No Greater Love Than His - In The Son of His Love--a blog

Our Covenant “Place” In the Father

8/15/2023

Our Covenant “Place” In The Father

I was thinking upon John 14:1-6 this morning and saw a deep connection to Hebrews 10, entering into the Holiest by the Blood of our Perfect Man. This Holiest is the "place" He has prepared for us, He is the Way, the New and Living Way by which we come into the Presence of the Father. No man can come to the Father except through Him. His preparatory work is His High Priestly ministry, first as the One Who offers the Only Acceptable Sacrifice, He Himself Being that Sacrifice, and then His ascension to the Right Hand of the Father, the very Bosom of the Father which is the Holy "Place", as our Eternal High Priest, "where" "He is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God THROUGH HIM, since He EVER LIVES to make intercession for them." (Heb 7:25) That intercession is His Eternal mediation of His Perfect Being on our behalf in the Presence of the Holy Father. This is what Jesus prays for in John 17:24, "Father, I desire that they whom you gave Me (John 6:37-43) MAY BE WITH ME WHERE I AM, that they MAY BEHOLD MY GLORY, which You Have Given Me; FOR YOU LOVED ME BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD." It seems to me that His Glory is the very Love that radiates from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the Father, for all eternity, that Love Being the very Holy Spirit Who ever Proceeds from the Father.(John 15:26) Therefore, the conclusion is that the drawing near is an entering into and being enveloped in, the Very Love of the Father for the Son that is the Eternal Life that is our Inheritance in the Beloved Son. That is the fulfillment of the Abba Cry that the Precious Spirit continually stirs up in our troubled hearts! (Romans 8:14-17; Galatians 4:4-7)

God's Love in us, the only Source of true Brotherly Love

7/2/2023

I John 2:3-6

Remember: John is talking to those who still live in the body of this death. He is talking to his little children that struggle with the high and holy requirements of the life of Christ in them. Sin is not an option, but it is inevitable in their walk in the midst of this fallen world, as it is measured by the righteousness that God requires. Therefore there is a constant appeal to the blood of Jesus Christ to cover our sins. And remember he's not talking to those who are walking in darkness, nor those who say they have no sin, nor those who say they have not sinned. The truth is not in them

Vs 2:3a Hereby we do know that we know stuff about Him. No, no, no. This knowing is the intimate know of which John speaks of in John 17:3 & 1 John 5:20-21. That life that was from the beginning is a relational knowing that we have been brought into by faith, that relational knowing of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that access amd fellowship is only by the blood of our Day of Redemption, our Mercy Seat, our Scape Goat, our propitiatory sacrifice!!!
This Knowing Relationship that is life eternal is the Priority Relationship of our stay on this earth. It is our “operating center” of the new life in the redeemed.
I am not talking about some “higher life” for the super devoted few, I am talking of the normal walk in the Spirit as spoken of throughout the NT.(Rom. 8:1-4; 2 Cor. 5:14-18; Gal. 5:16-25, 6:15)

Vs 2:3b-4 “If we keep His commandments”.
Romans 8:2-4 Remember, what the law could not do, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (without sin) and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the (weakness) of the flesh, but after the Spirit!!! This operation is spoken of in Vs 2 as “The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus!”
Ezekiel 36:25-27 After a dreadful lists of Israel’s sins, the Lord proclaims what He will do “for my Name’s sake” (Vs 23), God says He will give them a new heart and a new spirit within them. “And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you shall keep my judgements and do them”. Jer. 31:21-34
Hebrews 10:15-17 declares in the parallel passage of Jeremiah 31:31-34 that it was the Holy Spirit declaring that covenant, and then the writer proceeds to imply(Vs18-22) that this was the prophecy of THE NEW AND LIVING WAY by which we have continual access to this fellowship with the very Holy Presence of the Most High God!!! All true children of God have the inward law of the Spirit of Life in ‘Christ Jesus operating in them!!
If the Father’s will, our Savior’s commandments, are not our priority, it seems doubtful that the Spirit of Life is in us!!!
But remember to walk in the assurance of 1 John 7, 9, & 2:1-2a!!!

Vs 5 The Love of God perfected in us??? perfected #5048 All word for word translations, ancient and modern, have “perfected”. “To add what is lacking in order to render a thing full”. What is lacking?? Our inadequate ego driven, self centered flesh love, it is sorely lacking!! We desperately need a new “Love Source”.
Rom. 5:1-5 The Justified have a new Love Source, the New Covenant Spirit sheds abroad the Love of God, God’s Love, in our hearts.
Eph. 3:14-21 takes this further. The Spirit’s Love Addition is a growing thing.
Vs 14-16 The Father is the Source. I Jn. 4:19, 2:15, 3:17 Notice from these 2 passages, that the issue is, does this Love of God/Father dwell in us?
Vs 16 The Spirit does the “heart work” in the inner man, the new operating center.
Vs 17 Christ, the embodiment of the Love of God, the root and ground out of which this Love of God grows (Vs 18)

Now notice three things. Firstly, this love is from outside of ourselves. It is the love of God. And secondly this love of God is the very person of Christ, in all of his glorious definition, dwelling in our hearts by faith. And thirdly notice, that our apprehension and comprehension of this indwelling Christ and His love, is to be an ever-increasing understanding. The terminology of verse 17, “being rooted and grounded in love”, demands that we understand that it is a glorious growing thing within us.
The fact that this love is sourced from outside of ourselves requires us to put aside our frail, fickle, and foolish ideas that is human love. It is ever deficient to obey the commandment of Christ to love one another. And that's because our natural love is anchored in ego, in self, in flesh. This Love that John is talking about is from above and is operated in faith by the Holy Spirit within our hearts. This Love that John is talking about, loving our brothers, is the outflow of Christ's love for the Father. This is what Peter is speaking of in 1 Peter 1:17-25 as the Gospel fruit of the Gospel, birthing in us the non-hypocritical love of the brethren.
But this Love may look different from what we have imagined. This is that love which threw over the money changers tables, for they had turned His Father's house into a den of thieves. This is that love for the Father which stated those fearsome words to Peter, “get thee behind me Satan”, because the Father's will and purpose was being questioned. It was that love for the Father that led Him to declare to the gain saying Pharisees and scribes, that they were whitened sepulchers full of dead men's bones, and on another occasion that they were of their father, the Devil. They had continually displayed an utter disregard for that covenant with His Father at Sinai. And this is that same love for the Father that continually led Him to not do His own will but the will of Him that sent Him. This is the love that waited two days for Lazarus after died so that Mary & Martha might learn through their tears that He is the Resurrection and the Life. And finally this is the Love of the Father of which our Jesus speaks at the end of The last supper when he says, “that the world may know that I love the Father, let us go up from here.” And that love led him to the garden, to His arrest, His crucifixion and His resurrection, and praise God, to His exaltation to the right hand of the Father. That is the love that the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts. The ultimate cause of our redemption and new creation is the Son’s Love for the Father and the Father’s delight in His Creator Son. Yes, our Jesus did some warm and fluffy “love stuff” which gets all the press, but that is the Love of Father in Christ Jesus meeting the need of the occasion. Remember, this is the Love first of all of Father & Son by the Spirit and the whole Essence and Glory of God is brought to bear in it’s expression through His people.
Eph. 3:19 And in this knowing the Love of Christ spiritually, beyond some mere mental idea, we are filled with the fulness of God. (See Col. 2:6-10)

Vs 6 Hence that which is lacking is filled up!! This is how we can walk as he walked. This is how we can keep His commandments by the Spirit with our faith eyes on Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

John’s sanctified realism.

6/18/2023

I John 1:6-10 (2:1-2)

Sin is not optional, but it is inevitable as long as we are in the bodies of this flesh.
John is “fleshing out” Paul’s, “the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God.” (Galatians 2:20b)

Keep in mind: John’s purpose in writing is that we may have fellowship with the Father & His Son, Jesus Christ, through faith in the Word of Life Who is the eternal Life of God, Eternally One with the Father.
This God Who Is Eternal Life is Pure Light, not a speck of darkness in Him. The Essence of His Being is blazing Glory which no man can approach unto and survive!!! Exodus 34:12-23 How then can we mere creatures have fellowship with Him?

The structure of Vs 6-10, the negatives and positives:: 6-, 7+, 8-, 9+, 10-.. In Vs 6,8,10 John anticipates the deceptive nature of our flesh to such an incredible offer of fellowship with the Most High God!!
Vs 6 Claiming fellowship with the God Who is Light while continuing as usual, walking in darkness that has no renovation of behavior, is living the lie and not doing the truth! “We LIE and DO not the truth.” Walking in the Light will manifest in a change in behavior. Some more, some less, some faster, some slower, but change nonetheless!
Vs 8 “If we say we HAVE no sin, we are deceived. Note, the TRUTH is not IN us. The gaze of the Spirit of Truth has not fallen on our inner man (Eph. 3;16), the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God hasn’t done His heart surgery. (Heb. 4:12-13)
Luke 18:18-24
Vs 10 “If we say that we have not SINNED”. Note, we make HIM a LIAR, and His Word, His Truth is not in us. Luke 18:10-14
All lies, no truth. Making God a LIAR, “Hath God said”? Gen. 3:1, 4&5; John 8:44
What then is this walking in darkness? I submit that walking in darkness is walking in the original LIE of “self godhood”, out of the operating center of self will.

How then can we walk in the Light?
John 8:12 “Then spake Jesus unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the LIGHT OF LIFE.”
John is laying before us Christ Jesus as the means of having and maintaining this fellowship, this walking with the God Who is Pure Light. (John 1:1-5, 18)

The shadow: Ex. 25:17-22 Communion with God above the Mercy Seat. BUT, it was not constant, and only when God’s cloud paused above the Mercy Seat: Lev. 16:2. Remember the blood? Lev 16:15-16 The Day of Atonement was necessary to restore communion with God by the shedding of the blood of the sacrificed goat.
“The blood of Christ (once shed and sprinkled) is regarded as the truth or realization of all the ancient sprinkling or cleansing which restored the Israelite to his standing or right relation before God.” Smeaton (Hebrews 1:3, 9:14, 10:14-22
Vs 7 Walking in the Light comes from following Jesus in the communion and fellowship that He has with the Father, and in that common faith, with each other. And if and when sin is manifest, we draw on the atoning Blood of Jesus, Grasping it by faith as continually adequate, though offered but once. In the full statement, “the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son”, John takes the Blood offered to a whole new level of adequacy and sufficiency, the very blood of the Only Begotten Son of God!!!
Vs 9 If we confess our sins (and the LIGHT constantly manifests any darkness in us through the ministry of the Word.(Heb. 4:12-14) He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all righteousness. Confession is essential to any relationship. Confession is a heavy blow to “godhood”!! Confession merits nothing, it just humbles us before the Sinless One!!!
Vs 2:1 Do not mistake John’s purpose!!! He is not trying to make us comfortable in our sin!! “I write these things unto you THAT YOU SIN NOT!!! This is not for the darkness lovers (vs 6), nor the deceived (vs 8), nor the sinless liars (vs 10). This is for little children, children staggering under the warfare of flesh and Spirit!! (Gal. 5:17)
“If any man sin, we (Note the “we”, John includes himself) have an ADVOCATE with the Father, JESUS CHRIST THE RIGHTEOUS. Christ’s Righteousness on our behalf is verified by the “location” of His ministry as our advocate, the Right Hand of the Father. Eph. 1:19-21
Advocate: #3875 parakletos One who pleads another’s cause with one, an intercessor. He is our Melchizedek, eternally pleading our case before the Father!!!

Vs 2:2 “And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.” (Jew and Gentile; Rom. 11:32, Gal. 3:22)
Propitiation: #2434 hilasmos The means of appeasing. Usage throughout Greek literature as an appeasing the wrath of the gods. Hebrews 3:10-12; 4:3-4 These passages speak of God’s Wrath at the unbelief of Israel, an evil heart of unbelief. Our Jesus is our propitiation, the One Who, by His sacrifice and blood, Who removed the wrath of God toward us, propitiated God’s Wrath, as required by His Justice and Righteousness. Our Advocate, our Propitiation, is continually in the Presence of our Father for us, and we in Him. No more cloud above the Mercy Seat. Our Mercy Seat, Christ Jesus, is ever before the Father maintaining the way of continual fellowship with the Father and the Son. (Hebrews 4:19-22!!!)
This is the Melchizidek Priesthood of our Jesus described in detail in Hebrews. Feast on this truth!!! “Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come to God by Him, seeing He lives forever to make intercession for them.” Heb 7:25

From fellowship study on John

5/16/2023

I was extremely frustrated last evening in our consideration of John 7. After the glories of John 6 and our Lord's declaration of our Sovereign Triune Gods' will and purpose in the Perfect Body and Blood of our Incarnate Savior, I had desired to see that same being manifested in chapter 7. Instead we were led to see our glorious incarnate God surrounded by, as Ken called it, the messiness of our fallen humanity. We saw Him encounter the messiness of unbelieving family, the messiness of dead religion, the messiness of hypocrites, a nearly total misunderstanding of His Goodness and Purpose, all of it prefaced by His prophecy of betrayal by a friend! (Jn 6:70-71)
I now see, that was the point. We were seeing our Jesus in His perfectly sinless humanity entering into every area of messiness that this world is defined by. We were beholding His “learning obedience by the things that He suffered.”(Heb.5:8) And this was according to the Will of the Father, the One Who sent Him. “It became Him for Whom are all things, and by Whom are all things....to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering.”(Heb. 2:10) He did that, in order that we might in faith, grasp His Union with our affliction, the strength of His perfect humanity in the midst of our helplessness, and that we may experience the mediation and provision of His great High priestly ministry and that we may flee to Him to obtain Mercy, and find Grace to help in our continual time of need.
In the words of an old saint, Octavius Winslow, "this incarnate God is our God. The great truth of the Bible is God manifest in the flesh, the incarnation of the Son of God and the belief of this truth is an essential doctrine of salvation. Claim your relationship to and your possession of this God man. He is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. You have not one human element that did not enter into his humanity. Nothing that was human was foreign to him. (No sin in Him, because sin is Satanic and not a human element according to Creation. It is the horrible aberration of this fallen world.) It is therefore your privilege to claim Him as your Elder Brother and to run to him with all your afflictions of mind, body, and as your Brother born for adversity.(Prov. 17:17) Every perfection of His Being, every element of His Nature, every pulse of His Life, every fiber of His Heart - His every Thought and Affection and Feeling - is ours. Behold the Lamb of God, behold the Man for this God is yours. Christ loves for you to recognize your personal interest in Him, He is honored by your claim of free Grace to all that He is personally and officially. He is a glorified by your continuous coming to the unsearchable riches of His grace, wisdom, and love, and by your making large and unlimited withdrawals from their inexhaustible fullness. " All things are yours and you are Christ and Christ is God's." (1 Cor. 3:21, 23)"
No matter the mess your in, the betrayal you feel, the judgement and misunderstanding surrounding you, come rest in your Jesus, bathe in the cleansing blood of His walking through the ultimate mess of this world without sin, being assured that “All that the Father gives to Me shall come to Me; and he that comes to me, I will not cast out.

Lord of Heaven and Earth

3/23/2023

Lord of Heaven and Earth
Genesis 14:18-22 The introduction of Melchizedek King of Salem, the priest of The Most High Good. Vs 19 He blessed Abraham, the receiver of the Promise as, “Blessed be Abram OF THE MOST HIGH GOD, POSSESSOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. BLESSED BE THE MOST HIGH GOD.”

This is the “shadowy” introduction to our Great High Priest, the Heavenly Eternal Melchizedek, the Eternal Son of God Most High, the One by Whom God Most High created the worlds, the Only One Who could restore the Work of God’s Hands to the place of bringing Pleasure unto Him. (Heb. 1:2, 10-12, 2:5-10; Rev.4:11) .

The Levitical priests “were ordained for men in things pertaining to God that they may offer gifts and sacrifices to God”, this to maintain communication with the God of Heaven and earth, to be led and fed and protected in this world that was no longer in subjection to man.(Heb. 2:6-8)

In Rev. 4:11, the worshipful summation of John’s visionary visit to “throne room” of the Most High God, we read, “Thou art worthy O Lord, to receive Glory and Honor and Power: for Thou hast created all things, AND FOR THY PLEASURE THEY ARE AND WERE CREATED.” This God is surrounded in John’s vision with Glorious Emblems of Covenant, Promise, and Purity.

That Personal Pleasure for which God wrought His creation of all things is no capricious fancy. It flows out of His Eternal Will and Purpose to manifest His Glorious Goodness. It takes on a “benevolent” meaning in Ephesians 1:5,9. Here we find our God adopting children to Himself by Jesus Christ, “according to the GOOD PLEASURE OF HIS WILL.” And in Vs 9, “He has made known unto us the mystery of His Will, according to HIS GOOD PLEASURE which He purposed in Himself.”

We conclude that all things, all of creation, all the earth, including the descriptive choir of Revelation 5:13-14 were and are created to bring Eternal Pleasure to the Most High God. His Will and Purpose as revealed in Ephesians to adopt a Family for His Name (Eph. 3:14-15) is an integral part of His Creative Purpose and must not be separated from the earthly scope of His Pleasure in Rev. 4:11.

Uniting this truth of God’s Pleasure in all of His Creation with Hebrews 1&2, this Creating Purpose takes on a “covenant tone”. This is the book of our High Priest, the Eternal Melchizedek, the Priest of the Covenant of Grace, Peace and Rest. Note that He is introduced as, “by Whom also He made the worlds.” Just as the Levitical priests were ordained for men in things “pertaining to God”, our Great High Priest is introduced as the Creator of the worlds, implying that all of Creation “pertains”, belongs to God and His creative purpose for His Glory and therefore must have the ministry of the Eternal Melchizedek to “offer gifts and sacrifices” to restore it to that purpose of Glory!!!

Chapter 1 proceeds to introduce the Son’s Eternity against the backdrop of this fallen creation. 1:10 speaks of His laying the foundation of the earth and declaring the heavens as the “works of His Hands”. 1:11 says, “they shall perish”, necessitated by the ungodly lust of man for his own glory, robbing God of His Pleasure. “They shall wax old as a garment. Vs 12 And as a garment, you will fold them up”. But notice a wonderful phrase, “BUT THEY SHALL BE CHANGED”. This necessity for change for this earth is placed over against it’s Eternal Changeless Creator: “But Thou are the same, and Thy years fail not.” For God’s Good Pleasure, a change must occur to this earth and everything in it, and the Changeless Creator is the only one adequate to bring that about.

Our needy prayers, our opportunity to behold the Glory of God

2/24/2023

Walking in the Light of our Lord Jesus Christ in a fallen world. 1 John 1

1/24/2023

In the first chapter of his first epistle, John gives us a "Hands-On" introduction to our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ, His purpose and work. The humanity of his Jesus is clearly declared in the verbs that he uses (heard, seen, looked upon, handled) to describe the Apostolic encounter and relationship with the One who was from the beginning.
In verse 2, this One Who Is the Word of Life, he declares plainly to be the Eternal Life that was with the Father. In these two verses we have a most personal and intimate encounter with the God/Man Who Is the Sent One from the Father. (See John 5:22-24, 6:29)
Verse three lays out John's reason for giving us this introduction to his Beloved Lord. It is that we may have fellowship with the Apostles in a spiritually Hands-On way in order that we may have a spiritually Hands-On fellowship/relationship with the Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. This is in keeping with John's record of our Lord's High Priestly prayer in John 17:20 where our Jesus prays for "them also which shall believe on Me through their (the Apostles) word." The power of the Gospel is in this historic Apostolic Witness, the Witness that we are called to spiritually encounter. They did not speak of some myth!!
It is intriguing that while John presents Jesus as the Eternal Life that is with the Father from the beginning, his focus is not primarily our eternal life in him. I believe that's to be understood in his words, but he seems to be emphasizing that our life in Christ is first of all to be one of fellowship with the Father and His Son. There is no indication of a "get out of hell free card" salvation in John's thinking. This Eternal Life, this life in Christ Jesus, brings us into fellowship with the Most High God, and this is no mere nodding acquaintance of which he speaks..
I have heard the cutesy description of fellowship as two fellows in one ship. That is dreadfully inadequate in John's context. The only validity to such a trite example might be seen if we see Christ Jesus as our Ark and us floundering, drowning, trying to walk on water, and His mighty right hand drawing us to the safety of the Ark. Or perhaps we being in Christ Jesus and the waves of this world and the storms and lightning of our flesh threaten to sink us, and again our sweet Jesus calls our, “Peace be still”, and all is at rest.
It is in this intimate, continual fellowship with our Savior who is Eternal Life, our Ark of Safety, that we find true Joy and that to the fullest.

Next time: the believers walk in fellowship with his Lord through this defiled and fallen world. 1 John 1:5-2:2

Christ our Daily Food John 4:32-34

1/12/2023

The food, the spiritual nourishment of our Lord of which He speaks, that which exceeded His natural hunger, was His delight to do His Father's Will (Ps. 40:6-8). And He is the Embodiment of the Father's Will and Testament (Eph. 1:3-10), the Father's Word made flesh (John 1:14), that Prophet of which Moses spoke (Deut. 18:15-19; John 6:14, 7:40), not given from Sinai, but from Heaven, His Father's Throne(Isa 66:1).
Our Jesus declares himself to be our necessary food.(John 6:27, 47-58) He is speaking of the necessary food that is the essential nourishment of Eternal Life! His body and blood is so vital, that in verse 53 He says, " I say unto you except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, you have no life in you."
The physical elements of His commanded feast (Mt. 26:28; 1 Cor. 11:25) are to draw us to the continual reminder of the spiritual meal that we must feast upon, His Perfect Body and Blood, prepared by the Father(Hebrews 10:5) that ALONE can sustain the Eternal Life freely given us upon belief in the Sent One, our Jesus(John 6:29). He is our Righteous Man, the One the Father requires, that wasn’t to be found throughout the Old Covenant (Isa. 59:16, 63:5, Ezek. 22:30). Our Jesus ALONE could Do and Possess the Righteousness that is ALONE the Delight of God (Ps.40:6-8) and Pleasure of the Father.(Mt. 3:16-17, 17:1-5) He is all that we could not be and has done all that we could not do!!! And on top of that, He has paid the penalty required by the just Righteousness of God for all that we could not be or do (2 Cor. 5:21)
By faith alone, we must feast upon the Lamb of God, our Passover Lamb, who ALONE provides the two-fold benefit that we must have. He has kept the death angel from our door,(Heb. 2:14-15) and He is our needed food for the treacherous journey through the wilderness of this fallen world(Gal.2:20). He ALONE can sustain us unto the Glorious inheritance(Eph. 1:17-21) of the Eternal Promised Land, of which Peter speaks of in 2 Peter 3:11-13, a new Heaven and a new Earth where Righteousness dwells. And that Righteousness which dwells there is the very Presence of our Righteous Loving Father and His Beloved Son by the Power and Love of His Glorious Spirit.
But Wonder of wonders, by faith alone, we have access into that Glorious Holy of Holies right now. Hebrews chapter 10 presents to us the incredible truth that we are called to enter into the Holiest by the Blood of Jesus even now, by a New and Living Way which Jesus has consecrated for us through the veil that is to say His Flesh, (that is body the Father prepared for Him Vs 10:5), and having a High Priest(Heb. 7:24-25) over the House of God (Heb. 3:5, that is, all who have come to God through Him,) let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
And how do we feast continually upon this necessary food? Our Lord hasn't left us guessing, for he says in John 6: 35, " and Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that comes to Me shall never hunger and he that believes in Me shall never thirst." Coming and believing is but the response of faith, faith alone that believes that this God/Man Christ Jesus was sent by God His Father as the Righteousness of God that ALONE satisfies the Father's Will in Heaven and upon the Earth. As a dear old saint once said, "Join anything of your own to Christ and you un-Christ him. God will look at nothing but Christ, and you must look at nothing else. He is the Savior, and there is none beside him. Look anywhere else and you are undone, and that eternally."

The Table of Joy and Thanksgiving

1/6/2023

The Lord did not leave it to the apostles to institute the Lord's supper after His departure. He rather regarded it as so important that by his own authority, while yet present, He instituted it in the most solemn manner on the night of His betrayal, immediately before going out to the garden. The bread and wine selected as emblems of His body and blood, were designed to impress upon His disciples (& us) with the persuasion, #1 that His body was the true Paschal sacrifice; #2 that His blood was the true sacrificial blood by which the New Covenant was constituted, more perfect by far than the Covenant at Sinai. The elements were signs of a reality, pledges in hand, that as surely as they took the sign into their hands, they by faith received the thing that was signified; for they were seals and pledges as well as signs.
The Covenant is founded simply on the bloodshed of One for many for the remission of sins, without any other element, whether in the form of supposed merit, or moral improvement, or services performed as the procuring cause. The cup of Thanksgiving was thus the evidence of our participation by faith in the blood of Christ and the bread that participation by faith in the body of Christ, as our only acceptance before God. The sacrament of the supper loudly proclaims this great truth to all time, and all ages must hear it. Till the Lord come, His atoning death must be proclaimed with festive Joy at this supper, as often as it is deemed proper to celebrate it. Of how great importance must that truth be which Jesus so vividly portrayed, and the perpetual memory of which He has so carefully secured! This shows what a supreme place belongs to His atoning sacrifice. It is the principal thing of the Gospel; nay, it is the Gospel. Take it out of the Gospel and it ceases to be the Gospel.

George Smeaton, from The Doctrine of the Atonement According to the Apostles.

Christ our Righteousness

12/20/2022

The God-man, Christ Jesus, united a sinless humanity to Himself, that by entering into every part of our obligation as creatures and sinners to the law of God, He might bring in an everlasting righteousness. Until the law received its satisfaction in this two-fold respect, that is by obedience to its requirements and penalty for breaching its commands, the Supreme Judge could take no one into His Favor. The humanity Christ wore was made by Him an instrument which He used for the great purpose of bringing in the Righteousness of God or, to put the matter in a personal and concrete form, Christ Himself is the Righteousness of God. The Son of God made flesh, obedient in life and death, is our righteousness before God. The entrance of Christ’s sinless humanity with the law in His Heart became the central point of all time, to which previous ages look forward, and after ages look back.

George Smeaton: Christ’s Atonement According to the Apostles