Saturday, January 12, 2013
Christ is Precious
By Octavius Winslow (1808-1878)
Unto you therefore which believe he
is precious. - 1Peter 2:7
In the hour of adversity, of trial, of
sorrow, oh, how precious is Christ in the experience of the believer!
It would seem, beloved, as though we had never really known Him until
then. Certainly, we never knew from experience that there was so much
that was human, tender, and compassionate in His heart until sorrow
touched our own. We had no conception what a fount of sympathy was
there. A new bend in your path, a new epoch in your history, or a new
stage in your journey, has frosted with the snowflake and swept with
the storm-blast of winter the entire landscape of life: fortune
gone—friends removed—health failing—poverty threatening—want
pressing, oh, how dreary and lonely seems the path you tread. But
pause—it is not all winter! Jesus approaches! He unveils a bosom
once pierced, shows a heart once sad, and drawing you within its
blest pavilion, hides you from the wind and covers you from the
tempest. You never thought Jesus had a heart of such exquisite
tenderness until now…The creature has left a blank, but Christ has
come and filled it. Reverse has made you poor, but the treasures of
divine love have enriched you. In the Lord Jesus, you have more than
found the loved one you have lost; and if in the world you have
encountered tribulation, in Him you have found peace. O sweet sorrow!
O sacred grief that enthrones and enshrines my Savior more
preeminently and deeply in my soul!
There is a supremacy in the feeling of
Christ’s preciousness to the believer, which is worthy of a remark.
Christ has the preeminence in the affection of the regenerate. “Whom
have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire
beside thee” (Psa 73:25). Listen to His own words, asserting His
claim to a single and supreme affection: “He that loveth father or
mother”—brother or sister, wife, or children—“more than me is
not worthy of me” (Mat 10:37). There are natural ties of
affection—the parental, the conjugal, the filial; there are ties,
too, of human love and friendship, linking heart to heart; but not
one word does He Who inspired those affections, Who formed those
ties, breathe, denying their existence or forbidding their exercise.
Nay, the religion He came to inculcate distinctly recognizes these
human relations, and seeks to strengthen and intensify by purifying,
elevating, and immortalizing them. But mark the emphatic word
employed by Christ: “more than me”!…In a word, Christ should
become more supreme and precious to our hearts by all the sweet,
sacred relations and affections of life…
Receive as precious everything that
flows from the government of Jesus. A precious Christ can give you
nothing but what is precious. Welcome the rebuke—it may be
humiliating; welcome the trial—it may be painful; welcome the
lesson—it may be difficult; welcome the cup—it may be bitter;
welcome everything that comes from Christ in your individual history.
Everything is costly, salutary, and precious that Jesus sends…The
most severe disciplinary dispensations in the government of Christ
are as much the fruit of His eternal, redeeming love as was the
tenderest and most touching expression of that love uttered from the
cross. All is precious, wise, and salutary in the dealings of Christ.
His teachings, His woundings, His withholdings, His withdrawings, His
slayings, His changed countenance, His altered tones—when, in a
word, His uplifted hand lights heavily upon us, smiting us seven times, even then, oh, how
precious should Christ be to the believing soul! Then it is we learn
by experience what a balsam exudes from His pierced heart for the
very wound His own hand inflicted!...Oh, precious Christ! So divine,
so all-sufficient, so indescribably precious, may we not welcome with
thankfulness and receive with submission all that Thou dost send…
But there is approaching a period—ah,
how it speeds!—which will be the most solemn and severe, yet the
sweetest and truest test of the sustaining, soothing power of
Christ’s preciousness in the experience of His saints: the last
sickness and the closing scene of life. Imagine that moment to have
arrived. All of earth’s attraction ceases, all of creature-succor
fails. Everything is failing: heart and strength failing—mental
power failing—medical skill failing—human affection and sympathy
failing; the film of death is on the eye, and the invisible realities
of the spirit-world are unveiling to the mental view. Bending over
you, the loved one who has accompanied you to the margin of the cold
river asks a sign. You are too weak to conceive a thought, too low to
breathe a word, too absorbed to bestow a responsive glance. You
cannot now [affirm] your faith in an elaborate creed, and you have no
profound experience, ecstatic emotions, or heavenly visions to
describe. One brief, but all-emphatic, all-expressive sentence
embodies the amount of all that you now know, believe, and feel; it
is the profession of your faith, the sum of your experience, the ground of
your hope: “CHRIST IS PRECIOUS TO MY SOUL.” Enough! The dying
Christian can give, and the inquiring friend can wish no more.
Dearest Savior, be Thou close to me in that solemn moment! Tread the
valley by my side, pillow my languid head upon Thy bosom, speak these
words of heart-cheer to my struggling, panting, departing soul: “Fear
not: for I am with thee” (Isa 43:5). Then, it will be happiness for
me to die—death will have no venom—the grave no gloom—eternity
no dread; and, from the measured experience of Thy preciousness on
earth, I shall pass in triumph through the shadowy portal into the
full sunshine and perfect realization and eternal enjoyment of all
that faith believed, love desired, and hope expected of Thy
full-orbed glory and preciousness in heaven.
www.moutzion.org, From “The Preciousness of Christ”
in The Precious Things of God, Soli Deo Gloria, a division of
Reformation Heritage Books, www.heritagebooks.org.
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1 comment:
Not one day is by mistake or whatever it may bring. May He be praised for each day and being Lord of it and of me!!!
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