywhere. Wherever Christ is preached and souls have received Him, there are His members. And what have we to do? Diligently to maintain the unity that embraces everyone belonging to Christ-"in the bond of peace."

The flesh is anxious and restless; a peaceful spirit is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and mightily contributes to the binding together of hearts in practice. [12]

Praying for the Holy Spirit

So completely have the saints in general lost sight of the presence and action of the Spirit in the assembly that they notoriously and periodically pray that He may be poured out afresh. They, of course, mean thereby little if anything more than an accession of comfort for believers and a great increase in the conversion of sinners. But all the while they ignore His actual presence on the earth. [7]

The Holy Scriptures

"From a babe thou knowest the sacred writings that are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus." 2 Timothy 3:15

Faith in the Bible

There is one thing that God's Spirit always assumes-the perfect goodness and the unswerving holiness of God. And this, beyond all doubt or fear, we are entitled always to keep before our hearts in reading the Bible.

Never then let the breath of suspicion enter your soul. Invariably, when you listen to the written Word of God, range yourself on His side. You will never understand the Bible otherwise. You may be tried, but be assured that you will be helped out of the trial. The day may come when nobody appears to lend you a helping hand. What is to become of you then?

Once allow your soul to be sullied by judging those living oracles, and real faith in the Bible is gone as far as you are concerned. If I do not trust it in everything, I can trust it in nothing.

Objections against Scripture are always the creation of unbelief. Difficulties, where they exist for us, would only exercise faith in God. The Word of God is always in itself not only right, but fraught with light. It makes wise the simple; it enlightens the eyes.

The necessary claim of Scripture is that it be confided in as the Word of God, though it does not thence follow that we are competent to explain all. [2]

The Character of Scripture

There is this character about Scripture that, being divine, it never can be mastered by intellect alone, but always appeals to the affections and conscience as well as to the mind. It needs the power of the Holy Spirit to connect it with Christ in order even then to feel, judge and act aright. [14]

Understanding the Bible

We cannot understand the Bible by forcing the lock; what we want is the key. But if you have Christ, you already have the key. In faith apply Christ to the Bible, and you can understand it. It is not a question of a superior mind or of great learning, for the most learned have been the most foolish in their mistakes. The simple man who understands only his mother tongue understands the Bible, if he with true simplicity submits himself to the Lord and has confidence in His love. [33]

The Word of Truth

It is the peculiar property and glory of the Word of God that it communicates not merely a truth here and there, but the truth, and this in the Person of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the only power for rightly using and applying and enjoying the truth, and therefore He is called "the truth" no less than the Lord Jesus. [1]

Searching Scripture

We must search all Scripture. And a wholesome, blessed thing it is for us that we never can find anything complete from the Word of God by merely examining some particular part of it. God necessitates our searching His Word through and through, in order to get at His mind with any measure of fullness. [12]

Christ in the New Testament

Every Christian accepts the New Testament as of God; he who does not is no real Christian but a skeptic. Hearing the apostles and prophets of the New Testament is inseparable from knowing God now.

To profess Christ and reject plenary inspiration indicates the work of evil spirits. Infidelity, as a rule, begins with the Old Testament, but it will surely attack and reject the New Testament also.

It cheers the Christian, who finds his richest spiritual food, not in the Old Testament, though just as truly inspired, but in the New Testament where Christ is no longer veiled or distant but manifested in all the fullness of His glory and His grace, in the majesty of God and the meek tenderness of the lowliest Man that ever trod the earth. [23]

The Four Gospels

The Holy Spirit made the four evangelists, by His power, the vessels for setting forth the various glories of Jesus the Son of God on earth. Each had his own line given and perfectly carried out, and facts and sayings are recorded by each, whether reported by the others or not, as they bore on his proper objects. [51

Inspiration

"Every scripture is God-inspired, and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction that is in righteousness; that the man of God may be complete, furnished thoroughly unto every good work." 2 Timothy 3:16-1 7

Every Scripture Inspired

If Scripture be denied to be the Word of God, where is the church, the believer or the lost sinner? Where is Christ the Lord, or God's testimony to His grace and truth? No ground at all abides for faith. Make it an uncertain thing, the word of man really rather than the Word of God, and you lose God's saving love, grace and controlling power which kept infirm and erring man from a single error, that there should not be a flaw in all Scripture as originally given of Him. This is what God intended, as it is what the Apostle Paul pronounces authoritatively in his latest Epistle (2 Timothy). That too was the proper time for it. He says that not merely all Scripture in a general way is given by inspiration of God, but "every scripture," every part of the Bible, each part of the Old Testament and each of the New Testament, every bit of it is God-breathed. [23]

Inspired Word and Inspired Thought

Scripture savors of what is infinite, being the expression of God's mind, although clothed in the words of men. It is therefore really unique, for though it may have on its surface what meets the passing need of the day, below this runs a deep and swelling stream, which flows onward to the full ocean of the accomplished purposes and glory of God. [3]

The Denial of Inspiration

How horrified the apostles, Peter and Paul, would have been to witness the deadly undermining of the Bible which, begun by freethinking men more than [two] hundred years ago, has become a naturalized epidemic, not only in Germany, France and Holland, but now in the English-speaking regions of the earth, growing self-confident, impudent and arrogant beyond measure, not knowing that God has forewarned of this turning away their ears from the truth and readiness of mind for fables.

Take their treatment of the Pentateuch in particular and of such prophets as Isaiah and Daniel. The infinite fact of a divine Person become flesh as truly as He is God is (with very few exceptions, to whom God may give deliverance) as nothing in their eyes, though of infinite value to those who believe and love as they know His love, God's love, to them. [22]

The Exercise of Prayer

"I exhort, therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men, for kings and all that are in high rank, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all piety and gravity." 1 Timothy 2:1-2

The Expression of Dependence

Prayer is the great means by which we are practically kept in God's presence and the Word is made welcome, profitable and sanctifying. It is the proper expression of our weakness to God and of our confidence in His love and care day by day and evermore.

Instead of presuming, as men, to enter into the deep things of God or to take and pursue the path of the cross of Christ, we confess in prayer our constant need of dependence upon God. And hence it is that throughout Luke the Lord Himself, "born of a woman," is so often brought before us as One that habitually walked thus with God. [401

The Need of Prayer

It is of the essence of the new nature that the believer has to live in dependence on God and to find its present exercise in the midst of trials by cultivating that confidence in Him which finds its proper expression in prayer.

Even Christ, Himself God's wisdom, habitually waited on God, prayed at all times where men least look for it, and spent the night in prayer when the occasion called for it. If He who never lacked wisdom so lived, then how much should we be ashamed of our failure in so drawing near to God and drawing from Him what He so readily gives! [20]

Prayer With Thanksgiving

The heart should not forget what a God we are making our request to. In the confidence of this let us thank Him, even when we are spreading our wants before Him. [13]

Watching Unto Prayer

This supposes the activity of love which is quick to discern in the fear of the Lord and in the bowels of Christ that which might tarnish His glory, on the one hand, and, on the other, whatever would contribute to the exaltation of His name in His saints and testimony.

Where God's presence is realized, there is no straitness in the affections, but love goes out energetically to Him and in communion with Him concerning all the saints. It is the service of love before Him who is love. [12]

Boldness in Prayer

When the day of glory comes, there will be no need of exhortation to boldness in prayer, for all will be praise. There is urgent call for such prayer now in this world with its difficulties and perils; withal it is the day of the richest blessing for the Christian when we know that Christ is in the Father, we in Him, and He in us. It is therefore just the time for this practical boldness in asking God for anything and all things according to His will; aught else we dare not wish. And we know that He hears us.

But if God encourages us to ask with boldness, we are constantly exposed to miss asking according to His will unless we grow in the knowledge of His Word. Here lies the practical value of cultivating a deeper spiritual understanding of the Scriptures. The Word of God He magnifies above all His name, and so should we. [23]

The Lord's Prayer

The Lord is addressing Jewish disciples and leading them out of their previous thoughts and feelings and ways into the new principles of the kingdom of heaven, which He was about to introduce. This is important to remember for understanding either the meaning or the object of the prayer. It does not contemplate, as it was not addressed to, the whole human race indiscriminately; it does not express the state, want and feelings of every person who has holy desires after God or a due fear of coming wrath.

The Lord's prayer supposes discipleship and the relationship of children with a Father.

Accordingly the prayer, viewed in its structure, naturally divides into two sections. The first portion is made up of the desires proper to righteousness in the largest and highest sense-the atmosphere, I think I may say, in which our Lord Himself lived and moved here below. The second part is composed rather of supplications suited to those who were needy in every way, but withal true objects of grace. The first three petitions form one division, and the last four the other.

The Lord takes up the disciples where they were. If He had uttered the as-yet-undeveloped truth which was revealed when redemption was wrought and the Holy Spirit thereon given, His language would have been unintelligible to the disciples. If anything had exceeded what was suitable to their then state, if experience or worship proper to accomplished redemption had been supposed, it would not have been the perfect prayer it was for them. [40]

Christian Worship

"We are the circumcision that worship God in Spirit and boast in Christ Jesus, and have no trust in flesh." Philippians 3:3

The Service of Praise

Can any privilege be higher or more intimate than to be in His presence, walking in the light as He is, delivered from the egotism which breaks out into the variance of separate will, and cleansed by the blood which effaces every sin? to adore the Father, the only true God? to pour forth our thanksgiving for all the grace that has reached even to us? to praise Him, in spirit, with all saints, for all that He is and has done and given us to receive and know?

Christ is the ground and substance of it all, and hence without cloud or change, and the Holy Spirit is given that a divine power and character might be in vessels though still earthly. This is a wondrous assimilation to the everlasting worship which shall be in heaven and throughout eternity, but we owe it now and are invited to it now, not as a title merely but as a joyful occupation, especially as gathered to His name. It will be perfectly without alloy in the day of glory to which we look on, but it does become us to abound in it here, seeing that the light and the love and the known accomplishment of that work which secures the blessedness of all to God's glory are already ours, and Christ is revealed to us in that glory as the fullest witness and pledge that it is ours. [21]

Christian Worship

Christian worship is the united outpouring of thanks and blessing to God and the Lamb from hearts purified by faith, who have the knowledge of the Father and Son by the power of the Holy Spirit and who therefore draw near in the happy confidence of His love, in the confessed delight and enjoyment of what God is, and in the praise of what He is and of what He is to them.

Any of you, children of God, who are not seeking to take the place given you by the word of the Lord, of true worshippers worshipping the Father, are losing your time upon the earth in forgetfulness of your sweetest privileges. No one dictates to you; you are not advised where to go, what to do, with whom to consort, but this only-consult as to it the Word of God for yourselves. If you be afraid of the test, if you are unwilling to follow its direction, you have not avoided a bad conscience. Remember what you are sanctified for. Let nothing be so prized as the glory of Christ, nothing so authoritative as the revealed will of the Lord.

Let me press this also upon you, as self-evident, that if you are mingled, Christians and non-Christians, men of the world and believers in Christ together, there cannot be worship in spirit and in truth. There never was, since the Lord announced its nature, real Christian worship where such mixture exists. The effect of the attempt is, not that worldly persons are raised upward to the ground and power of worship in spirit and in truth, but that Christians must go down to the atmosphere of the worldly. That is to say, you abandon (and for what? or on whose authority?) all your own proper privileges. [50]

The Lord's Supper

"The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not fellowship with the blood of the Christ? The loaf which we break, is it not fellowship with the body of the Christ? Because we, the many, are one loaf one body, for we all partake of the one loaf" 1 Corinthians 10:16-17

The Memorial of Christ

It is the holy, gracious and deep meaning of the Lord's supper, and in no way the elements or the ministrant, which invests it with such value and blessing. He is in the midst of His own to give them the enjoyment of His love in present power, but as recalling their hearts to the sacrifice of Himself for their sins to place them without charge or question before God. The bread remains bread, and so does the wine.

The Lord's supper, then, is to remind us of Christ-of His death-not of our sins, but of our sins remitted and ourselves loved.

But the more precious the Lord's supper is, as the gathering of Christian affection to a focus in the remembrance of His death, the greater the danger, if the heart be careless or the conscience not before God. Each is to put himself to the proof, and so to eat and drink. Where the true and holy aim of the Lord's supper is slighted, and the communicant does not discern the body (that is, does not discriminate between the memorial of Christ and an ordinary meal), he eats and drinks judgment as a present thing. [10]

The Church of God

"Christ also loved the assembly and gave Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water in the word, that He might Himself present to Himself the assembly glorious, not having spot or wrinkle, or any of such things; but that it should be holy and blameless." Ephesians 5:25-27

What Is the Church?

Christ has died for and under sin-our sin. And what is the consequence? All believers now, whether Jews or Gentiles, in Christ Jesus are brought into an entirely new place. The Gentile is brought out of his distance from God; the Jew, out of his dispensational nearness; both enjoy a common blessing in God's presence never possessed before. The old separation dissolves and gives place by grace to oneness in Christ Jesus.

When did this begin? This is an important question, for it is really the answer to the question: What, according to Scripture, is the church? Ask many of God's children. Would they not say, The aggregate of all believers? But is this the body of Christ? There were saints from the beginning, all who were born of God, but were they formed into a united assembly on the earth? Did anything under the Old Testament correspond to one body? It never was heard of, excepting as a thing promised, till the day of Pentecost. It awaited the cross of Christ. Therein God abolished the enmity. Before that God had commanded the Jew to be apart from the Gentile, and our Lord maintained it most strenuously when He was upon earth. He forbade His disciples to go into any city of the Gentiles. [12]

The Marks of the Church of God

Wherever anything assumes to answer to God's church on earth, there must be free room, not only for gifts, but for diversities of gifts, in the same congregation. Where the gifts are practically shut out and the congregation really looks to one or more individuals only, no matter how gifted, the ground is proved by the first touch of God's Word to be not of Himself. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit (not minister).

Next, as we are told, "There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord." That is, the Lord employs one for one thing and another for another, but it is He who acts in this.

Again, "There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all." The church is not a place where man has the smallest title or where there is any room for his will. If God is working there, it is man's place to retire, that God may really work according to His own will. What a character this gives the church of God!

Are these the truths that really fill our hearts? When we enter, say, on each Lord's Day, when we come together on any occasion for edification or worship, do we meet as God's assembly, looking to the Spirit, the Lord God Himself? [29]

The Ruin of the Church

It is most important to remember that God's assembly as a whole is now in a state of ruin. Where this is lost sight of, there is apt to be rashness and such dangerous high-mindedness in the use of the truth as would leave outside the action of the Spirit of God.

When we do come together as His assembly, let it never be that we may take part, but that He may work as He will and by whom He will. Neither, again, let us be impatient. Our part is to count on Him, neither hindering others, nor refusing to go forward if He leads.

The great thing is the manifestation of God's presence in the assembly. Can anything be more solemn than for a person unexercised to take part in the assembly? What continual self-judgment is due to see whether his motive arises from simple obedience to the will of God? [38]

The Mind and Love of Heaven

If Christianity gives the deepest importance to the individual with God, the assembly affords the largest scope to the affections of the members of Christ as His one body. And Satan hinders in all possible ways the happy interchange of what is so sweet and holy, the mind and love of heaven enjoyed among saints on earth. [15]

The Body and Bride of Christ

"The holy city, new Jerusalem, I saw coming down out of the heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."Revelation 21:2

The One Body of Christ

According to the divine plan, if I am a member of the church at all, I am a member of the church everywhere. If I go to any quarter of the world where saints call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I am a member, not by permission nor by courtesy, but by the universal recognition on the part of believers of the title which grace has given me. Baptized by the Spirit, I am a member of Christ's body, wheresoever I may be.

In apostolic days that membership, and none other, was known throughout. There might be differences of view. There might be need of the word, "Whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing." Some might eat herbs, and some might eat meat, but the Spirit said, and says, "Receive ye one another, as Christ also received us, to the glory of God."

Now the glory of God is identified, not with some, but with all the members of the body of Christ. If the weakest member, therefore, were excluded, save in case of necessary scriptural discipline, so far would that glory be forgotten or despised, and those guilty of such exclusion ought to be avoided, as causers of divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which we have learned. [41]

Rebekah, a Type of the Church

After the death of Sarah, we have the introduction of Rebekah. He who is at all instructed in the ways of God recognizes in the latter the bride for the risen Son and Heir of all things, and this after the figure of the covenant of promise in Sarah has passed away.

Till the Jews had refused the fresh summons of God to own their Messiah, now risen and glorified, there could be fittingly no bringing in of the Gentiles, no formation of a heavenly bride, the body of a heavenly Christ. [27]

The Work of Ministry

"He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, unto work of ministry, unto edifying of the body of the Christ." Ephesians 4:11-12

Ministry

There never was such a thing as ordaining a man to preach the gospel. In Scripture, the Lord, and the Lord only, calls men to preach. There is not in the entire New Testament one instance to the contrary. It is positively disorderly, and contrary to the Word of God, for a man to seek a human commission in order to preach the gospel or for taking the place of a teacher in relation to the Christian assemblies.

What I believe to be unscriptural, and indeed positively sinful, is the insisting on a certain ceremony through which a man must pass before he is recognized as properly a minister of Christ.

The effect is this, that it accredits a number of men who are not ministers of Christ and discredits a number of men who are His ministers, because they do not go through that particular innovation.

This is an evil which, derived from the core of Judaism, is the greatest conceivable check to the energy of the Holy Spirit in the church at the present or any other time. [9]

Ministry Other Than Preaching

The caring for souls-the binding up of those that are broken in spirit-the interesting ourselves in the troubles and trials and difficulties of the saints of God-is of great price with Him, and this kind of ministering is, I am afraid, very imperfectly performed among us. This is really the meaning of ministry-not so much speaking. [4]

Conferring With Flesh and Blood

However valuable training schools may be for the world, however admirable for giving men a certain place, it ends merely in what man can teach and not what God gives.

Moses thought that, when he had spent forty years in Egypt, he was fitted to deliver the people of God, but he had to learn that not until he had been taught of God in the wilderness was he competent to lead the people out of Egypt. [9]

Communicating Truth to Others

There are two things that have to be taken account of in communicating truth. Not merely should there be certainty that it is truth from God, but it must also be suited truth to those whom you address.

The Lord had many things to tell the disciples when He was with them, but they were not able to bear them then. [9]

Speaking for the Lord

Without doubt each saint is responsible, in all humility as regards himself, to speak for the Lord where His glory and will, grace and truth, are plainly revealed. Alas, how much is said that has no higher source than self, however veiled it may be! But self when opposed is apt to break out into strife and party work, with all their deadly accompaniments and results. Nor are any souls more deceived than those who accredit themselves with the best motives and fear not to assail with odious imputations those who reprove them. [20]

Gifts and Ability

"Neglect not the gift that was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the elderhood." 1 Timothy 4:14

Gift and Ability

God gives and forms intellectual power. That is what is called in Scripture "the ability." But examine our Lord's parable where He alludes to this very thing, and you will find that He distinguishes between "the gift" and "the ability"-He gave to every man "according to his several ability." God in calling men to serve Him, even before they are converted, fashions the vessel for His purposes. His providence singles out a person from his very birth, and He orders all the circumstances of his life which follows.

You have in Paul a most remarkable natural character, as well as no ordinary training and acquirements. All this was providentially ordered in Saul of Tarsus, but besides, when called by the grace of God, a gift was put into him that he did not possess before, a capacity by the Holy Spirit of laying hold of the truth and of enforcing it on people's souls. God wrought through his natural character, his manner of utterance and his particular style of writing, but everything, though flowing through his natural ability, in this new power of the Holy Spirit communicated to his soul. Thus there are these two things: the ability, which is the vessel of the gift, and the gift itself, which is, under the Lord, the directing energy of the ability. There is no such thing as gift apart from the vessel in which the gift acts. [12]

The Variety of Gifts

A person is used of God to move souls powerfully and with blessing, to gather them in and to bring them to Christ. There is an evangelist clearly. On the other hand, you may see one whose heart does not go out so much in putting the gospel before souls, but who enjoys and loves to make others enjoy the truth of God and to develop the character of God. Is not he a teacher?

Again, a pastor supposes not only knowledge of the truth but the power to urge it day by day on individuals: It involves a dealing with conscience and affection in a way that a teacher does not necessarily imply.

Again, there may be a person who cannot bring out truth powerfully, but he can exhort; he can deal with the conscience.

The Spirit of God works in the assembly. One man manifests ability to preach, another to teach, some to serve the Lord in private and others in public. What is the power of judging of these? The same Spirit of God. [12]

Sanctification

"We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, that God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." 2 Thessalonians 2:13

Sanctification of the Spirit

To believe the gospel is the obedience of faith. The Word wielded by the Spirit and received as of God thus separates to Him and is indeed exactly what is called "sanctification of the Spirit" in 1 Peter 1:2, not in the practical sense, but, in principle and absolutely, that setting apart to God from the beginning which constitutes a saint. Hence it precedes the knowledge of forgiveness or the possession of peace with God, as Peter says, "By sanctification of the Spirit, unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." [15]

Sanctified Unto Obedience

We are not put on the ground of doing things merely because we think them right. If we desired or sought to do right simply because we thought the thing right, we should be always wrong. The only true principle for a Christian is obedience. We are sanctified unto the obedience of Christ. It is the very life-breath of the new nature. It was what was found in perfection in Christ, and God now calls us to walk as He walked.

Assuredly there is immeasurable distance between the perfection of Christ's walk and our walk, but this is certain: We are bound to go forward in the same direction. The Lord may and does distance us, but we are bound to be on the same road. We are called to direct our faces to the same heaven, and we are bound to go onward, according to the measure of our strength, after Him, not away from Him.

This is what is implied in being sanctified unto His obedience. God has given us to see its perfection in Christ, but He has set us in the very same path, as He said Himself, "Follow Me." [49]

A Saint

The Christian enjoys the Spirit's holiness; he is even born of the Spirit ( John 3:6,8), and thus is the sanctification inward to the utmost degree. Accordingly, such a one is a "saint" from God's first vital action spiritually in the soul.

The Spirit's activity is immediate and abiding, the ground of the practical holiness that ensues, which is but partial and relative.

Practical sanctification is a capital and constant duty for every Christian who is sanctified by the Spirit from his starting point, to obey as Christ did in filial love, with the immensely blessed addition of His blood-sprinkling, which cleanses from every sin, instead of menacing inevitable death if we fail. The resulting obedience, of which our Lord is alike example and power, is our practical holiness. [21]

Holiness

"I speak humanly on account of the weakness of your flesh; for as ye yielded your members in bondage to uncleanness and to lawlessness unto lawlessness, so now yield your members in bondage to righteousness unto holiness." Romans 6:19

Practical Holiness

Let us not forget that it is in our body we are to glorify God. Many a one deceives himself in the thought that he is all right in spirit, though he dare not say that he keeps his body under and brings it into subjection. The Christian is bound to glorify God in his body.

How God values the spirit, ways, communion and conduct of the Christian! How lowering to the standard when, like the Corinthians, we forget that we are no longer men striving to walk with decency through the world, but our body the temple of the Holy Spirit and ourselves the purchase of Christ's blood, and with such an aim set before us as glorifying God! [10]

Liberty, but Not Laxity

There are many persons who more or less understand that Christ has brought us liberty in the matter of righteousness, or the standing of justified men in the sight of God, but they do not know liberty in the daily walk with God. And when I say "many," I mean many Christians, or real saints.

Practical holiness, in such cases, invariably suffers. Where there is, along with this, much conscience, it necessarily takes the legal form of ordinances, restraints and the like. Where souls have not the same internal exercises, it takes the shape of laxity to a greater or lesser extent: that is, they see that they are delivered by the grace of God, and they consider themselves free to use the world and to allow, to no little a degree, the inclinations of nature, because, as they say, there is evil in the nature, and, as they suppose, God, in His tender mercy, makes allowance for it.

Now both these things are totally wrong. One cause of all this mistake lies in the misapprehension of a very important truth-the effect of the presence of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." [91

Righteousness

"Now apart from law God's righteousness is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even God's righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all that believe." Romans 3:21-22

The Righteousness of God

God was so glorified in the cross of Christ that He raised Him up and seated Him in glory at His own right hand-not only forgave us, but seated us in Christ in heavenly places. This is God's righteousness, which is revealed to faith. Nothing less is righteously due to Christ because of His redemption work. It is the contrast of law-work in all respects. God is righteous in treating not Christ only but the believer in Him according to the worth of redemption in His own eyes. By virtue of His work God accounts us righteous who believe; we are made the righteousness of God in Him. [8]

God's Righteousness Revealed

In the gospel is God's righteousness revealed. The awakened sinner does repent, does detest his sins, judges himself as wholly and nothing but evil in God's sight, and so humbly, thankfully casts himself on Christ.

In the gospel is revealed God's righteous consistency with Himself in revealing to the believer a salvation entirely outside himself and, therefore, by or of faith, out of that principle and no other. The gospel is God's power for salvation because in it is His righteousness revealed in the way of faith. [8]

Righteousness and Holiness

Righteousness and holiness differ in this respect: Righteousness is the true perception of and, of course, the walking in our relative duties as men of God; holiness is rather the rejection in heart and way, according to God's nature, of what is contrary to Him. Holiness, therefore, is a far more absolute thing than righteousness, which takes up what we owe relatively to God and man. [12]

Practical Righteousness

Practical righteousness is consistency with Christ and inseparable from being born of God. We are born of God; we are His children, and can you conceive such a thing as the smallest unrighteousness either in God or Christ? As whosoever does righteousness is born of God, so we may say that whosoever is born of God does righteousness. It is what grace secures by a new nature in our conduct which points to that source and no other. What could more effectually act on the conscience, where there was a new life from God? [23]

God's Righteousness

It is the righteousness of God to justify me, a believer, though I have been a vile sinner, and for this reason, although my sins in the one scale must have sunk me alone down to hell, yet there was, in the other scale, Christ and His blood far outweighing all and raising me up to heaven. What is the consequence? My sins are clean vanished before that precious blood, and the scale of Christ proves itself to be the only one that keeps its weight before God. Upon this now hangs the very righteousness of God.

It is no longer a question of legal righteousness, but now He has Christ, and this is what God owes to Christ's obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, by virtue of which God righteously clears the guilty, which, as dealing according to the law, He could by no means do. "By Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses."

What was known of God in creation contained no provision for sin, and what was known of Him under the law would have only blasted the smallest hope of the sinner, whereas now the more I see what God is in Christ's cross, the more confidence and peace I have. "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." [12]

Justification

"Who was given up on account of our offenses and was raised on account of our justification." Romans 4:25

Three Consequences of Justification

Peace with God we have as the first notable result of justification. Our previous state was enmity and war with God. But now that He has justified us by faith of Christ, we can look back at all the past, so humiliating to our souls, and yet we have peace with God.

The next effect is that through our Lord Jesus Christ we have also, as a permanent blessing given already to us, the title of access into this favor wherein we stand. Blessed be God! It is grace that reigns there. Not a breath is there, save of favor toward us who deserved, alas! to be cast out and contemned for our unworthy ways, even since we have been brought to God.

But there is a third result: We "boast in hope of the glory of God." He will have us to be with and as Christ in His own glory. With us who believe He deals as to past, present and future, according to what our Lord Jesus deserves and His eternal redemption. If the righteousness be God's righteousness, not man's, if divine righteousness be the starting point, no wonder that the grace of God is the ground in which we stand, and that the glory of God is the sole adequate hope, whether we consider the Person or the work of the Savior. May we boast of it and Him! [8]

God Just in Justifying Believers

His grace moreover does no dishonor to His holy and righteous character, but the very reverse, and all through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. What is the ransom He purposed and has found? Christ, a propitiator through faith in His blood whom He set forth for a declaration of His righteousness, for God passed over the sins of believers in Old Testament times, looking forward to Christ's blood to vindicate Him, and forbearing all the while. But now it is not a matter of forbearance. The debt is canceled, the blood is shed, His righteousness is no longer in prospect but brought in and manifested, and God is proved to be just in justifying him that believes in Jesus (Romans 3:26). [8]

The Rapture

"The grace of God appeared bringing salvation to all men, instructing us that, having denied ungodliness [or, impiety] and worldly lusts, we should live soberly [or, discreetly] and righteously and godlily [or, piously] in this present age. Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ." Titus 2:11-13

A Personal Return

When the apostles on Olivet looked after their ascended Lord, "two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven" (Acts 1:10-11). Well they knew that it was a real, personal departure of their Master; just as certainly will His return be real and personal. [46]

The Christian's Hope

The coming of the Lord is not only urged continually in the Scriptures as the constant and proximate expectation of the saints, but it underlies all and accounts for much, even where not a word is said about it directly or openly. [11]

The Bride in Heaven

In Revelation 19 the marriage of the Lamb had come, and the bride had made herself ready. That could not be the earthly bride. How could the earthly bride celebrate a marriage in heaven? And how could the heavenly bride celebrate it there unless the saints composing it had been taken there before? [24]

The Lord Himself Will Come

That the Lord personally comes into the air for the wondrous meeting there to fetch us into His heavenly house bespeaks love unmeasured. We know how to show honor to our friends, when we do not let them come to us as best they can but send some trusty person to conduct them, or it may be a member of the family. If greater attention were called for, the wife of the busy head might go. But if the utmost were intended, the head of the family would set aside every hindrance and come to meet the beloved and honored object. Oh how wondrous that for us the Son comes thus, as we think of Himself and of ourselves. [34]

Preparing Us and the Place

Instead of abandoning you, I will as your divine Savior both prepare you for the place as already set before you and prepare the place for you by going to the Father's house.

"In My Father's house there are many abodes [abiding-places]." No doubt you have never aspired to such a home. You have expected Me to abide forever with you in your house, when I have purged it of all adversaries and evils by the power which I have even to subdue all things to Myself. But there is ample room for you as well as Me in that intimate home of divine love and heavenly glory. [34]

The Shout of Command

The Lord shall Himself descend from heaven with "a shout of command." Outside Scripture it is used for a general's call to his soldiers, for an admiral's to his sailors, or sometimes more generally as a cry to incite or encourage. It seems most appropriate as conveying a word of command to those in immediate relationship. Not a hint drops of a shout for the world, for men at large, to hear. It is here for His own to join Him on high.

"With archangel's voice" brings in the highest of heavenly creature glory to attend the Lord on that transcendent occasion. If angels now minister to the saints, as we know they did to Him also, how suitable to hear of "archangel's voice" when they thus gather round Him!

Nor is the "trump of God" silent at such a moment, when all that is of mortal man in His own shall be swallowed up of life at the presence of Christ. [15]

The Patience of Hope

"Remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope of our Lord Jesus Christ before our God and Father" 1 Thessalonians 1:3

The Word of Christ's Patience

One of the great distinguishing features of the Christian is that he suffers with Christ and, more than this, that he is content to wait, as Christ waits, for the great day. He is not anxious for the glory of the world now; his portion is not here; the Christian is waiting, as becomes the bride, for the exaltation of the Bridegroom over the earth.

The bride knows that the Bridegroom is exalted in heaven, and her heart is where her treasure is. Christ is glorified at the right hand of God, and her present joy is to know well that He who is her Bridegroom is coming, that He will first gather to Himself His bride, and that in due time He will display His bride with Himself in glory.

Christ is patiently waiting to come; He looks onward to the future as much in heaven as He did when He was on the earth.

Because we keep the word of His patience, He says, "I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation [or trial], which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth."

Those who keep the word of His patience are not to be there when the hour comes; that is to say, it is a complete removal from the time of the trouble. The church of God will be exempt; the faithful will be kept from it. By the faithful I mean all the children of God. [35]

The Morning Star

However well it was to heed the word of prophecy, it is but "as to a lamp shining in a dark place," for so the earth is and must be till the Sun of righteousness arises with healing in His wings.

The prophetic word did show the ruin of Israel as a whole for its idolatry, and the special further sin of Judah for the rejection of the Messiah. The prophetic word made clear the rise of the four Gentile empires while the Jews are "Lo-ammi" (not My people) and, between Daniel and the Apocalypse, also the reappearing of the last or Roman empire with the apostate Jews, who set up the Antichrist in Palestine, to be destroyed by the Lord shining out from heaven.

The lamp is excellent to cast adequate light on this dark world, its evil and its doom, and they did well in paying it heed, "until day dawn and a [or, the] morning star arise in your hearts"-that is to say, till they apprehend with enjoyment the bright, heavenly relationship which Christianity, fully understood, gives us now in Christ and the heavenly hope of His corning to introduce us into the Father's house. The prophetic lamp is good to help us against the squalid place, but how much more is "daylight" in Christ to lift us above the world in all our associations of faith and the bright hope, Christ as Morning Star, which He not only is, but has promised to give the overcomer (Rev. 2:28; 22:16-17)! [22]

The Coming Kingdom

"Wherefore the rather, brethren, use diligence to make your calling and election sure; for in doing these things ye shall never stumble. For thus shall be richly furnished to you the entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 1:10-11

The Coming and Day of the Lord

The coming of the Lord will be the consummation of the Lord's grace. The day of the Lord will be the execution of the Lord's judgment. Hence, if we mix up the coming of the Lord with His day, we weaken the solemnity of judgment, just as if we mix up the day with the coming we lose all the freshness and fullness of His grace.

Grace and judgment must each have their due expression, and as the coming of the Lord Jesus is that which Scripture employs to express the Lord's return to receive His own people and present them arrayed in His glory in the Father's house on high, so the day of the Lord embraces His intervention with men on earth, putting down all the pride, malice and unbelief of men, and bringing in a new system of divine government, where all things shall be subjected to His authority. [36]

Christ's Coming Pre-Millennial

The hope is of Christ for heaven. Prophecy treats of events for the earth, which a better knowledge of the Word learns to be subsequent. There is no earthly sign revealed to intercept the hope of Christ's coming for us, to receive us to Himself.

The language of Scripture joins issue with the theology of the schools. Christendom has lost the tongue of Canaan, because the truth is no longer a living reality for men. The Apostle put no date and made not a shade of error. Like his Master, he in the Spirit would have the saints ever waiting and looking for Christ's coming.

How could it surprise any suddenly if it cannot be before a thousand years of peace beyond example? The coming of the Lord rightly held presupposes the believer resting on redemption, sealed with the Holy Spirit of God, and already meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. [45]

The Millennium

That the earth is to be full of the knowledge of Jehovah's glory is certain; that preaching or the church is to effect it is not only without, but against, God's Word. It is an honor reserved for Christ in person.

It is an honor reserved for Christ in person, who will execute judgment on His enemies, destroy idolatry, expel Satan, bring Israel and the nations to repentance, bless all creation, and reign in power with His glorified saints till the last foe is annulled, when He will give up the kingdom to Him who is God and Father, that God may be all in all. [45]

The Bride in the Kingdom

"There came one of the seven angels that had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of the heaven from God, having the glory of God." Revelation 21:9-10

The Earthly and Heavenly Bride

The bride is only a figure, and as there is the church which has a nearer place than any of the others that are in heaven, so Jerusalem-or Zion if you will-will have a special place near to Messiah on the earth. The Lord's heart, surely, is large enough both for heaven and earth. He who is God as well as man-He who is the Head of the church as well as the Head of the Jew-loves and will love them both with the fullest and most fervent love.

Consequently, as in the Old Testament we have a bride who is clearly defined and most unquestionably not the church, so in the New Testament we have a bride that is fully brought out, and that bride is as clearly the church and not Jerusalem as in the Old Testament it is Jerusalem and not the church. This, I think, will help very considerably in understanding the Song of Solomon. [471

The Father's Kingdom

Christ's coming, to receive us to Himself in the Father's house above, becomes the distinctive keynote [of heaven]. But the Christian does not therefore lose his part in the kingdom, though the heavenly hope helps to explain more clearly the exalted relation he is to have in reigning with Christ at that day.

The Father's kingdom will come where the risen saints shine like the sun and His will be done on earth as in heaven, because the glorious Son of Man will hold the reins of power (Satan being bound), and the angels of His might gather out of His kingdom (clearly the earth) all scandals and those that do iniquity. Then, and then only, are the saints to judge the world, yea, angels (1 Cor. 6), as the apostles sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19).

It is a state of things surely to be fulfilled, but as surely neither in this age nor in eternity, but in the age between, when all things, the habitable world to come among them (Heb. 2:5-8), will be seen put under Christ, as they cannot be now or when the kingdom is given up. [45]

Spirit, Soul and Body

"The God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit, and soul and body be preserved entire without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth, who will also do it." 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

This Body

The body is for the Lord and the Lord is for it. Never was the honor of the body set in its true light till Christ came and proved it not only in His own Person but in ours as redeemed by His blood and indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

Even now the Lord disdains not this temple of the Spirit: how much less when changed into the likeness of His glory? In this body we shall have the portion of our Lord, for "God both raised the Lord, and will raise up us by His power."

Not our souls but our bodies are declared to be members of Christ. "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit."

The resurrection not only exalts God and humbles man but delivers from present ease and indulgence where it is held in faith. [10]

Soul and Spirit

The soul is the seat of personality; the spirit is rather the expression of capacity. Hence the soul, with its affections, is the responsible "I," as the spirit is that higher faculty capable of knowing God, but also of unutterable woe in the rejection of Him. The God of peace Himself claims and sanctifies us wholly.

Peace with God, the peace of God, the God of peace: such is the order of the soul's entrance into and experience of the blessing through our Lord Jesus, as the Holy Spirit is the Person who effectuates this wonderful purpose of our Father, whether now in measure or absolutely and perfectly at Christ's coming, a hope never separated in Scripture from any part of Christian life. [15]

Man's Soul Immortal

All animals were living souls, but they lived when made. Not so man: The outer vessel was formed of God for man, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Man alone had the wondrous privilege of God's in-breathing.

It was thus only that man, and man alone, became a living soul; therefore is man's soul immortal. He derived his living soul from the inbreathing of God. This is the ground of his special relationship with God: man now responsible to do His will, as by and by he gives account to God. [48]

Two Resurrections

"If the Spirit of Him that raised Jesus out of the dead dwell in you, He that raised Christ out of the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies also on account of His Spirit that dwelleth in you." Romans 8:11

The Two Resurrections

There is no such thing in Scripture as a resurrection of all men together. Of all things resurrection separates most distinctly. Till then there may be more or less a mixture of the evil with the good, though it be a dishonor to the Lord and an injury to His people. But appearances deceive, and absolute separateness is not found, and God uses the trial produced by it for blessing to those whose eye is single. But at His coming the severance will be complete; at His appearing it will be manifest. Hence, the resurrection of the sleeping saints is called a resurrection out of, or from among, the dead, which could not be said of the resurrection of the wicked, for they leave no more to be raised. Thus, both classes are raised separately, and the traditional idea of one general resurrection of the dead is fictitious.

But the moral consequence of the error is as positively bad as the truth sanctifies, for the action of a general resurrection connects itself with a general judgment, and thus vagueness is brought in on the spirit of the believer, who loses thereby the truth of salvation as a present thing and the consciousness of possessing eternal life in Christ, in contrast with coming into judgment.

The first resurrection of the saints, severed by at least a thousand years from that of the rest of the dead, the wicked who rise for judgment and the lake of fire, is the strongest possible disproof of the prevalent confusion, an immensely grave appeal to the conscience of the unbeliever, and a most cheering solace to those who are content to suffer with Christ meanwhile. [15]

Risen With Christ

"If therefore ye were raised with Christ, seek the things above, where the Christ is seated on the right hand of God." Colossians 3:1

Christ the Firstfruits

Christ is raised from the dead, the pledge that those fallen asleep shall consequently rise. It is the proof that all men shall [be raised], unjust no less than just. He is the "firstfruits of those fallen asleep." [10]

Resurrection

Resurrection, as far as we are concerned, is a matter of hope. We have part with Christ in His death; we shall have part in resurrection also for our bodies. Meanwhile, we, as alive through Him risen, have all the benefit of His death as a power delivering from sin. Our old man we know to be crucified with Him. Without this the root of evil had not been dealt with nor consequently had we against self that weapon of divine temper which a God of resurrection puts in our hands. [8]

Risen With Christ

We are dead and risen. Even many Christians who use the words constantly do not really enter into the meaning of this language, and for the obvious and sufficient reason-they are not living in the truth of it practically; they are too habitually mixed up with the world to understand such absolute separation from it. It is not that they are dull of understanding in the things and interests of nature. But their speech and their ways [betray] them, proving how far they are from intelligence of the Scripture itself. They substitute mysticism for the truth. [14]

What Christ's Resurrection Means

Christ risen from the dead establishes, as the great fact presented by God to faith, victory over evil in Him who bore its consequences in the righteous judgment of God that He might deal in sovereign grace with man, give the believer power morally by the Holy Spirit meanwhile, and associate him openly and triumphantly with Christ in the same risen condition ere long and forever.

The denial of the resurrection denies not merely the future hope of the saints, but the standing fact of Christ, the mainspring of God's good news. If it is not true, the foundations are gone, the gospel is worthless, God Himself misrepresented, and the witnesses impostors.

The immense fact of resurrection was one which Christ not only predicted over and over again, but on it staked the truth of His mission and Sonship. It is the manifestation of that power of deliverance from death and judgment which is the present joy of the Christian, as it is the brightest witness to the efficacy of atonement and the pledge of glory with Christ at His coming again. [10]

The Principle of Law

"So that, my brethren, ye also have been made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that ye should belong to another, Him that was raised out of the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God."

Romans 7:4

Law and God's Will

The law is a righteous interdict upon man's will. Negation never can form a Christian's ways. We want the bracing of the man morally to all that is good. How is this to be effected? As there is in Christ the communication of life, so also from Him comes the filling with the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. The believer is not treated by God as a horse or a mule which have no understanding, but as an intelligent and loving being who is brought into fellowship with God.

What is presented as God's will necessarily forms the mind, and consequently the walk, of a Christian man.

The more the Christian knows God's will, which is gracious as well as holy, happiness grows and strength too, whereas law works so as to produce misery and convince of utter weakness. [14]

Law and Promise

The Holy Spirit has taken particular pains to lay hold of facts in the Old Testament which we should never have thought applicable in order to bring out blessed truths in the New Testament. Who would have discerned the difference between law and promise in Hagar and Ishmael striving with Sarah and Isaac? The Spirit of God not only saw it, but intended the record of the circumstances to be the beautiful foreshadowing of the two covenants: that of law, which has only a child of the flesh, and that of promise, which, on the contrary, brings forth in due time the child of the Spirit.

It clearly showed that God attached the promise not to the mere offspring of the letter, but to the children of the Spirit.

Every religious system which takes its stand upon the law invariably assumes a Jewish character. Why is it that men have magnificent buildings or the splendor of ritual in the service of God? On what model is it founded? The temple is clearly the type, and along with this goes the having a peculiar, sacred class of persons, the principle of the clergy being founded upon the notion of the Jewish priesthood. The service, where that is the case, must depend upon what would attract the senses-show of ornament, music, imposing ceremonies-everything that would strike man's mind or that would draw a multitude together, not by the truth, but by something to be seen or heard that pleases nature. It is the order of what the Word of God calls the "worldly sanctuary." [9]

The Law's Object

The object of the law was to bring out the sinner's true condition of soul, not at all to bring him into blessing, but to bring out the fearful ruin into which man had fallen by sin. The law was not meant to be the rule of life; indeed, it is rather the rule of death. If a man had no such thing as sin, it might be the rule of life, but he being a sinner, it is an absurd misnomer to call it the rule of life. [9]

The Christian's Rule of Life

"To me to live is Christ, and to die gain." Philippians 1:21

The Rule of Life. The way of the Lord Himself is the true "rule of life" for the believer since His manifestation, not even all the written Word alone, but that Word seen livingly in Christ, who is made a spring of power by the Holy Spirit to his soul that is occupied with Him. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal [on equality] with God: but made Himself of no reputation [emptied Himself]." [13]

Legalism. Legalism is an insidious thing, because it looks fair. When this is the case, men fancy that they become practically more holy, but the contrary is the fact. What produces true holiness is

The Christian's Rule of Life

God working in the soul, both to will and to do of His good pleasure, and this because "sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ." God brings the believer into His own presence and puts him there as a child. [9]

The Requirement of the Law Fulfilled

God so wrought in Christ in order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to flesh, but according to Spirit.

Christ, not the law-Christ in grace and truth-Christ dead and risen is the sole power of holiness by the working of the Holy Spirit in us, and the heart answers in love to God and man, so that what the law required of those under itself, but in vain, is really fulfilled in those who are not under law but under grace (Rom. 8:4). [8]

God's Love for Us

"When the kindness and the love to man of our Savior God appeared, not by works in righteousness which we ourselves did, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost." Titus 3:4-5

God Commends His Love

Both Gentile and Jew joined hands to crucify the Savior and thus cut themselves off from mercy on every ground save God's boundless grace.

Then and there it is that God commends His love unto us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Oh, how foolish to fancy that He wants the sinner to commend himself to God by doing some good or great thing and to forget that it is He who in His Son has wrought the only, the best and the greatest thing that even He could, in that all-sufficient sacrifice for him that believes! When this is received, the heart that was proudest and darkest does not fail to love. [23]

God's Perfect Love

How could the Christian find adequate cheer, in the midst of the world without and the flesh within, to persevere in God's will with joy and confidence, unless he had the assurance of His perfect love? It is what best strengthens practical righteousness.

We never perform our duties rightly to God or any other unless we are by grace above our duties. If you sink under your duties, you will always fail. [23]

The Measure of God's Love

There is nothing in all the thoughts of God more wondrous than that God can love such as we are with the same love wherewith He loves His Son. And He does so love us; I know it for myself and dishonor His Word if I do not know it. If He says it, is it not that I may believe it and take it home to my heart and enjoy it now in this world? that I may use it as my constant buckler against everything that flesh or world or Satan can insinuate against me? He loves us as He loved Him.

Do not say it is too high a thought. I know nothing so humiliating-that so convicts us of being nothing-as this that, so loved, we should so little feel it; that, so loved, we should so feebly return it; that, so loved, we should yield to the cares, the vanities, the thoughts, the pursuits, and anything, in short, that is not in accordance with such love.

It is the delight and, if we may so say, the desire of God that those who are His should enter into the greatness of His love, for no glory nor sense of it nor confidence in it nor waiting for it ought to be enough even for such hearts as ours. It is a wonderful thing to think that we are to share the glory of Christ, but more so that we have the same love. The same God who gives us the glory of Christ will have our souls enter even now by the Holy Spirit into the community of the same love. [12]

A Call to Love

Confidence is the child of love, and known love begets confidence.

God would have the practical life of a believer instinct with love more than any other thing. Righteousness is assumed and obedience, but there must be love, and as love is the energetic power in God's nature, so is it also the indispensable power that works in the Christian's life one with another, coming out more saliently perhaps than anything else.

To love is inseparable from being born of God, and so he that loves proves by this very fact that he is a child of God. It has nothing at all to do with natural affections, which everybody ought to know may be strong in the most wicked men and women.

We require not only to be begotten of God, but also divine power, nay, God's abiding in us, in order that we should love one another according to God. [23]

God's Love in Christ

"I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39

Divine Indwelling

There are two ways in which Christ shows perfect love: first, by coming down to bear all my sins and stripes; second, by going up to heaven to give me His glory. Meanwhile, He sheds on me the Spirit, that God may dwell in me and I in God. Such is the perfect love of God. [49]

The Way of Love

What a truth that God has sent His only-begotten Son into the world! How wonderful the bare fact, especially as it was in nothing but love! It was not something done in heaven. The only-begotten Son He had sent to give a life in this world to fit for God there whence He came. But no work done even by the Son on high could suit either God or man. The way of love was that the Son should become man to glorify God and give life in its highest nature to dead man by faith.

The Old Testament tells how the race, whether Jews or Gentiles, had behaved toward God for thousands of years; the New Testament tells a still worse tale. Yet He who knew all beforehand has sent His only-begotten into the world, and for what? Was it for judgment? It was for the very opposite; it was to quicken dead souls with the life eternal that was in His Son, for no less is meant in the words, "That we might live through Him." [23]

The Kindness of God

It was a wonder for God in His love to humble Himself and come down to man in the Person of His Son become a man. It was a wonder infinite that a man who was God incarnate died as a sacrifice for sinners on the cross. He now is raised from the dead and received up in glory, exalted to give repentance and remission of sins, not to Israel only, but to any poor sinner who believes in Him to the ends of the earth.

Both Jews and Gentiles joined in rejecting God's Son, the Messiah, who could and would have shed nothing but light and good to God's glory. When all hope naturally was buried in His grave, God raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, and not this only, but He causes grace to appear in deeper and larger ways than ever before by the gospel.

Thus did the kindness of God and His love toward man appear. It is matchless, full of comfort, deliverance and blessing to every soul believing in Christ. [18]

The Light of God

"Ye were once darkness but now are light in the Lord: walk as children of light (for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth), proving what is agreeable to the Lord." Ephesians 5:8-10

The True Light. It is the true light of God which is now shining. Such is the gospel of Christ, in which more than in all else put together the kindness of God and His love toward man appeared. He therefore sent it forth to every creature, as the sun shines for every land. [18]

Walking in the Light

The Christian walks, not necessarily according to the light, but always in the light, as God is in the light revealed by Christ. It is the moral character proper to the new nature, God's nature, who is light and in whom is no darkness at all. True, the Christian has the old nature still, but he is set free, as having died with Christ, never more by grace to indulge it but to condemn what God condemned in Christ's cross at all cost to Himself. Indeed, we have a full salvation not only from sins but from sin-justified from the bad fruit (Rom. 5:1) and justified from the bad tree (Rom. 6:7). [6]

God's Light

Light is only seen in God's light, and man must sink into darkness when not morally elevated by looking up to One above him. [8]

Light in the Lord

We are light, yea, light in the Lord-at once the ground and character and measure of that which becomes our ways as Christians: Let us walk accordingly.

How comforting is the call of grace to holy ways! The most solemn appeal reminds us of our blessing and its security, even when urging us on with ever, such closeness. How holy is our standing in Christ that God Himself should be able to say of us, "Ye [are] light in the Lord." If He does, should we not say it of ourselves, both in privilege and responsibility?

Let us look to Him that, thus set outside all taint (for there is nothing purer than light), we may go forward, showing that light which we are now in the Lord. It is in the light we walk, and by it we should judge all, for light we are. God would repudiate a lower standard or an atmosphere less pure. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all; if we are His children, we are children of light. [12]

Let Your Light Shine

If I love and prize Christ, such will be my feeling toward Christians, even as I shall want myself and all Christians to feel that Christ is the only thing worth our thoughts, affections, labor and life. There is continual danger of the Christian's sinking into thoughts of natural qualities-of those things that make men attractive. The point of faith is to rise above all this.

No man ever walks inconsistently while his eye is on Christ. And it is not merely the sense of his own weakness, but the consciousness that the old man is judged and gone from before God. What a blessed standing is the Christian's! [14]

The New Life

"We know that the Son of God came, and bath given to us understanding that we should know the true one; and we are in the true one, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and life eternal." 1 John 5:20

The New Life

The testimony of God is the divine means of communicating life to the soul when applied by the Holy Spirit-that is, by faith. And if we want still further to know what specially in the truth of God is used to quicken those who are dead in sins, it is always, more or less, the revelation of Christ.

My believing that the creature was made by God will not quicken my soul. I might believe any facts in the Old Testament and be assured of all the miracles, discourses and ways of Jesus in the New Testament, and yet my soul might still be unquickened.

But believing in Christ Himself is a very different thing from not doubting things about Him. It supposes that I have, more or less, come to an end of myself, that I have bowed to the humiliating sentence of Scripture upon my nature, and that I own myself to be only a poor, lost, dead creature in the sight of God. [12]

The New Birth

He, the Son, is the quickener of all saints, and therefore it is no question whether the Old Testament saints have not been quickened as really as ourselves: assuredly they must be and were. There never was but one Savior, and consequently the new birth, which all need for God's kingdom, is ever the impartation, by the Spirit, of the life which is in the Son of God. [29]

Life in God's Son

The believer's peace turns wholly on having God's Son and life eternal in Him. It is written that this "life is in His Son" because the Spirit would comfort the believer with its security independent of himself and every other creature. In the Son is this life, where no evil can reach, no danger approach. It is his joy to know his life, the life eternal, in Him who is not only its unfailing spring but its divine preservative against all the wiles of Satan; and yet more: He is in fellowship with God the Father, the object of His love and honor more than ever since redemption. But John 5:24 equally assures us that we have this life and that God has given it to us here.

Now nothing can be more certain than that God's love is toward every child of His family. Therefore is the Word of God most explicit that this privilege was meant to be inwardly known, enjoyed and exercised in personal communion, worship and walk of every Christian, however immature, just as the other life, the flesh, always utterly hateful to God, is now more than ever, through Christ and the given Spirit of God, made hateful to the saint. Hence the Christian has to disown and set aside the fallen life and to walk by faith according to the only perfect model of Christ in his new nature, called here and in the corresponding Gospel "eternal life." It is the life of Christ, and now, by grace, it is "our life." [23]

The New Nature

"With Christ I am crucified, yet I live, no longer I, but Christ liveth in me; but that which I now live in flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God that loved me and gave Himself up for me." Galatians 2:20

The Two Natures

The believer has two natures and not one. All teaching that sets forth the nature improved is false. The old man in the saint is always bad. While we are living men here below, the will of the flesh is opposed to God: There is that which God does not improve and which does not in the least degree admit of improvement.

Our old man is not extinguished, but crucified. "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body." It is not gone, but the allowing it to reign over you is exhorted against. It is like a wild beast which you are to keep under lock and key, but the wild beast does not become tame by merely locking it up. And the overlooking of that point quite accounts for a Christian falling into what is wrong. He sins when he is careless or off his guard.

There is in the believer, on the one hand, that old nature of the flesh which is always prone to evil, and, on the other, the new man (the new nature), which loves God and His will, and it is in virtue of this that the man is said to be sanctified. He has got a nature he never had before. He is set apart to God, and, being brought by faith under the power of Christ's work, he is said to be washed, sanctified and justified. [361

The Mark of a Christian

What marks a Christian is, not that he has not sin within, but that he has a new nature, which none has except he that believes in Jesus by the Holy Spirit. In virtue of Christ, God regards him as one who has entirely done with sin as a matter of divine judgment on us. God has quite closed with it thus, not as a dealing with us day by day. There is where confession of failure comes in, and thus it is a good and right thing for a Christian to judge and confess his evil.

A man's being entirely forgiven all trespasses does not put aside the need and duty and privilege of confessing the truth about ourselves to God, day by day. [9]

Eternal Life

"This is the eternal life, that they know Thee, the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, Jesus Christ." John 17:3

Eternal Life

Eternal life is expressly predicated on the eternal Word, the Son of God, before He came into the world, but it never became the known portion of the believer till Christ was manifested.

It was here in the world of sin, sorrow and misery-here where the first man utterly failed unto death-that the Second Man displayed life eternal, obeying unto death, and by His death defeated Satan and found an everlasting redemption for all that believe. And those who believe have life eternal in Him that they might live now of His life, not of their own fallen life. The manifestation of the life is precisely in this world and nowhere else. [23]

Two Views of Eternal Life

Eternal life is viewed not only as a present possession for the believer in Christ, but as the future issue of a devoted pathway for His name. Our Apostle elsewhere in this Epistle (Rom. 6:22-23) gives us both brought together in the same context. But now, says he of Christians, "being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (8]

The Life Eternal

God and Father, we adore Thee

For the Christ, Thine image bright,

In whom all Thy holy nature

Dawned on our once hopeless night.

Thou didst send Him as the witness

Of a life beyond compare;

By Thy Spirit we received Him,

Now in Christ how blest we are!

Eternal Life

Fellowship with Thee the Father,

And with Jesus Christ Thy Son—

Such Thine own unjealous giving

By the Holy Ghost made known.

For in Christ was life eternal

Once beheld and heard below;

And in Him dwelt all the fullness,

Though in grace He stooped so low.

Father, Jesus was Thy pleasure,

Object of supreme delight;

Father, what wast Thou to Jesus

But His constant spring and light?

Now in Him, our God and Father,

Sharers of Thy love are we;

Now partaking with our Savior

His unceasing rest in Thee.

Grace divine is this, transcending

All that else the heart employs:

'Tis the Son and Father deigning

Us to give of Their own joys.

Christian Love

"Be therefore imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as the Christ also loved us and gave Himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for an odor of, sweet smell." Ephesians 5:1-2

Loving the Truth

If we love the truth, we shall not fail in affection toward those that are identified with it. Party zeal is the flesh's parody of it. God will have love and faith to be a living reality here below, and, in the world as it is, one must increasingly suffer. But He will be sanctified in those that are nigh Him, ever noticing both what He values and what He hates. [17]

The Nature of Love

Love is of God. Therefore it is of the deepest moment that it should ever be genuine and incorrupt, for the higher its source, nature and character, the more dangerous where that which is spurious usurps its place and name, misleading others and oneself under a fair but false pretension. Love is the activity of the divine nature in goodness, and hence it is inseparable from that nature as reproduced in the children of God. Nevertheless, this does not absolve them from the need of self-judgment that it be sincere and undefiled, seeking others' good according to God's will unselfishly. The letting in of hopes, fears or objects of our own falsifies it.

Where love is real, there is and must be the detestation of evil, no less decidedly than the close attachment to good. If the latter attracts, the former offends and is often ill received in the world. [8]

Love Unfeigned

It is to be doubted whether love can be unfeigned without abhorring evil, and what evil can compare with bearing the name of the Lord without real attachment to Him? [10]

The Bond of Perfectness

There is more in love than simple kindness and forgiveness: It goes beyond these. Love always brings in God, being the activity of His nature. His nature morally is light, but the energy of it is love that goes out in goodness to others.

Thus, love tends to bind together, whereas self or flesh is the very opposite, the one as decidedly removing difficulties as the other brings them in. Love not only bears and forbears, but it also overcomes evil with good. [14]

Love One Another

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" 1 John 4:11

Loving One Another

The love of Christians mutually is the proof and the power of communion that God abides in us and that His love is perfected in us, instead of being choked by the flesh or enticed by the allurements of the world.

Christ must be the life for such a reproduction. Yet when the disciples saw its perfection in Christ, how little they realized God in Him! When He died and rose, they understood it better. But when anointed with the Spirit they enjoyed it best of all and walked as they abode in that love, which is the energy of God's nature. It is so with us now in principle and in fact too according to the measure of our spirituality.

We can readily see how much this love of God in us toward our brethren rises above moral duty. If the Holy Spirit had not so written through the Apostle, we might have thought it a grievous exaggeration to give it such value as to say that if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us. May we fully and simply believe His Word, that we may be enabled thus to love, and assure our souls that as love is of God so He abides in us to walk in it, apart from the world which can mix only to destroy its character, instead of His love being perfected in us! [23]

Members One of Another

It is as preposterous and uncomely for a Christian not to tell the plain, simple truth to a brother Christian as for a man to deceive himself. They are part of ourselves. "We are members one of another." Do we realize this? If we did, what would be the effects? Assuredly, one would be perfect plainness in dealing with that which is wrong; another would be a real, hearty desire to set right those who are wrong.

It is evident that we could not wish to injure ourselves. And if I regard another as part of myself, I ought to act towards him accordingly. [12]

Brotherly Love

Blessed as is always and everywhere the energy of the new nature, it is in the assembly of God that it finds its largest and deepest exercise, so far as we are concerned. Nowhere else is it demanded so continually and in such varied forms. Without love, souls therein make speedy and utter shipwreck; with it, the sorest trials turn into the happiest testimony to the grace of Christ. [10]

Christian Joy

'May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Ghost." Romans 15:13

Our Exceeding Joy

Never will there be a work to surpass, yea or to match, what has been already wrought in the cross. Nowhere else such a concentration of what otherwise must be irreconcilable: majesty and humiliation, holiness and mercy, righteousness and sin, love and hatred, Satan apparently victorious but really and forever vanquished, man at his utter worst, God in His fullest grace, Jesus at the lowest point of obedience yet glorifying God absolutely even as to sin-all issuing for the believer to God's glory in a perfect acceptance and an everlasting deliverance, with the reconciliation of all creation to come.

We do not wait for the day of sight to participate in this exceeding joy, which breaks forth in thanksgiving and praise. [21]

Enjoyment of Christ

There is a danger of persons fancying that the richest harvest time of peace and joy possible is at the hour of conversion, whereas, at best, it is the enjoyment of a babe. There is a mighty sense of deliverance, but sense of deliverance is not necessarily Christ, nor the sweetest way of tasting Him. It is connected with our sense of the love of Christ, and this we assuredly are privileged to enjoy, but there is a knowledge and delight in Christ Himself which is a deeper thing still, and it is based upon a growing acquaintance with His personal glory and love, as well as His work. [9]

Singing

Singing is not only due to Him who gives happiness, but a safety valve for His feeble ones, who easily in times of trouble slip from dependence. His praise recalls us to Himself. [20]

Christ Praising in the Midst

Think for a moment what the praise of Christ was in such an hour, what His feelings must have been, when emerging from the darkness from the dust of death, from the abandonment of God! He alone could rightly estimate the immensity of it all, who having suffered once for sins now rests in the hard-won victory. Then it was that He bore our sins; then He who knew no sin was made sin. Risen from the dead, He is bearing sins no more; He is praising, and not alone, but "in the midst of the congregation."

Oh, what praises were Christ's, delivered now at length and from so great a death! But are they not our praises too? And is it not in "our midst" that He sings them? What a character does not this communion imprint on the church's worship! The praise of Christ, after sin was judged as it never can be again and He who was crucified in weakness lives by the power of God, gives the just and only full idea of what becomes God's assembly.

Truly His is in the highest sense a new song. Alone He has thus suffered; not alone does He praise, but in the full chorus of the consciously redeemed. How wondrous that it is not here merely "in" the congregation but "in the midst" of it that He thus sings! [39]

Trial and Tribulation

"That the proof of your faith, much more precious than gold that perisheth though proved by fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 1:7

Rejoicing in the Lord

There is a joy independent of all passing circumstances and deeper than all others because it is nearer to, yea, it is the one spring of all joy. It is of the deepest moment that we-that all saints-should heed the call. It is due to Him, in whom we are exhorted to rejoice, that we should bear a true testimony in this respect.

The Holy Spirit is in us to give us a divine appreciation of the Lord. May we be enabled by faith, heartily, simply, alone or with others, in public and in private, to "rejoice in the Lord."

Joy in the Lord is the truest safeguard against the religious snares of the enemy. Where the truth is known, the grand thing is to have the affections kept on the right object and withal in happy liberty. [13]

Boasting in Tribulations

This flesh can never do; it may affect stoical insensibility, but faith, while it increases our feeling, alone gives us to triumph.

In hoping for the glory of God, our boast is direct. It is not so with our tribulations. We should and do boast in them, but it is not immediate. It is the fruit of intelligent apprehension of God's gracious aim in these afflictions.

Tribulation works out endurance. Then endurance sustained in faith works out experience (that is, the proof of what is tested and stands), as this again, from what God is shown to be in gracious, present care, strengthens hope, and this does not put to shame by failure and disappointment, because the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God, who loved us when there was nothing lovable in us. [8]

The Cross of Christ

"Be it not for me to boast, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world." Galatians 6:14

The Cross of Christ

The crucifixion puts shame upon man and upon the flesh more than any other thing. The effect of Christ's death, simply, does not give me man made nothing of and the utter worthlessness of human nature as before God. When the Apostle wants to show the absolute separation of the Christian from the world, he says, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."

Now it is plain that this is a much graver and more forcible way of putting the case. There is nothing the world counted so foolish as the cross. Philosophers scorned the notion that a divine person should thus die: It was something that seemed so weak and objectless. They had no just sense of the horribleness of sin, of man's positive enmity to God, and of His solemn, eternal judgment. The cross is the means of bringing it all out.

But more than that: The cross not merely shows what the flesh is, and the world, but it also proves the hopelessness of looking to the law to bring in blessing, save in a negative way. There is such a thing as the power of the law to kill, but not to quicken; Christ alone does this. [9]

The Cross

There is nothing like that cross, which stands alone apart from all before and after.

There sin in man rose up to slay the Son of God, yet it was, in slaying Him, itself slain as well as judged, that grace might reign through righteousness unto eternal life for every believer. [10]

The Rudiments of the World. To be dead with Christ takes a person not only out of the world in spirit, but out of the whole system of its religion. We are not true to our standing, as well as to Christ, if we are as men alive in the world. We have a new life, which is the life of Him who is dead and risen, and this has now brought us into the condition of death to all that is of the world.

The great mass of Christians will not hear of such a breach with the world, and thus comes one severe trial of those who see it thus a foundation truth of Christ. Have they in grace made up their minds for His sake to be counted fanatical, foolish, proud, hard, narrow, committing these and all other calumnies to Him who loves them and knows the end from the beginning?

The taking up the rudiments of the world is then a flat, practical contradiction to our death with Christ. [14]

Preaching and Prison

"That utterance may be given me in the opening of my mouth with boldness to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that in it I may be bold as I ought to speak."

Ephesians 6:19-20

The Preaching of the Cross

Men had dared to call the preaching of the cross of Christ foolishness. But who and what were they? Those that perish! Was it wise to follow such? They might vaunt of their wisdom, but this would not save them from perdition.

Need we wonder it was to them foolishness, if they saw not the glory of the Person of Christ given to die in God's love to sinners? What could seem less reasonable to the natural mind than for a crucified man to be the only Savior from sins and the wrath of God?

Men naturally despise the cross, who do not believe either that their sins deserve divine judgment or that He in grace bore that judgment thereon.

Nothing is a man so slow to acknowledge as his own badness, and in such a state religion is only a blind for the soul and a sop for God-of all vanities the greatest and most pernicious. [101

Imprisonment Turned to Account

He who is most right before God must be content to suffer most before men, as the Apostle was seen doing unto bonds. But suffering wrongfully, even unto bonds as a malefactor, did not hinder blessing. "The word of God is not bound." On the contrary, such circumstances attract fresh notice. A class wholly new have their attention drawn to the revelation of God. The name of the Lord comes before magistrates, officials of the law, soldiers, seamen, governors and perhaps even crowned heads. It may be the world's shame that so it should be, but rejection is the path of the Christian, the true glory of the church, till Jesus reigns. [17]

Christian Warfare

"This charge I commit to thee, child Timothy, according to the prophecies on thee going before, that by them thou mightest war the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience." 1 Timothy 1:18-19

Warring the Good Warfare

Condition of soul has much to do with warring the good warfare. Faith must be kept up, bright and simple and exercised, the eyes of the heart ever on the things unseen and eternal. Withal a good conscience is imperative, for if faith brings God in, a good conscience judges self so as to keep sin out. This, of all moment for every Christian, is preeminently needful for him who is devoted to the service of Christ. There is nothing which so hardens the heart as the continual giving out of truth apart from one's own communion and walk. [16]

Our Warfare

We have to do with the most serious fight that ever can be carried on by man here below; we have to combat Satan, not only to hold our own, but to hold the Lord's own against all the power of the enemy. But in no case is the Christian to wage carnal warfare. His warfare is only against Satan. [44]

The Christian's Armor

The Holy Spirit calls on us to take up the panoply of God. Neither strength nor wisdom of man avail in this conflict. As we have to do with the hosts of Satan, on the one hand, we need, on the other, "the whole armor of God."

Walking in flesh, we do not war according to flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but divinely mighty to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down reasonings and every high thing that lifts itself up against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Not flesh but the Spirit of God has power against Satan. [12]

The Helmet of Salvation

The helmet of salvation is the bold and joyful consciousness of the full deliverance God has wrought for us in Christ. This crowns the various parts of the armor already noticed. [12]

The Evil Day

The character of the time in which our conflict goes on is designated as "the evil day." Evil indeed is the entire period since Christ was crucified and the enemy acquired the title of "the prince of this world." We are expected to walk with carefulness, not as fools but as wise, seizing every good and suited opportunity, because "the days are evil."

There are occasions when the power of evil is allowed to press more closely and the danger is great for the careless soul, and it is well when the Christian has anticipated it, for the point at such a time is not to take up the panoply, but, having already taken it, "to withstand."

"The evil day" should find us already and fully armed, if we are to make effectual resistance.

The fight-the fights-may have been keen, the victory complete through the Lord's goodness and might, but the war is not over. Our place is still to stand our ground. [12]

Christian Growth

"Putting away therefore all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envyings and all evil-speakings, as newborn babes long for the guileless intelligent milk that by it ye may grow unto salvation, if indeed ye tasted that the Lord is good." 1 Peter 2:1-3

Growth in Truth

The Spirit is as necessary to the understanding of the Word as the Word is the necessary material for the Spirit to use. Yet I am sure that one really finds the truth not as a student, but as a believer. God is dealing with the heart and conscience. We cannot separate growth in the truth from the spiritual state of the soul: If we essay it, we may appear to get on very fast in mastering the Bible, but it is to be feared that the next step will be a fall. [37]

Growth and Communion

"To know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge" may seem to be a paradox, but there may be the knowing more and more of that which surpasses knowledge. He supposes us launched upon that sea where there is no shore: We can never reach the end of His love.

Yet the Apostle speaks of knowing the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, "that ye may be filled to all the fullness of God."

And it is for the saints now that the Apostle thus prayed. It is the heart's condition and real growth in communion with God that is before us. [12]

Knowing God's Will

Our great business, next to enjoying Christ and delighting in His love, should be to cultivate what is according to His will, so that we should not give a false witness of what He is and has done for us. [25]

Fragment

Those who do not see anything in Scripture as an object for constant search, growth and desire after more are those, it is to be feared, who see scarce anything in it that is divine. As soon as it is discerned that there is infinite light in it, desire to know more and more is a necessary consequence.

But it is for practice. Whenever we begin to be satisfied with what we have got, there is an end of progress, but when we make a little real advance, we want to make more. [13]

Passing Into Sonship

The believer, if simple, passes, we may say, at once into sonship. If he is occupied with self, with his ordinances, with his church, or with any object to engage his soul other than Christ, he remains an infant and in no real sense full-grown.

God is not mocked, nor does He suffer even saints to slight or doubt the gospel with impunity. It is to prefer bondage when grace is proclaiming liberty and to need milk instead of that solid food which suits the full-grown, yet every Christian ought to be full-grown. Christ redeemed him to know the sonship of God in the power of His Spirit. [19]

Christian Obedience

"My beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, with fear and trembling work out your own salvation; for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure." Philippians 2:12-13

Christ Our Pattern for Obedience

The saint needs an object from God to form our souls and fashion our ways. And He sets before us Christ. What or who can compare with Him? Flaws were in the best of saints at their best; think of Peter, Paul and John.

Christ "did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth." Christ "when reviled did not again revile, when suffering did not threaten, but gave over to Him that judgeth righteously." Who among His most bitter foes that sought every occasion ever convicted Him of sin? He always did the things that pleased His Father and never once did any will but His: the lowliest of men, yet above the highest, for there is nothing so lowly as obedience, nor is there anything so pure and morally elevating as ever obeying God. He and He only was His "righteous servant," absolutely and perfectly. [21]

The Commandments of Christ

If Christ calls upon us to obey as He does, if He lays down commandments, these have nothing whatever to do with the ten commandments. The law was an appeal to flesh; therein life here below was held out but never gained: "This do, and thou shalt live."

But the commandments of Christ are directive precepts for those to whom new life is already given of grace by faith. They have now therefore the greatest of all blessings in having Christ their life.

Nothing is more certain than that God has given the believers Christ and that Christ has also given Himself for them. Wonderful truth, yet most simple! It is the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation. But the truth of the gospel is soon lost when people speculate instead of believing. [23]

God's Will, Not Ours

Obedience supposes the will broken and submissive to God's Word and thus to Himself. There is no true lowliness without it, yet it arms the soul against all counter-attractions and gives firmness to the weakest against every adversary.

So we see in Christ Himself, who honored Scripture as none ever did before and fashions the Christian after His own model. It concentrates the moral mind on God's will and is jealous to maintain His authority in whatever fell from His mouth, knowing that He has that divine perfection of majesty, holiness, truth and faithfulness which was fully displayed in Christ, His image. [23]

The Obedient Spirit

It is always the spirit of grace which produces the obedient spirit, as the law begets servility and fear. When we are happy in God's presence, we are united in one common object, and that object is Christ. There is thus a motive that governs every affection and action, and happiness, peace and submissiveness are the proper and natural effects of grace working among the children of God. [9]

Christian Meekness

"Put on therefore, as elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any should have a complaint against any; even as also the Lord forgave you, so also do ye." Colossians 3:12-13

Thoughtfulness for Others, Not for Self

How is the spirit of opposition and self-exaltation to be overcome? "In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." What a blessed thought! How evidently divine! How could strife or vainglory exist along with it?

When one thinks of self, God would have one to feel our own amazing shortcomings. To have such sweet and heavenly privileges in Christ, to be loved by Him, and yet to make such paltry returns as even our hearts know to be altogether unworthy of Him is our bitter experience as to ourselves.

When we look at another, we can readily feel not only how blessedly Christ is for him and how faithful is His goodness, but love leads us to cover failings, to see and keep before us that which is lovely and of good report in the saints-if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, to think on these things. [13]

Lowliness and Meekness

It is a blessed thing to find zeal, but what can redeem the walk of a Christian which fails in lowliness and meekness? There is a time to be firm and a time to be yielding, but neither gift nor position can justify those who seem to think that in their case the exhortation to meekness and lowliness has no place.

We must take care, on the other hand, that it is not meekness in manner or lowliness in word only, for God looks in us for what is real. Too often, such humility but covers the deepest pride, as love and the spirit of Christ are most talked of where they least exist. Let us beware of this vain show. [12]

Esteeming Others Better Than Ourselves

When a soul that is in any measure spiritual thinks of himself, what he feels is his immense falling short of Christ. He has habitually before him how greatly he fails, even of that which he desires in his ways before God. But when he looks at his brother-Christian, let him be the feeblest possible, and sees him as a beloved one of Christ, in full acceptance in and the object of the Father's tender affections, this draws out both love and self-loathing!

Thus, if grace be at work, what is Christ-like in another saint rises at once before the heart and what is unlike Christ in himself. It is not a question of striving to cultivate high feelings about one's neighbors and to think them what they are not, but really believing what is true about them and feeling rightly about ourselves too. If one thinks of what a saint is in Christ and to Christ and what he will be through Christ, then one's heart takes in the wonder of His love and how much the Lord makes of him, but when the eye is turned to oneself, all the unworthy ways and feelings and shortcomings come up in humiliating remembrance. [9]

The Creation of the World

"By faith we apprehend that the worlds were framed by God's word, so that the things beheld have not derived their being out of things apparent [or, phenomena]." Hebrews 11:3

The Creator of All Things

The first words of God's law told the Jew that the heavens and the earth were but creatures; Israel was to hear, if others were deaf, and bound to own, serve and worship the one God, the Creator. The chosen people was quite as ready as any other to worship the creature, as all their history to the Babylonish captivity proves, but there can be no doubt what the Bible supposed, declared and claimed from its very first verse- God created the universe. [26]

The Denial of Creation

Creation is a great truth, which unbelief never recognized. It seems not to have been denied among men before the Deluge, though of no value or effect because of their growingly vile condition. Scripture implies that idolatry sprang up after that solemn judgment of God.

They were without excuse, because the things made, the very reverse of a development, pointed to the invisible-His everlasting power and divinity. [30]

The All-Creating Word

The Word was not made, but Himself made all. The Word is the Creator of all that has a derived being. He created all. No creature received being apart from Him. The Word was the agent. Had He not been "in the beginning with God," it could not have been in any special way attributed to Him, the eternal Word. But creation is here affirmed as His work, not in a positive way only, but without exception for every creature. [6]

Creation by the Will and Word of God

That all was made out of nothing is what no Christian would say, but that, where nothing existed, God created all things out of His own will and word is just the truth alike simple and profound, and all other hypotheses are as unwise as they are uncalled-for and untrue.

Evolution may not openly deny God, but at best it robs Him of His personal action and concern in the wisdom, power and goodness of His will in every part, and its tendency is manifest to exclude Him altogether in contradiction of His Word, which attests His deep and direct interest in the whole.

God would not have His people ignorant of the origin of all things through His power and goodness and wisdom, having called them into relationship with Himself. [19]

Appendix

The writings of the late William Kelly cover an extensive period. His earliest publications were in the year 1844, when at the age of twenty-three in Guernsey he wrote two or three small tracts on ecclesiastical subjects.

From that date Mr. Kelly labored by word and pen almost without intermission to set forth the doctrines of the Scriptures, as distinguished from the traditions of men with which many had become encrusted since apostolic days. In 1848-1850, he edited The Prospect, a periodical devoted especially to the study of prophecy. In January 1857, he entered upon the editorship of The Bible Treasury, a monthly magazine of papers upon scriptural subjects. This arduous service was maintained without a break for fifty years, until his decease in March 1906. By far the greater part of the contents of this periodical consisted of critical and expository papers prepared by the editor himself. These contributions are of exceptional value on account of the wide scholarship of the author, who, moreover, was well versed in the original tongues of Scripture.

Mr. Kelly was a lucid and impressive speaker as well as a perspicuous and polished writer, and he ministered regularly to audiences in various parts of the country. Many of his lectures and addresses were reported and issued in book or tract form. They obtained a wide circulation in both the Old and New World among the children of God, especially those who love the Scriptures and are eager to learn more of the beauties and wonders of its imperishable truths.

As might be expected in view of the large stream of production extending over so long a period, many of Mr. Kelly's works are now out of print, but a considerable number are still obtainable. Passages have been selected from fifty of his writings, and these extracts, for the convenience of the reader, are collected under a series of subject headings. Each extract is followed by a number, which has reference to the "List of Books and Tracts Quoted," given on pages 206-208. By this means its origin may be traced, and anyone desirous of reading the whole work will be guided to it.

The author's skill as a critic and translator of the Scriptures is well-known in scholarly circles. Many of his expository works are accompanied by a special translation of the portion expounded. Readers of these extracts will therefore be interested in the texts placed at the head of the various sections, which are given in Mr. Kelly's version and are specimens of his style.

Mr. Kelly wrote a few hymns also for use in worship and devotion. Two of these are included in this selection (page 17 and page 162).

In the preparation of these extracts the compiler received great assistance from one who wishes to remain anonymous. Without this extended and efficient aid, the task of selection and arrangement would have proved a very lengthy and laborious one.

W. J. Hocking June 1927

Note:

In the original edition of this book, Mr. Hocking arranged the excerpts into 31 sections. For this edition, we rearranged the excerpts into 52 sections, one for each week of the year, and chose a new title. We have done this to encourage the use of this book as a companion of two similar books, Pilgrim Portions by J. N. Darby and Footprints for Pilgrims by various authors.

Bible Truth Publishers October 1998

Courtesy of BibleTruthPublishers.com. Most likely this text has not been proofread. Any suggestions for spelling or punctuation corrections would be warmly received. Please email them to: BTPmail@bibletruthpublishers.com.

Light for the Pilgrim Path: Selected Passages From the Writings of William Kelly

Table of Contents

The Saviour God and Father

God the Savior of All

The Savior God

God and Father

The Trinity

The Trinity in Unity

Knowledge of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit

The Work of the Trinity

The Person of Christ

Christ the True God

David's Lord

Image of the Invisible God

The Son of His Love

Fellowship With the Father and the Son

The Athanasian Creed

His Perfect Humanity

The Virgin Mary

Firstborn of All Creation

The Accessible Christ

Christ's Humanity

The Atoning Work of Christ

Jesus Forsaken of God

The Work of the Lord Jesus on Earth

Propitiation

Atonement and Reconciliation

The Purification of Sins

The Sufferings of Christ

Sufferings on the Cross

The Sin-Bearer

The Virtue of Christ's Sacrifice

The Resurrection of Christ

The Resurrection of Christ

The Red Sea and the Jordan

A Living Hope

God's Promise in Isaac

Christ, the Glorified One

The Gospel of the Glory

Christ's Glory and Triumph

The Transfiguration

Love and Glory

Blessed by the Greater

After the Order of Melchizedek

Our Great High Priest

Our Great Priest

Christ's Present Work

Christ's Intercession

The Minister of the Sanctuary

Aaron's Rod That Budded

The Sympathy of Christ

The Sympathy of Christ

Christ's Sympathy Not With Sin

Our Advocate

The Holy Spirit

The Comforter

Flesh and Spirit

The Sword of the Spirit

Help to Our Weakness

The Spirit and the Church

The Spirit for Worship

Keeping the Unity of the Spirit

Praying for the Holy Spirit

The Holy Scriptures

Faith in the Bible

The Character of Scripture

Understanding the Bible

The Word of Truth

Searching Scripture

Christ in the New Testament

The Four Gospels

Inspiration

Every Scripture Inspired

Inspired Word and Inspired Thought

The Denial of Inspiration

The Exercise of Prayer

The Expression of Dependence

The Need of Prayer

Prayer With Thanksgiving

Watching Unto Prayer