Jesus is only precious to believers

Jesus is only precious to believers

(James Smith, "Christ Precious!" 1861)

"Unto you therefore who believe — He is precious!" 1 Peter 2:7

Every believer VALUES Christ. Let others think of Him as they may — all who are taught of God, think highly of Him. They can never honor Him as they wish, or enjoy Him to their full satisfaction.

Every believer feels their NEED of him.
No weary traveler ever felt his need of rest,
no hungry laborer ever felt his need of food,
no drowning mariner ever felt his need of a life-boat
 — as the believer has felt his need of Christ!

They need to be saved — and only Christ can save them.
They need to be happy — and only Jesus can make them happy.
They need His blood to cleanse them from sin, and procure their pardon.
They need His righteousness to clothe their souls, and justify them before God.
They need His Spirit to sanctify their nature, and make them fit for Heaven.
They need His intercession to secure them from evil, and procure for them good things.
They need His fullness of grace to supply all their needs, from earth to Heaven.

Every believer discovers the exact SUITABILITY of Christ to them.
He is just what they need — He has all that they need!
They are foolish — and He has wisdom.
They are unrighteous — and He has righteousness.
They are unholy — and He has holiness.
They are weak — and He has strength.
They are in bondage — and He has redemption.
They are lost — and He has salvation.
In a word, they are led to see that God has stored up everything in Jesus — and that possessing Him, they have all things!

Every Christian believes on Him to the saving of the soul. They trust Him to procure their pardon, peace with God, and everlasting life.
Their heart goes out to Him,
they repose confidence in Him,
they commit their souls to Him,
they build on Him — as God's foundation;
they hide in Him — as the sinner's refuge; and
they trust themselves with Him — as the almighty Savior.

"Unto you therefore who believe — He is precious!"

But Jesus is only precious to believers. Others do not feel their need of Him, do not see Hisadaptation to them, and do not depend on Him for pardon, peace with God, and everlasting life.

Beloved, do you have this saving faith — which renders Christ so precious?

If so, admire the sovereign and distinguishing grace of God, which has conferred so great a blessing upon you — for not all are given saving faith.

If so, realize the importance of this faith — which renders Christ so precious. 

It is the eye — which sees the beauty of Christ.
It is the foot — which travels to Christ.
It is the hand — which lays hold of Christ.
It is the mouth — which tastes the sweetness of Christ.
It is the inward principle — which clings and cleaves to Christ.

Avoid therefore whatever weakens faith, or interrupts its exercise; and prize whatever strengthens it, and makes it vigorous!

   ~  ~  ~  ~

My needs — His fullness!

My needs — His fullness!

(James Meikle, May 24, 1757)

All plenitude is in Christ, to answer all the needs of His people. In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead, that out of His fullness, I may receive all spiritual blessings!

Have I destroyed myself by sin?
I have deliverance from Him who is mighty to save from sin and wrath!

Is my life fleeting — and passing away like a shadow? Jesus is the Ancient of days, and endures forevermore!

Are my days short-lived and full of trouble? Jesus is my life, and the joy of my heart!

Am I exposed to contempt? Jesus shall be my crown of glory, and diadem of beauty!

Am I traveling through the wilderness? Jesus is my staff, and on Him I lean all the way!

Am I on my last journey to my long home? Jesus is my leader, and my rewarder!

Am I a sheep? Jesus is my pasture, and my green pasture too!

Am I hungry and thirsty? Jesus is my heavenly manna, and gives me to drink of the water of life!

Am I weary?
Jesus is my rest and refreshing!

Am I weak? Jesus is my strength!

Am I oppressed and wronged? Jesus is my judge and my avenger!

Am I reproached? Jesus will wipe away the reproach of His people!

Am I a soldier? Jesus is my Captain and shield!

Must I fight in the field of battle? Jesus is my armor in the day of war!

Do I sit in darkness? Jesus is my light!

Do I have doubts? Jesus is my counselor!

Am I ignorant? Jesus is my wisdom!

Am I guilty? Jesus is my justification!

Am I filthy?
Jesus is my sanctification!

Am I poor?Jesus is the pearl of great price, and has immeasurable riches laid up for me!

Am I blind?
Jesus, and none but He can open the eyes of one born blind!

Am I naked?
Jesus has white clothing to cover the shame of my nakedness!

Am I in the very utmost necessity?
Jesus is a very present help in time of trouble!

Am I exposed to the hurricanes of adversity? Jesus is . . .
  a refuge from the storm,
  a shelter from the blast,
  rivers of water in a desert,
  the shadow of a great rock in a weary land!

Am I afraid of being left alone? Jesus will never leave me, nor forsake me!

Do friends and brethren prove false? Jesus is the friend who sticks closer than a brother!

Am I in danger from disease and death — or from sin and Satan?
My life is hidden with Christ in God! When He shall appear, I shall appear with Him — immortal in my body, and glorious in my soul!

Is my case considered in the court of Heaven? There Jesus is my Advocate!

Do I offend the Father?Jesus is my Intercessor!

Do I suffer in my body, and am I grieved in my mind?Jesus bore my infirmities, and carried my griefs!

Is my mind disquieted, and my soul debarred from peace?
Jesus is my sympathetic High Priest! He was tempted in all points, and knows how to support those who are tempted!

Am I poor in my circumstances?
Jesus, the heir of all things! Though He was rich, yet for my sake He became poor — that I through His poverty might be made rich!

Do I suffer in my character? Jesus was numbered with transgressors, called a glutton, a drunkard, and a devil!

Am I bereaved or alone? Jesus, my best friend, can never die!

Must I undergo death and be laid in the grave?
Jesus has taken away the sting of death, and robbed the grave of its victory!

Must I rot in the grave? Jesus shall be my resurrection, and raise me to immortality and bliss!

Would I go to God and to glory? Jesus is my way, and must admit me into the palace of the great King, where I shall abide forever!

My needs are many — but His fullness is infinitely more!

The morning dews and fructifying showers water the fields, and refresh the parched furrows. But what are they, compared to the exhaustless ocean of Jesus?

What is all that I enjoy here below, compared to the exuberant fullness of Heavenly bliss? O! then, how shall my soul be replenished — when possessed of this infinite All, through eternity itself!

   ~  ~  ~  ~

The most precious thing in Heaven or earth!

The most precious thing in Heaven or earth!

(John Flavel, "The Fountain of Life" 1671)

"Yes, He is altogether lovely! This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend!" Song of Songs 5:16

In giving Christ to die for poor sinners, God gave the richest jewel in His cabinet! This is a mercy of the greatest worth, and most inestimable value.

Heaven itself is not so valuable and precious as Christ is! Ten thousand thousand worlds, as many worlds as angels can number — would not outweigh Christ's love, excellency and sweetness! O what a lovely One! What an excellent, beautiful, ravishing One — is Christ!

Put the beauty of ten thousand paradises, like the garden of Eden, into one; put all flowers, all pleasing fragrances, all colors, all delicious tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness into one — O what a lovely and excellent thing would that be! And yet it would be less compared to that loveliest and dearest well-beloved Christ — than one drop of rain compared to all the seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths!

Now, for God to bestow this mercy of mercies, the most precious thing in Heaven or earth, upon poor sinners; and, as great, as lovely, as excellent as His Son was — what kind of love is this!

"Yes, He is altogether lovely! This is my Beloved, and this is my Friend!" Song of Songs 5:16

   ~  ~  ~  ~

A canary and a goldfish!

A canary and a goldfish!

(author unknown)

A canary and a goldfish had their allotment together in the same room.

One hot day the master of the house heard the fish complaining of his silent condition, and envying the sweet song of his companion overhead. "Oh, I wish I could sing as sweetly as my friend up there!"

Meanwhile the Canary was eyeing the inhabitant of the globe, "How cool it looks! I wish my lot were there." 

"So then it shall be!" said the master, and forthwith placed the fish in the air — and the bird in the water.

Immediately they saw their folly, and repented of their discontent and grumbling.

The moral of this little fable is this: Let every man be content in the state in which Divine Providence has placed him, and believe that it is what is best fitted for him!

"I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." Philippians 4:11-12

   ~  ~  ~  ~

Where Truth Leads Us

Where Truth Leads Us

By A.W. Tozer


The world is full of seekers, true enough, and they gravitate quite naturally toward the church. Seekers after peace of mind are plentiful enough to keep the printing presses busy; seekers after physical health are always with us in sufficient numbers to make our leading faith healers comfortably rich; seekers after success and safety are legion, as our popular religious leaders know too well. But real seekers after truth are almost as rare as albino deer. And here is why: Truth is a glorious but hard master. It makes moral demands upon us. It claims the sovereign right to control us, to strip us, even to slay us as it chooses. 

Truth will never stoop to be a servant but requires that all men serve it. It never flatters men and never compromises with them. It demands all or nothing and refuses to be used or patronized. It will be all in all or it will withdraw into silence. It was Christ who capitalized truth and revealed that it was not an it at all but a Being with all the attributes of personality. I am the Truth, He said, and followed truth straight to the cross. The truth seeker must follow Him there; and that is the reason few men seek truth.

The Word Became Flesh

The Word Became Flesh

By G. Campbell Morgan


And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us... full of grace and truth. John 1:14

Whatever, in the complexity of present-day thought, may be our view of the method of the advent, it is impossible to deny that nigh two thousand years ago that happened which has absolutely and completely revolutionized human thinking and human life. The student of history is always interested in tracing great streams to their sources. The rise and fall of dynasties, great discoveries, revolutions, all of them are important and interesting, and yet in some senses all these things are related directly or indirectly to the one event described in the mystic language of this text.

In this advent of Jesus there was both a crowning and a comprehension of all that was excellent in the past; and the conception and initiation of all the ideas and movements which are lifting humanity ever nearer to God.

We come to this statement of John the mystic in order to consider what it teaches concerning the fact of the advent, concerning the revelation resulting from that fact, and, finally, concerning the values resulting from the revelation.

In order that we may see the simplicity of the statement, I have omitted the parenthesis. It is important. It states a truth concerning the Person Whom we are to consider from a slightly different standpoint. It lies in the heart of this verse by way of explanation and exposition, and yet it may be omitted without doing any violence to the thought. We consider, then, this simple and sublime statement, "The Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us... full of grace and truth."

The statement of fact which this verse contains can be understood only as we remember that in this prologue of the Gospel of John the verse in which the text occurs is intimately connected by way of declaration with the first verse of the chapter. The intervening verses constitute a parenthesis. Consequently we bring these two verses together in order that we may understand the facts declared in our text. I will read them in intimate connection. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us... full of grace and truth." This is one continuous statement, and the fact that there is a great descent from the first statements to the second demonstrates the wisdom of inserting the parenthesis, for this helps us to see how great is the descent.

While the first and second statements present one complete declaration, they nevertheless constitute a perfect balance. The first three statements must be borne in mind as we consider the second three, for the second three need the first three.

There are three first statements: "In the beginning was the Word"; "the Word was with God"; and "the Word was God." There are three second statements: "The Word became flesh"; "and dwelt, pitched His tent among us"; and "full of grace and truth." Now, if we take these two series and bring them together, not exactly as one continued statement, but part to part, we shall see that the whole declaration tells how infinite and hidden mysteries came into the realm of finite and revealed things. "In the beginning was the Word"... "The Word became flesh." "The Word was with God"... "and pitched His tent among us." "The Word was God"... "full of grace and truth." Let us attempt an examination of these three couplets.

Taking the first half of the first, every phrase defies us. Every word is beyond our comprehension. "In the beginning"! We may at once reverently declare that the thought transcends the possibility of our understanding. It is one of those matchless sweeps of inspiration that go beyond all the thinking of man. "In the beginning." I lay my hand on anything in this world, and I begin to ask questions concerning its origin. I begin to track it through long and tedious processes back to the point of its initiation. No man has ever been able to do this successfully. We have never been able to say the final thing concerning origins by the processes of investigation and discovery, but we are always attempting to find them, and rightly so. Man has more than once formulated a philosophy, has more than once suggested a solution, but as surely as he has done so, within a decade, or quarter of a century, his philosophy has passed away, and his solution is found to be false. This phrase takes us behind all the processes, behind the fact of the initiation of all things material and mental, behind all the things of which man can be conscious, and we bow in the presence of the statement, and reverently declare that it transcends us.

Or if I take the other expression, "the Word," I am equally conscious of disability to comprehend its final meaning. I am personally inclined to think we get to the sublimest meaning as we take the simplest, and remember that a word is an expression. A word is that by which one person expresses his thought to another, so that the other may be able to understand it. A word spoken by one person to another is the revelation of something in the mind of the one that the other did not know, and could know only through that word. A word is a revelation made, a thought communicated. "The Word was in the beginning," a method of manifestation, a method of speech, that in and of God by which He made something of Himself known to those without Himself, apart from Himself, beyond Himself.

You inquire whether the Word was a Person, and I reply, What do you mean by a person? Until you have defined your term "person"--which, by the way, never occurs in Scripture--I cannot answer you. If you tell me that man is a person, I say, Yes, undoubtedly he is; but he is finite. Now, a finite person is an incomplete person, and therefore not a perfect revelation of what a person is. A perfect Person must be infinite also.

This at least is declared, that in the beginning there was an expression of Deity. But that is not helpful to us, for it was beyond our finite comprehension. "The Word became flesh," that is where the help begins. When the infinite Person--and I do not quite know what that means--becomes a finite Person Whom I can understand, I do pass into some new appreciation of the character and the value, and the fact of the infinite that transcends me, "In the beginning was the Word.... And the Word became flesh."

A few words only are necessary concerning the second of these couplets, "And the Word was with God." That which was the method of Divine speech and manifestation was with God, and again I freely confess to you here are terms, finite terms struggling to express infinite meaning, and failing even though they be the words of inspiration. Then I read, "He pitched His tent among men"; and the thing that has baffled me and perplexed me, and overwhelmed me in the realm of Deity, which is beyond my comprehension, becomes something I can look at within the realm of human life: "He tabernacled among men."

And then, finally, when I read in the great introductory word, "the Word was God," both with God, and God; both method of Divine expression, and that which expresses itself, again I am overwhelmed, I cannot understand. Again I feel that I have read a simple sentence that is so full of mystery as absolutely to defy my explanation. Then I read "full of grace and truth," and I have an unveiling of the nature of God, though perhaps no explanation of the method. I have seen One Who is flesh, and pitches His tent by my side in the valleys where I dwell, upon the mountains to which I climb, in the midst of the life I live; and in the life of this One grace and truth flash and flame in glory. I am told that that is God, and I feel, not that I have been able to encompass all the mystery of Deity by revelation, but that I have been taken through a wicket gate, and my eyes are gazing out upon light such as I had never seen. I have at least been able to look through a veil at that which unveiled would have blinded me: "In the beginning was the Word," and I do not understand it. "The Word became flesh," and it has come within the reach of my hand. "The Word was with God," and I cannot comprehend the meaning of the statement, but the Word "tabernacled among us," pitched His tent near us, and I at least may draw near and behold. "And the Word was God," and there is no more in the statement than there was in all the other things that men had said long before. But "full of grace and truth," and here are two essential facts concerning God which will help me. Pass over this ground with me again. "In the beginning was the Word"... "the Word became flesh." What does this signify? Eternity, the ageless age, coming into time; expressing itself in the language of time, manifesting itself in the method of time. "In the beginning was the Word," the utterance of God; not letters, or syllables or words merely; not a literature which I can commence here, and finish presently, but the Word of God. Not only that which fills the whole fact of space so far as I can imagine it; but "the Word became flesh," that is, came to a locality; it came to a place to which I can travel; it came to a place to which coming, I can see.

God's Way of Holiness

God's Way of Holiness

By Horatius Bonar

Table of Contents

› Preface - God's Way of Holiness 1864. by Horatius Bonar, D.D. Preface The way of peace and the way of holiness lie side by side, or rather, they are o ...read

› Chapter 1 - The New Life - It is to a new life that God is calling us; not to some new steps in life, some new habits or ways or motives or prospects, but to a new life. For the ...read

› Chapter 2 - Christ For Us, The Spirit In Us - We noticed, in our last chapter, the difference between the divine and the human sides of Bible truth; we would, in this, advert to another distinctio ...read

› Chapter 3 - The Root And Soil Of Holiness - Every plant must have both soil and root. Without both of these there can be no life, no growth, no fruit. Holiness must have these. The root is "pea ...read

› Chapter 4 - A Strength Against Sin - Men live in sin, and yet they have the secret thought that it ought not to be so, that they ought to get rid of it. Even those that have not the law, ...read

› Chapter 5 - The Cross and Its Power - Before I can live a Christian life, I must be a Christian. Am I such? I ought to know this. Do I know it, and in knowing it, know whose I am and whom ...read

› Chapter 6 - The Saint and the Law - "God imputeth righteousness without works," says the Holy Spirit, speaking through Paul (Rom 4:6); and he who is in possession of this righteousness i ...read

› Chapter 7 - The Saint and the Seventh Chapter of Romans - I do not see how any one with a right insight into the apostle's argument, without a theory to prop up, or with any personal consciousness of spiritua ...read

› Chapter 8 - The True Creed & the True Life - The alphabet of gospel truth is that "Christ died for our sins" (1 Cor 15:3). By this we are saved, obtaining peace with God, and "access...into this ...read

› Chapter 9 - Counsels and Warnings - That which among men so frequently takes the name of holiness is very unlike the Bible reality. Whether used in connection with the hardness of a life ...read