Christ
I so deeply believe in the immutable love of Jesus that I suppose, if one believer were to be in hell, Christ himself would not long stay in heaven, but would soon cry, “To the rescue! to the rescue!”
The nearer you live to Christ, the more you imitate him, the more your life is conformed to him; and the more simply you hang upon him by faith, the more certain you may be of your election in Christ and of your calling by his Holy Spirit.
The Father will never save a man apart from Christ; there is not one soul now in heaven who was not saved by Jesus Christ; there is not one who ever came to God aright who did not come through Jesus Christ.
Christ is the sinner’s surety. Jehovah will never require my debt to be paid twice. Let none impute injustice to the God of the whole earth; let none suppose that he will twice exact the penalty of one sin. If you have been the chief of sinners, you may have the chief of sinners’ forgiveness, and God can bestow it now.
If ye would be happy — if ye would rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, “behold the man!” the man of sorrows who hath died for you.
Sinner, thou art to know that Christ died for sin; thou art also to understand that Christ is able to save, and thou art to believe that; but thou art not saved, unless in addition to that thou puttest thy trust in him to be thy Saviour, and to be thine for ever.
All God’s attributes are against you if you are not in Christ! If you are not sheltered beneath the wings of Jesus, there is not one single glorious name of God, nor one celestial attribute, which does not curse you.
We cannot spin a robe that is long enough to cover us; we cannot make a righteousness that is good enough to satisfy God. If you would be saved, it must be through what Christ did, and not what you did.
As long as on this earth there is a sinner who has been reclaimed by Omnipotent grace, Christ’s name shall endure; as long as there breathes a chief of sinners who has washed himself in the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness; as long as there exists a Christian who has put his faith in Jesus, and found hi™ his delight, his refuge, his stay, his shield, his song, and his joy, there will be no fear that Jesus’ name will cease to be heard.
Some preachers can manage to deliver a sermon and leave out Christ’s name altogether. Surely the true believer will stand, like Mary Magdalene, over the sermon, and say, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.”
The marrow of theology is* Christ; the very bone and sinew of the Gospel is preaching Christ. A Christless sermon is the merriment of hell; but too much of Christ we cannot have. Give us Christ always, Christ ever. The monotony of Christ is sweet variety.
What a grand sight it must have been when Christ ascended into glory; what a noble certificate it must have been of his Father’s acceptance of him!
It is not a consideration of what you are, but a consideration of what God is, and what Christ is, that can save you. It is looking from yourself to Jesus.
It will not save me to know that Christ is a Saviour; but it will save me to trust him to be my Saviour. I shall not be delivered from the wrath to come by believing that his atonement is sufficient, but I shall be saved by making that atonement my trust, my refuge, and my all.
There is the same Christ for big sinners as for little sinners; the same Christ for grey heads as for babes; the same Christ for poor as for rich; the same Christ for chimney sweeps as for monarchs; the same Christ for prostitutes as for saints.
Just cast thyself wholly on Christ, and, if thou art not saved, God’s book is a lie, and God himself has broken his truth. But that cannot be. Come thou and try it. “Whosoever believeth in Christ shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Whoever can honestly say from his heart, “Christ is all,” is a Christian; but he who cannot say so is no Christian, whatever he may be.
Some of the best paintings, you know, only just give the head and shoulders; they do not give the full-length portrait. There is no believer, there is no choice divine, that could paint a full-length portrait of Christ.
When we see Christ as he was, how astonished we are! One of the first feelings we should have, if we could have gone to the Mount of Olives and seen our Saviour sweating there, would have been astonishment.
If any of you shall be saved, it must be by Christ alone. There must be no patchwork; Christ did it all, and will not be helped in the matter.
If thou dost trust in thy works, then thy works are antichrist, and Christ and antichrist can never go together. Christ will have all or nothing; he must be a whole Saviour, or no Saviour at all.
It would have been a stoop more immense than if a seraph should have changed himself into an emmet, for the Almighty Son of God to have been clothed in the garb of even the archangel Gabriel; but his condescension dictated to him that, if he did become a creature, he would become, not the noblest creature, but one of the most ignoble of rational beings, — that is to say, man.
We shall not see Jesus as the world’s great Deliverer, as earth’s great Redeemer, as the world’s bright Sun, as well as her Morning Star, until we have studied the prophecies, and seen how they all speak concerning Jesus, even of him that is yet to come.
A costly grave! I see over the top of it “Sacred to the memory of the family of Joseph of Arimathea;” yet Jesus slept there. Yes, he was buried in another’s sepulchre. He who had no house of his own, and rested in the habitation of other men; who had no table, but lived upon the hospitality of his disciples; who borrowed boats in which to preach, and had nothing in the wide world, was obliged to have a tomb from charity.
My deeds slew Christ. Alas! I slew my best beloved; I killed him who loved me with an everlasting love. Ye eyes, why do ye refuse to weep when ye see Jesus’ body mangled and torn? Oh! give vent to your sorrow, Christians, for ye have good reason to do so.
Look to Jesus, with all your sins, doubts, and fears; naked and guilty, just as you are, look to Jesus. Everything besides Jesus is a fallacy, a deception, and a lie.
There is nothing in heaven that is equal to Christ; there is no flower in all the gardens of paradise that blooms so sweetly as the Rose of Sharon. There is not a gem with which the crowns of the glorified are now bedighted that glistens one-half so gloriously as the eye of Christ
You who are panting to know the way to heaven, remember, there is only one ladder that can ever take you there. The rounds of it are made of sovereign grace. That ladder is called Jesus; the foot rests on earth, in his humanity; the top leans in heaven, on his Godhead.
Jesus! it is the name which moves the harps of heaven to melody. Jesus! my love, they sing. Jesus! the life of all our joys. If there is one name more precious than another, it is this name. It is woven into the very warp and woof of our psalmody. Many of our hymns begin with it, and scarcely any, that are good for anything, end without it.
Ask me the greatest man who ever lived — I tell you the man Christ Jesus was “anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows.”
Men will travel hundreds of miles to behold the place where a poet first breathed the air of earth; they will journey to the ancient tombs of mighty heroes, or the graves of men renowned by fame; but whither shall the Christian go to find the grave of one so famous as was Jesus?
Jesus! we are ready to say with good George Herbert, “It is the music with which the bells of heaven ring; a song in a word, an ocean for comprehension, an oratorio in two syllables, a gathering up of the hallelujahs of eternity in five letters.” If we had only that word, and were to preach nothing else for a sermon, it would be enough to make a child of God spring upon his feet and leap for joy.
Pant thou, first and last, after the character of Jeans, in all its sublimity and perfection; and pant thou after the spirit of Josub to sanctify thee; for Jesus only is enough in eanctification, as the pattern to which thou art to attain, and as the spirit which shall make thee conformable thereunto.