Be persuaded that no heart plague can be cured unless you are convinced of your place within the covenant of Grace. It is absolutely essential that you apprehend the Grace mediated to you in the Blood and Righteousness of Christ. (Romans 5:17, 21) The law-the covenant of works-gives you no promise & holds no prospect of help or grace. It requires an absolutely perfect spotless obedience, a pure spotless, unplagued, undiseased heart, and does so under an an awful penalty if its demand is refused, offering no help whatever to enable you to meet that demand. It leaves you cut off from the divine blessing, shut out from divine help, a prey to Satan. When he finds you in this forlorn estate, the covenant of works makes no attempt to frighten him away when he seizes on you as his prey and works in you as a child of disobedience. By this covenant, you have no advocate, no deliverer, no captain of salvation, no destroyer of the works of the devil, no shield, no fortress, no high tower nor shadow of protection. And worse, the strength of sin is the law. It strengthens and confirms your heart plague.
Under this covenant, you have no aid provided to you, no encouragement, no hope in the struggle with sin. While under its bonds, in unbelief, your heart plague is hopeless, incurable. It will finally and surely cut you off. It is solely in the covenant of grace that all hope is to be found. What an abundance of hope, encouragement, and aid it provides. It removes your condemnation, delivering you from the curse of the law and the wrath to come. It delivers you with divine authority from the standing of a criminal and from the treatment due to such. It throws open the doors of your prison and brings you forth into the sweet light of day, into eternal freedom. It says to the prisoners, "Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves". It makes express promises of help to you in your efforts against sin. It says with Divine Authority, "Sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law but under grace. "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts, I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, I am the Lord that sanctify them."
Under this covenant, you have no aid provided to you, no encouragement, no hope in the struggle with sin. While under its bonds, in unbelief, your heart plague is hopeless, incurable. It will finally and surely cut you off. It is solely in the covenant of grace that all hope is to be found. What an abundance of hope, encouragement, and aid it provides. It removes your condemnation, delivering you from the curse of the law and the wrath to come. It delivers you with divine authority from the standing of a criminal and from the treatment due to such. It throws open the doors of your prison and brings you forth into the sweet light of day, into eternal freedom. It says to the prisoners, "Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves". It makes express promises of help to you in your efforts against sin. It says with Divine Authority, "Sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law but under grace. "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts, I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, I am the Lord that sanctify them."
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