Knowing Christ
“I
count all things but loss for the excellency of
the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord” -Philippians
3:8 [KJV]
In
this knowledge of Christ, there is an excellency above all other
knowledge in the world; there is nothing more pleasing and
comfortable, more animating and enlivening, more ravishing and
soul-contenting. Only Christ is the sun and center of all divine
revealed truths.
We
can preach nothing else as the object of our faith, as the necessary
element of our soul’s salvation, which doth not some way or other,
either meet in Christ, or refer to Christ. Only Christ is the whole
of man’s happiness, the Sun to enlighten him, the Physician to heal
him, the Wall of fire to defend him, the Friend to comfort him, the
Pearl to enrich him, the Ark to support him, the Rock to sustain him
under the heaviest pressures -
“As
a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the
tempest, as
rivers of waters in a dry place, and as the
shadow of a great rock in
a weary land” (Isaiah
32:2).
Only
Christ is that ladder between earth and heaven, the Mediator between
God and man, a mystery which the angels of heaven desire to pry and
peer and look into (see I Peter 1:12). Here is a blessed
subject indeed. Who would not be glad to pry into it, to be
acquainted with it?
“This
is life eternal, to know God
and
Jesus Christ whom He hath sent”
(John
17:3)
-Gospel
report by preacher Isaac Ambrose (1604-1664 A.D.)
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