Apr 22
26
Complete In Christ
“For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power” (Col. 2:9-10).
Christ’s perfect obedience is our righteousness (Phil. 2:7-8).
His sacrifice for sin is our atonement (Heb. 2:17).
His word is our instruction (2Tim. 3:16).
His wisdom is our direction (Col. 2:3).
His power is our protection (1Peter 1:5).
His blood sacrifice is our justification (Rom. 5:9).
His grace is our salvation (Rom. 3:24).
His eternal love is our security (Rom. 8:32-39).
His everlasting mercy is our hope (Lam. 3:22-26; Titus 3:5).
His fullness is our completeness (John 1:16).
His immutability is our strength (Mal. 3:6; Heb. 13:8).
His resurrection is the guarantee of our final glory (Rom. 4:25; Rev. 1:18).
His intercession is the assurance of all our deliverance from sin (1 John 2:1).
Tell me my friend, what could we possibly want for, when all the Godhead is engaged to make the believer complete in the Lord Jesus Christ, to His eternal glory (Rom. 8:29-30; Jude 1:24-25.
~Tom Harding
His Blood Alone!
The vital thing to understand about the blood of Christ is this: IT IS ENOUGH! Nothing else is needed to accomplish the salvation of all for whom His blood was shed. Not His blood plus my works; not His blood plus my “decision;” not His blood plus the ordinances; not His blood plus church membership; not even His blood plus my faith – His blood purchased my faith. His blood alone paid the price required by his justice, and His blood alone can make a sinner clean. “By His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained (not made possible) eternal redemption for us” (Heb. 9:12).
~Don Bell
Satisfaction!
(Philpot, “Daily Words for Zion’s Wayfarers”, 1893)
“I will satisfy her poor with bread.” Psalm 132:15
What a sweetness there is in the word “satisfy!”
The world cannot satisfy the child of God. Have
we not tried, some of us perhaps for many years,
to get some satisfaction from it?
But can wife or husband satisfy us?
Can children or relatives satisfy us?
Can all the world calls good or great, satisfy us?
Can the pleasures of sin satisfy us?
Is there not in all—an aching void? Do we not reap
dissatisfaction and disappointment from everything
that is of the creature, and of the flesh? Do we not
find that there is little else but sorrow to be reaped
from everything in this world? There is little else to
be gathered from the world but . . .
disappointment,
dissatisfaction, and
“vanity and vexation of spirit.”
The poor soul looks round upon the world and the
creature, upon all the occupations, amusements
and relations of life—and finds all one melancholy
harvest; so that all it reaps is sorrow, perplexity,
and dissatisfaction.
Now when a man is brought here, to desire satisfaction,
something to make him happy, something to fill up the
aching void, something to bind up broken bones, bleeding
wounds, and leprous sores—and after he has looked at
everything—at doctrines, opinions, notions, speculations,
forms, rites and ceremonies in religion; at the world with
all its charms, and at self with all its varied workings—and
found nothing but bitterness of spirit, vexation and trouble
in them all, and thus sinks down a miserable wretch; why,
then when the Lord opens up to him something of the bread
of life, he finds a satisfaction in that which he never could
gain from any other quarter.
And that is the reason why the Lord so afflicts His people;
why some carry about with them such weak, suffering
bodies; why some have so many family troubles; why
others are so deeply steeped in poverty; why others have
such rebellious children; and why others are so exercised
with spiritual sorrows, that they scarcely know what will
be the end.
It is all for one purpose—to make them miserable out
of Christ, dissatisfied except with gospel food; to render
them so wretched and uncomfortable—that God alone can
make them happy, and alone can speak consolation to
their troubled minds.
A system of divine and unfailing consolation!
(From Octavius Winslow’s, “The Voice of the Charmer”)
As a system of divine and unfailing consolation,
there is a charm in the gospel of Jesus of
indescribable sweetness. Originating with that
God, not only whose name and whose perfection,
but whose very essence is love, and who Himself
is the “God of all comfort,” it must be a gospel of
“strong consolation,” commensurate with every
conceivable sorrow of his people.
Let a Christian be placed in circumstances
of the deepest grief and sorest trial…
the bread and the water of affliction his food;
the iron entering his soul;
the heart bereaved;
the mind perplexed;
the spirit dark;
all human hopes blighted,
and ‘creature cisterns’ failing him like
a spring in the summer’s drought; then let the
Spirit of God, the Divine Comforter, open this
gospel box of perfume, breathing into his soul….
the rich consolations,
the precious promises,
the strong assurances,
the divine counsels, and
the glowing hopes which it contains,
and in a moment the light of love appears in his
dark cloud, his fainting spirit revives, and all is peace!
Oh! that must be a charming gospel which can
meet the necessities of man at every point;
whose wisdom no human perplexity can baffle,
and whose resources of sympathy and comfort,
no case of suffering or of sorrow can exhaust.
Tried soul! repair to this unfailing spring of comfort!
God speaks to you in it.
It is the unsealing of the heart of Jesus.
It is the still small voice of the Spirit.
It speaks to you. It bids you…. “cast your burden
on the Lord, and he will sustain you;” “Call upon
him in the day of trouble, and he will answer you.”
It assures you that amid all your perplexing cares,
“He cares for you.” It promises you that for your
flint paved path, your “shoes shall be iron and brass;”
and that “as your days are, so shall your strength be.”
It tells you that a “woman may forget her nursing child,
yet God will not forget you;” that in all your assaults,
you shall dwell on high, your place of defence shall
be the munitions of rocks;” and that though hemmed
in on every side by a besieging foe, and all other
supplies cut off, yet “your bread shall be given you,
and your water shall be sure.”
It invites you to lay your griefs and weep out your
sorrows upon the bosom of Jesus, and so “leaning
upon your Beloved, ascend from the wilderness.”
O to be led into the heart felt experience of these truths!
Weaned from feeding on husks and ashes
(J. C. Philpot, “Zion’s Blessings” 1843)
“I will satisfy her poor with bread.” Psalm 132:15
The Lord has given a special promise to Zion’s
poor—”I will satisfy her poor with bread.”
Nothing else? Bread? Is that all?
Yes! That is all God has promised—bread,
the staff of life.
But what does He mean by “bread”?
The Lord Himself explains what bread is. He says,
“I am the Bread of life. He who comes to Me will
never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will
never be thirsty. I am the living Bread who came
down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread,
he will live forever.” John 6:35,51
The bread, then, that God gives to Zion’s poor is
His own dear Son—fed upon by living faith, under
the special operations of the Holy Spirit in the heart.
“I will satisfy her poor with bread.” Psalm 132:15
But must not we have an appetite before we can
feed upon bread? The rich man who feasts continually
upon juicy meat and savoury sauces, would not live upon
bread. To come down to live on such simple food as bread
—why, one must be really hungry to be satisfied with that.
So it is spiritually. A man fed upon ‘mere notions’ and a
number of ‘speculative doctrines’ cannot descend to the
simplicity of the gospel. To feed upon a crucified Christ,
a bleeding Jesus!—he is not sufficiently brought down to
the starving point, to relish such spiritual food as this!
Before, then, he can feed upon this Bread of life he must
be made spiritually poor. And when he is brought to be
nothing but a mass of wretchedness, filth, guilt, and misery
—when he feels his soul sinking under the wrath of God,
and has scarcely a hope to buoy up his poor tottering heart
—when he finds the world embittered to him, and he has no
one object from which he can reap any abiding consolation
—then the Lord is pleased to open up in his conscience,
and bring the sweet savour of the love of His dear Son
into his heart—and he begins to taste gospel bread.
Being weaned from feeding on husks and ashes, and
sick “of the vines of Sodom and the fields of Gomorrah,”
and being brought to relish simple gospel food, he begins
to taste a sweetness in ‘Christ crucified’ which he never
could know—until he was made experimentally poor.
The Lord has promised to satisfy such.
“I will satisfy her poor with bread.” Psalm 132:15
Savory food such as their soul loves
J.C.Philpot
“For My flesh is meat (food) indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” John 6:55
This food is specially for the elect—blood shed for their sins, and for their sins only—righteousness brought in for them, and for them only—love bestowed upon them, and upon them only—promises revealed for their comfort, and for their comfort only—an eternal inheritance reserved in heaven for them, and for them only. The elect are the only people who hunger after it—who have an appetite for it—who have a mouth to feed upon it—who have a stomach to digest it. They are the only people whose eyes are really open to see what “food” is. All others feed upon shadows—they know nothing of the savoury food of the gospel.
“I have food to eat that you don’t know about.” Jesus’ food was—the hidden communications of God’s love—the visitations of His Father’s presence—the divine communion that He enjoyed with His Father. So, for the children of God, there is food in Christ—and this food the Lord gives them a hunger after. He not only sets before their eyes what the food is, but He kindles inexpressible longings in their soul to be fed with it. God’s people cannot feed upon husks—nor upon ashes—nor upon chaff—nor upon the wind—nor upon grapes of gall and the bitter clusters of Gomorrah. They must have real food—savoury food such as their soul loves—that which God Himself communicates, and which His hand alone can bring down and give unto them—so that they may receive it from Him as their soul-satisfying portion.
Wrought with divine power!
(J.C. Philpot, “The Veil Taken Away” 1844)
“Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also . . .
in power,
in the Holy Ghost and
much assurance.”
1 Thessalonians 1:5
Most men’s religion is nothing else but ‘a round of forms’ . . .
some have their ‘doings’,
some have their ‘doctrines’,
and others have their ‘duties’.
And when the one has performed his doings, the other learned his doctrines, and the third discharged his duties—why, he is as good a Christian, he thinks, as anybody. While all the time, the poor deceived creature is thoroughly ignorant of the kingdom of God, which stands not in simply in word, but in power.
But as the veil of ignorance is taken off the heart, we begin to see and feel that there is a power in vital godliness, a reality in the teachings of the Spirit—that religion is not to be put on and put off as a man puts on and off his Sunday clothes.
Where vital godliness is wrought with divine power in a man’s heart, and preached by the Holy Spirit into his conscience it . . .
mingles, daily and often hourly with his thoughts;
entwines itself with his feelings; and
becomes the very food and drink of his soul.
Now when a man comes to this spot: to see and feel what a reality there is in the things of God made manifest in the conscience by the power of the Holy Spirit—it effectually takes him out of dead churches, cuts him off from false ministers, winnows the chaff from the wheat, and brings him into close communion with the broken-hearted family of God.
Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, in the Holy Ghost and much assurance.”
1 Thessalonians 1:5
Come and eat!
(Horatius Bonar, “The Bread of Immortality”)
“I am the bread of life.” John 6:48
“I am the living bread.” John 6:51
All food is for the sustaining of life.
Jesus announces Himself as the bread which will sustain
the life of the soul. Not merely some doctrine–but Himself.
He is the bread; not merely bread–but the bread–the one
true bread; without whom the soul cannot grow, nor its life
be sustained. For only by this life-sustaining bread, can
such sickly souls be nourished. As such, Jesus is necessary
to the soul as its food–its bread.
Outside of Him, there is no nourishment, no sustenance.
He feeds–He alone. He feeds us on Himself! All else is
husks, or mere air and vapour. Jesus, in His glorious person,
is our food–the true bread and sustenance of the soul;
the hidden manna.
Jesus applies various names to it:
“bread from heaven”
“true bread”
“the bread of God”
“bread of life”
“living bread.”
All these are names indicative of its excellence, its power,
its suitableness. It is the very bread we need; no other
would do. Jesus is the soul’s eternal food. This
storehouse is inexhaustible–and ever accessible!
Come as you are, poor prodigal, starving on husks–come
and eat! Eat, O friends! Eat, and live! Eat, and be strong!
Eat, and be in soul health!
He has a numerous and necessitous family!
(Letters of John Newton)
“Let us therefore come boldly unto the Throne of Grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need!” Hebrews 4:16
What a multitude of eyes and hearts wait at the Throne of Grace! He has a numerous and necessitous family — but He is rich enough to supply them all — and His tender compassions extend to the poorest and most unworthy of them! Like the sun — He can cheer and enlighten millions of His poor pensioners at once! He gives to each one as bountifully — as if there were no others to partake of His favor!
His best blessings are not diminished — by being shared among many. The greatest earthly monarch would soon be poor — if he was to give but a pittance to all his subjects. But Jesus has unsearchable, inexhaustible riches of grace to bestow!
The innumerable assembly around the Eternal Throne are all continually supplied from His fullness; and yet there is enough and to spare for His earthly children also — and for all who shall come after us! May He give us an eager appetite — a hunger and thirst that will not be satisfied with anything short of the Bread of Life. We may confidently open our mouths wide — for He has promised to fill them!