Justification and Glory

‘Whom he justified, them he also glorified.’ Romans 8:30

Suggested Further Reading: Revelation 21:22–22:5

If I might very hastily divide this glory into its constituent elements, I think I should say it means perfect rest. ‘There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God;’ life in its fullest sense; life with emphasis; eternal life; nearness to God; closeness to the divine heart; a sense of his love shed abroad in all its fulness; likeness to Christ; fulness of communion with him; abundance of the Spirit of God, being filled with all the fulness of God; an excess of joy; a perpetual influx of delight; perfection of holiness; no stain nor thought of sin; perfect submission to the divine will; a delight and acquiescence in, and conformity to that will; absorption as it were into God, the creature still the creature, but filled with the Creator to the brim; serenity caused by a sense of safety; continuance of heavenly service; an intense satisfaction in serving God day and night; bliss in the society of perfect spirits and glorified angels; delight in the retrospect of the past, delight in the enjoyment of the present, and in the prospect of the future; something ever new and evermore the same; a delightful variety of satisfaction, and a heavenly sameness of delight; clear knowledge; absence of all clouds; ripeness of understanding; excellence of judgment; and, above all, an intense vigour of heart, and the whole of the heart set upon him whom our eye shall see to be altogether lovely! I have looked at the crests of a few of the waves as I see them breaking over the sea of immortality. I have tried to give you the names of a few of the peaks of the long alpine range of glory. But where are my words, and where are my thoughts? ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.’

For meditation: We cannot comprehend the glory of our Christian inheritance (1 Corinthians 13:12; 1 John 3:2), which is the opposite of what we deserve as those who ‘have sinned, and come short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). Are you ‘justified by faith’ in the Lord Jesus Christ and able to ‘rejoice in hope of the glory of God’ (Romans 5:1–2)?

~ C.H. Spurgeon

Source:

Sermon no. 627
30 April (1865)

Lord I Need You

It Is Because I Am a Christian…

 …holiness is not something we are called upon to do in order that we may become something; it is something we are to do because of what we already are…. I am not to live a good and holy life in order that I may become a Christian; I am to live the holy life because  I am a Christian. I am not to live this holy life in order that I may enter heaven; it is because I know I am going to enter heaven that I must live this holy life.

That is the emphasis here-‘Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure.’ I am not to strive and sweat and pray in order that at the end I may enter into heaven. No; I start rather from the standpoint that I have been made a child of God by the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. I am destined for heaven; I have an assurance that I have been called to go there and that God is going to take me there, and it is because I know this that I am preparing now. I must never regard that as contingent and uncertain in order that I may make it certain. It is exactly the other way round: it is because I know I am going to meet God that I must prepare to meet Him. ~Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Life in Christ, Vol. 3, Children of God, Studies in 1 John, pg. 41-42

The Path of the Scissors

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Forever

John 17:24

Divine Sovereignty

“Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” Matthew 20:15

Suggested Further Reading: Luke 19:11-27

There is no attribute of God more comforting to his children than the doctrine of divine sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe troubles, they believe that sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that sovereignty overrules them, and that sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children of God should more earnestly contend than the dominion of their Master over all creation—the Kingship of God over all the works of his own hands—the throne of God, and his right to sit upon that throne. On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by unbelievers, no truth which they have kicked about so much, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow him to be in his treasury to dispense his alms and bestow his bounties. They will allow him to sustain the earth and bear up its pillars, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends his throne, his creatures then gnash their teeth; and when we proclaim an enthroned God, and his right to do as he wills with his own, to dispose of his creatures as he thinks well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are ridiculed, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on his throne is not the God they love. They love him anywhere better than they do when he sits with his sceptre in his hand and his crown upon his head.

For meditation: Do you have to think twice before addressing Jesus as Lord? Judas Iscariot could never bring himself to do it—the other disciples could say “Lord” (Matthew 26:22); Judas could only say “Rabbi/Master/Teacher” (Matthew 26:25,49).

C.H. Spurgeon

Source

Sermon no. 77
4 May (1856)

We All Bow Down

Children of God

I do feel that perhaps this is the greatest weakness of all in the Christian Church, that we fail to realise what we are, or who we are…the central thing is to realise what the Christian is. We grumble and complain, and it is all due to the fact that we have not really seen ourselves in terms of this picture. Surely, as we read these words, we must, of necessity be humbled, indeed in a sense humiliated, as we realise the inadequacy of our ideas and the unworthiness of our view of ourselves as Christian pepole.

Or let me put it to you like this: is it not the honest truth that most of the unhappiness that we experience in this life is due to our failure to realise this truth? We are full of complaints and unhappiness. They arise partly from our own faults, partly from what others do to us or from what the world as a whole does to us. But all our unhappiness is ultimately to be traced back to this, that we are looking at the things that are happening to us, instead of looking at the vision that is held before us. It is because we do not see ourselves as the children of God and going through this life and world in the way that this text indicates; that is why our unhappiness tends to get us down. We do not relate it to the whole; we do not put it in its context; we live too much with the things that are immediately in front of us instead of putting everything into the context of our standing and of our destiny. ~Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Life in Christ, Vol. 3, Children of God, Studies in 1 John, pg. 23-24

I will Uphold You with My Righteous Right Hand

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Above All

Psalm 126:3

Mortify Therefore your Members which are Upon the Earth

There is None Like You