The Believer's Provision

In the well-known saying of St. Augustine, Give what Thou commandest, and then command what Thou wilt,’* we have not only the pith of the Gospel for the sinner who needs pardon, but the substance of the truth for the believer seeking holiness. If we would receive God’s commands, without being brought into legal bondage, we must know God’s gift, without limiting it, in its fulness, or freeness, or present efficacy. Gos requirement of us His children — forgiven, justified, and set apart in Christ — should not be contemplated apart from Gois provision for us, who, in ourselves, are utterly insufficient. It is as we see that our sufficiency is of God” — that is, not only of Him as the first cause, hut from Him as the immediate source — that we find by experience that His commandments are not grievous.*’

It is true that all God requires of us we lack; but it is also true that all we need He supplies. The believer can give thanks that God has supplied all his need as to standing; the same God engages to supply all his need as to walk. But while we see God’s requirement, and recognise God’s provision, let us not overlook our responsibility. When we fail, it is to this our failure may be traced. It is not because the provision has been insufficient, or unavailable, or afar off — but because the channel has been obstructed, the avenues of the soul have been closed, so that the need has remained unsupplied. Our responsibility lies in the exercise of faith.

Because it is impossible to exaggerate the all-sufficiency and never-failing efficacy of the provision which God has made for His children, in Christ, for their sanctification, we may step out upon every duty, however difficult, without anxiety; we can rest in His name, in every trial, without fear; we can receive all His dispensations, however mysterious, with-

out doubt or murmuring; and we can yield up ourselves and all our members to Him, without reserve. Faith in all these aspects must be brought into exercise — and here is our responsibility. There must be the courage of faith, the rest of faith, the receptivity of faith, and the surrender of faith. It is then that our need becomes linked to God*s provision.

How precious is the promise, “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus ‘* (Phil. iv. 19). “Afy God*’ — the Apostle’s God, what he realised Him to be. ‘* Shall supplf — shall fill to the full. “AllyoMX need” — temporal or spiritual, present or future. **Your need’^ — not always the same thing as your desires, your cravings, but what God says you need: He knows your real wants. And mark the measure of the supply: “According to the riches of His glory” — not “out of,” that would have been blessed, but “according to,” that is, in proportion to His riches. Well may

the Apostle say,” He is able to do exceeding abundantly aiove all that toe ash or think,

Then observe how God supplies our need I What is the supply? By Christ Jesus — or, literally, “in Christ Jesus.” A man perishing from hunger has his need supplied through the kindness of a friend. The poor man’s supply is in the foody and not in the means that brought it to him. So Christ is not the channel merely through which all God’s mercies descend to us, and by which all our prayers ascend to Him — He /; the supply itself, In this way God fills to the full all our need by unfolding by the Spirit some fresh fulness of Christ, some further aspect of His unsearchable riches. But it is not so much by something from Christ, as by Christ Himself that He supplies all the needs of our souls. How much is comprehended in that one word “Himself,” when spiritually apprehended I “Jesus shewed Himself to His disciples.”

Thou, O Christ! art all I want;
More than all in Thee I find.’*