Nov 25
17
“The sinner will never hunger nor thirst after righteousness till the sentence of death gives him an appetite.”
William Huntington
It matters what a man believes about Christ: Who He is, what He has done, and where He is now is absolutely necessary to a man’s hope. If Christ is not God, then He is less than God; anything less than God is not holy. Anything that is not holy,God is not pleased and anything God is not pleased with is under His condemnation. If Christ has not satisfied completely my case before God almighty (placing me in perfect standing with a God who is so holy that He would turn His back on His very Son because my guilty was laid to His account), then I am helpless lost. If He is not at this very moment interceding for me, pleading His own accomplishment in my behalf, then I have no peace with God. If the Son of Man has made you free, you are free -free from the wrath of divine justice, free from the law of God that did reveal my sinful state, and free from strivings of bondage by yokes placed on me that no one has ever been able to bear, Free, oh the glorious sound of One Who has freed me, washed me, clothed me, feeds me, and keeps me because He has always loved Me. That is the God I serve, and His love constrains me and gives me a longing to do more than I am willing or capable of doing all for His glory.
Marvin Stalnaker
Sanctified, Preserved and Called
Jude 1 Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called:
Sanctified
Here we are told that God’s people were sanctified by God the Father before the world began. He writes “to them that are sanctified by God the Father.” Paul tells us that God the Father chose us in electing love in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be “holy and without blame before him,” and “in love” predestinated us to that glorious end(Eph. 1:4-5).
The word “sanctified,” as Jude uses it, does not refer to the internal work of God the Holy Spirit in regeneration, but to the eternal work of God the Father in election. It is a word that may be properly translated, “made holy,” “consecrated,” “purified,” or “hallowed.” If we read it that way, the meaning is that God the Father, looking on his elect in Christ, being one with Christ, made us holy, righteous, and accepted in Christ, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” which is plainly stated in Romans 8:29-30 and Ephesians 1:6. But as it is used in Jude 1, the word, “sanctified,” refers to the electing love of God the Father (Jer. 31:3). Jude is telling us that God the Father, loving us with an everlasting love, set us apart to himself as the objects of his love, approval, and delight from eternity. The Lord Jesus used this word in exactly that way with reference to himself as our Mediator in John 10:36.
No word in the Bible is more delightful, precious, and honouring than this word “elect.” Nothing more sweetly endears our God to us than his electing love. Our Saviour himself wears the title God gives to all who trust him. He is the Elect One of God (Isa. 42:1), and we are the elect ones of God. Let us ever rejoice in God’s electing love, that love by which we were sanctified, set apart from all other creatures and consecrated to our God in his eternal purpose of grace, for the praise of his glory (1 Pet. 2:9; Ex. 19:5). It is from hence that we date all our mercies. It is to this source, the election of grace, and our being given to Christ, and chosen in Christ, that we are“kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5; 2 Thess. 2:13-14).
Preserved
Next, Jude tells us that, as the objects of God’s everlasting love, being sanctified by him in eternal election, we are, always have been, and always shall be“preserved in Jesus Christ.” Who can imagine what blessed things are included in those words? I am sure that we will be discovering their fulness throughout eternity! — “Preserved in Jesus Christ!”
11
We were “preserved in Jesus Christ” before we were called and after being called. We were “preserved in Jesus Christ” in eternity, when he betrothed us to himself, when he received us as the gift of his Father, before the foundation of the world. God’s elect are in a blessed, eternal union of grace with Christ, by which we were secretly preserved in him and beheld as one with him, before we had any being in our father Adam.
Our preservation in Christ did not keep us from falling with the whole human race in Adam, because it was not so intended. Yet, it kept us from eternal ruin through the fall. Indeed, our fall in Adam, according to the purpose of God, was one of the many means by which our heavenly Father ordained that all the blessings and benefits of redemption by Christ would come to us. Though we fell in our father Adam, we were “preserved in Jesus Christ” when we fell. Though we came forth from our mother’s wombs speaking lies, we were “preserved in Jesus Christ” throughout the days of our rebellion. Though we all “had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, and were by nature children of wrath, even as others,” we were “preserved in Jesus Christ” throughout the days of our rebellion. Even after being called from death to life by the power of his omnipotent grace, we are still “preserved in Jesus Christ.” Every day we live, we are more and more debtors to God our Saviour for his infinite grace!
Who can calculate the wonders of this preserving grace? We were preserved in Jesus Christ before we were called to Jesus Christ, preserved in all the stages of life, when called by grace, until grace is finished in glory. Let us daily meditate upon, rejoice in, and be humbled by this unceasing, wonder of God’s infinite grace. Though it is constantly experienced by us, yet little of it is known to us in the experience of it! We must enter eternity and look back over the everlasting hills, through all the path the Lord has brought us, before that we shall have any real sense of and appreciation for the unspeakable blessings contained in these four words, “preserved in Jesus Christ.”
Called
Take in one more great, soul-refreshing drink from this well of salvation. — “And called!” Here Jude is referring to the great, irresistible work of God the Holy Spirit in omnipotent mercy calling us from darkness to light, from bondage to liberty, from death to life to be the sons and daughters of the living God by faith in Christ. The same Almighty Spirit, who in the old creation of nature moved upon the face of the deep, and said, “Let there be light,” is he, who in the new creation of grace, commands the light to shine out of darkness in the hearts of chosen, redeemed sinners to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (Gen. 1:3; 2 Cor. 4:6).
There is a beautiful order in all this. So infinitely blessed and important is this great grace of God the Holy Spirit that until it is performed no child of God can have any apprehension, either of the Father’s electing love in election, or the Son’s accomplished redemption. It is by the work of God the Holy Spirit that we are made “partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world, through lust!’ (2 Pet. 1:4-5).”
Don Fortner
An ounce of heart-knowledge, is worth a ton of head-learning!
(Charles Spurgeon)
“ Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord:” Philippians 3:8
Saving knowledge of Christ will be a personal knowledge. I must know Him experimentally in my own soul.
Saving knowledge of Christ will be an intelligent knowledge. I must know Him, not as I imagine Him to be, but as the Word reveals Him to be. I must know His natures, divine and human. I must know His offices, His attributes and His works. I must meditate upon Him until I am “able to comprehend how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is.”
Saving knowledge of Christ will be an affectionate knowledge of Him. Indeed, if I know Him at all, I must love Him. An ounce of heart-knowledge, is worth a ton of head-learning!
Saving knowledge of Christ will be a satisfying knowledge. When I know my Savior, my mind and heart will be full to the brim-I shall feel that I have that which my spirit pants after. “No one who comes to Me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in Me will ever be thirsty again!”
Saving knowledge of Christ will be an ever-expanding knowledge. The more I know of my Beloved, the more I shall want to know. The higher I climb, the loftier will be the summits which invite my eager footsteps. As I get the more, I shall want the more. Like the miser’s treasure, my gold will make me covet more.
To conclude, saving knowledge of Christ Jesus will be the most blessed knowledge. In fact, it will be so elevating, that sometimes it will completely bear me up above all trials, and doubts and sorrows! And it will, while I enjoy it, lift me above troubles-for it will fling about me the blessedness of the ever-living Saviour, and gird me with the golden belt of His eternal joy.
Come, my soul, sit at Jesus’ feet and learn of Him all this day!
“that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: 18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power!” Ephesians 1:17-19
These two convictions stand as marvellous evidences of saving grace:
an awareness of our heart’s depravity, and
an awareness of our Physician’s infallibility.
The sum of my complaints amounts to this—that I am a sick sinner, diseased in every part.
But if He who is the Infallible Physician has undertaken my case—then I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord.
John Newton
The only real knowledge which we can possess of the truth of God, or of any one branch of that truth, is from a vital, experimental, heartfelt acquaintance with it through the teaching of the Holy Spirit! Men, learned or unlearned, priest or people, may theorise and speculate, may think they see and understand, may reason and argue, preach and prate, talk and write, wisely and well upon this and that point of doctrine, or upon this or that portion of scripture; but unless the sacred truth of God is made known to our hearts by a divine power, and laid hold of by a living faith, we have no true knowledge of, as we have no saving interest in it. How true are those words of the apostle—”And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” (1 Cor. 8:2.)
J.C.Philpot
The truth shall make you free!
“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32
J.C.Philpot
To a spiritual mind, sweet and self-rewarding is the task, if task it can be called, of searching the Word as for hidden treasure. No sweeter, no better employment can engage heart and hands than, in the spirit of prayer and meditation—of separation from the world—of holy fear—of a desire to know the will of God and do it—of humility, simplicity, and godly sincerity—to seek to enter into those heavenly mysteries which are stored up in the Scriptures—and this,not to furnish the head with notions, but to feed the soul with the bread of life.
Truth—received in the love and power of it, informs and establishes the judgment, softens and melts the heart, warms and draws upward the affections, makes and keeps the conscience alive and tender—is the food of faith—is the strength of hope—is the main-spring of love. To know the truth is to be made blessedly free—free from error—free from the vile heresies which everywhere abound—free from presumption—free from self-righteousness—free from the curse and bondage of the law—free from the condemnation of a guilty conscience—free from a slavish fear of the opinion of men—free from the contempt of the world—free from the scorn of worldly professors—free from following a multitude to do evil—free from companionship with those who have a name to live, but are dead. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free!