ANOTHER “year of grace” has sped its course, and is numbered with the past nineteen hundred and more since there was born in the little town of Bethlehem “A SAVIOUR ... CHRIST THE LORD.”
Of His life you know― “Who went about doing good... for God was with Him”―and making GOD, Who is LOVE, known to man. For man had lost the true knowledge of God, and is, naturally, still ignorant of Him. “No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.”
Of His death you know. What was it for? “Christ DIED for OUR SINS,” according to the Scriptures.
Of His resurrection from among the dead you know. What was it for? “He was raised again for our justification.” That is, that believing in God Who raised Him, you, or I, or any one, however guilty, might be fully cleared from every charge of the sins whose penalty He bore, and in Whose precious blood there is full atonement.
Of His ascension you know. What was it for? That He might now appear in the presence of God for us, and save us all the way through. “He ever liveth to make intercession for us.” He is a LIVING SAVIOUR for us at the right hand of God.
Of the descent of the Holy Ghost you know. What for? That He might seal all believers in that risen Saviour, thus appropriating them for God, and that He might be the LIVING LINK between their souls and Him.
Perhaps of His coming again you may know. What for? To raise the dead (believers) incorruptible, change the living ones, and catch all up together to meet Him in the air, that so we might be forever with Him.
Are you, my reader, one of those thrice happy persons who, if Jesus were to come, would be caught up to meet Him? Or, if death overtake you first, would you depart to be with Him or be reserved unto the judgment of the great white throne? Or are you of the number who, in the event of His second coming, would be left to experience the wrath of God sweeping this earth in devastating judgment? But oh, what is the worth of all this knowledge if your heart is hardened and your soul is lost?
“Another year of grace has sped its course” is a common expression. Why do men call it so, and yet grow increasingly callous as to God’s offer of grace, and their own need of it? Why, if still unsaved, do you seek rather to evade, than to avail yourself of, all that grace now offers you? “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose HIS OWN soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for HIS SOUL?”
If you have acted thus in all the years of grace you have enjoyed, do so no longer. Close with God’s present offers of mercy, and the present enjoyment and eternal blessedness of saving grace shall be yours. W. G. B.
“How SHORT is human life the very breath
Which frames my words accelerates my death.”