Be greatly encouraged in Christ Jesus our Lord!
"This
is the true God, and eternal life."
-I
JOHN
5:20 [KJV]
O
the blessedness, which eternity itself can never exhaust, of
possessing eternal life! There is something to my mind so singularly
blessed in the expression "eternal life," that I
cannot help dwelling upon it. How the thought, the feeling of it
expands the breast! Compared with it, how poor, mean, and low is our
temporal life and all its concerns—the short span which God has
allotted to us here below! And do observe how our eye is directed by
holy John to the true God as being Himself eternal life. He is not
only the Giver, the Spring, the Subject, the Object of it; He Himself
is it all. O if He has but quickened our souls by His Spirit and
grace, we carry now, even now, eternal life in our breast! for this
eternal life is the precious fruit on earth of that eternal life in
heaven which was with the Father and was manifested unto us [I
JOHN 1:2].
But
how shall we know that we have eternal life, you may ask? How do we
know that we have natural life? By an inward consciousness that we
are alive; by the pulse which beats, the lungs which breathe, the eye
which sees, the ear which hears, the tongue which speaks, the hands
which feel, by the warm play of blood through our veins, by the
thoughts which pass to and fro through our mind.
Similarly
we know the possession of spiritual life by an inward consciousness
of it and by its inward actings. And as where there is spiritual
there is eternal life, as we feel the bubblings, springings, risings,
and varied movements of this spiritual life in our bosom, we have a
testimony that we have also eternal life; that this eternal life is
in the Son of God, and from the Son of God has been breathed into and
communicated unto our souls.
-Gospel
report by preacher J.C. Philpot (1802-1869 A.D.)
March
11th, EARS FROM HARVESTED SHEAVES
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