Morning, September 25
“Just, and the justifier of him which believeth.”
Romans 3:26
Charles Spurgeon
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Conscience accuses no longer. Judgment now decides for the sinner instead of against him. Memory looks back upon past sins, with deep sorrow for the sin, but yet with no dread of any penalty to come; for Christ has paid the debt of his people to the last jot and tittle, and received the divine receipt; and unless God can be so unjust as to demand double payment for one debt, no soul for whom Jesus died as a substitute can ever be cast into hell. It seems to be one of the very principles of our enlightened nature to believe that God is just; we feel that it must be so, and this gives us our terror at first; but is it not marvellous that this very same belief that God is just, becomes afterwards the pillar of our confidence and peace! If God be just, I, a sinner, alone and without a substitute, must be punished; but Jesus stands in my stead and is punished for me; and now, if God be just, I, a sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished. God must change his nature before one soul, for whom Jesus was a substitute, can ever by any possibility suffer the lash of the law. Therefore, Jesus having taken the place of the believer—having rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that his people ought to have suffered as the result of sin, the believer can shout with glorious triumph, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Not God, for he hath justified; not Christ, for he hath died, “yea rather hath risen again.” My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, he is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what he has done, and in what he is now doing for me. On the lion of justice the fair maid of hope rides like a queen.
Amazing Grace-366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions
September 25
FADE, FADE, EACH EARTHLY JOY
Jane C. Bonar, 1821–1884
Love the Lord, all His saints! The Lord preserves the faithful, but the proud He pays back in full. Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord. (Psalm 31:23, 24)
Each of us was created for the purpose of enjoying the fellowship of Almighty God. Our souls were made for eternity, not for this brief earthly pilgrimage alone. The Christian life should be lived each day as though we were already enjoying the blessings of heaven. We deprive ourselves of one of life’s greatest treasures when we lose this perspective and become bogged down with the trivialities of earthly living.
An intimate fellowship with our Lord should produce at least three basic differences in our living:
• More humility—a greater realization of our finiteness and the need for dependence upon God.
• More happiness—a realization that this life has purpose and dignity as we represent God. And then a promised eternity in heaven with our Lord.
• More holiness—a greater desire to be a worthy representative for God and to live a life of absolute purity.
The author of this lovely devotional hymn text, Jane C. Bonar, was the wife of Dr. Horatius Bonar, generally regarded as the greatest of evangelical Scottish preachers and hymn writers. Jane, too, was a very gifted writer and Christian leader. For more than 40 years the Bonars shared life’s sorrows and joys together in a rich ministry for God. These devotional thoughts are still the sentiments of every spiritually mature follower of Christ:
Fade, fade, each earthly joy—Jesus is mine; break, ev’ry tender tie—Jesus is mine. Dark is the wilderness; earth has no resting place; Jesus alone can bless—Jesus is mine.
Tempt not my soul away—Jesus is mine; here would I ever stay—Jesus is mine. Perishing things of clay, born but for one brief day, pass from my heart away—Jesus is mine.
Farewell, ye dreams of night—Jesus is mine; lost in this dawning bright—Jesus is mine. All that my soul has tried left but a dismal void; Jesus has satisfied—Jesus is mine.
Farewell, mortality—Jesus is mine; welcome, eternity—Jesus is mine, welcome, O loved and blest, welcome, sweet scenes of rest; welcome, my Savior’s breast—Jesus is mine.
For Today: Psalm 16:8, 11; 37:4, 23; 40:8; Proverbs 11:20; Colossians 3:2
Allow the awareness of God’s presence to produce in your life more HUMILITY, HAPPINESS, and HOLINESS as you seek to represent Him.
Evening, September 25
“Who of God is made unto us wisdom.”
1 Corinthians 1:30
Charles Spurgeon
Man’s intellect seeks after rest, and by nature seeks it apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Men of education are apt, even when converted, to look upon the simplicities of the cross of Christ with an eye too little reverent and loving. They are snared in the old net in which the Grecians were taken, and have a hankering to mix philosophy with revelation. The temptation with a man of refined thought and high education is to depart from the simple truth of Christ crucified, and to invent, as the term is, a more intellectual doctrine. This led the early Christian churches into Gnosticism, and bewitched them with all sorts of heresies. This is the root of Neology, and the other fine things which in days gone by were so fashionable in Germany, and are now so ensnaring to certain classes of divines. Whoever you are, good reader, and whatever your education may be, if you be the Lord’s, be assured you will find no rest in philosophizing divinity. You may receive this dogma of one great thinker, or that dream of another profound reasoner, but what the chaff is to the wheat, that will these be to the pure word of God. All that reason, when best guided, can find out is but the A B C of truth, and even that lacks certainty, while in Christ Jesus there is treasured up all the fulness of wisdom and knowledge. All attempts on the part of Christians to be content with systems such as Unitarian and Broad-church thinkers would approve of, must fail; true heirs of heaven must come back to the grandly simple reality which makes the ploughboy’s eye flash with joy, and gladens the pious pauper’s heart—“Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” Jesus satisfies the most elevated intellect when he is believingly received, but apart from him the mind of the regenerate discovers no rest. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” “A good understanding have all they that do his commandments.”
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