The Knowledge and Enjoyment of our Saviour

"Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ." —Romans 13:14 [KJV]

Man is an active being. Happiness is his pursuit. "Who will shew me any good?" is his continual enquiry. But to seek it from wrong objects is his constant practice. Hence naturally we are ever restless and uneasy. The new-born soul only has found the centre of true felicity, real good, and permanent happiness, in the knowledge and enjoyment of his Saviour! Here paradise is regained: a heaven of bliss is restored to his soul. It is the peculiar glory of the gospel, it ever presents a precious object to our mind, even the Lord Jesus, from Whom alone we derive peace of conscience, joy of heart, and transport of soul. 

Is there, believer, a day in the year, an hour in the day, wherein thou wouldst pray to be excused from putting on the Lord Jesus Christ as the perfection of thy nature, and the adorning of thy soul? Surely not. As "one made alive from the dead," the Holy Ghost, by the word, stirs up thy "pure mind, by way of remembrance." Thou art not called to dream over dry, heathenish lectures of morality; nor from philosophic rules to acquire this and the other habit of virtue; neither art thou left to licentious liberty, to make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof. But it is to be the daily exercise of thy believing mind to put on the Lord Jesus Christ as the essence of every virtue; for in this consists all thy present comfort and holiness. 

And by this thou wilt become dead to all the pleasing, inviting objects that stand so thick around thee to beguile thy mind, and draw thine heart from its best Friend. The miser calls his gold his own, it is his god. Hence he exercises all his affections upon it, and derives all his happiness from it. The man of pleasure is in continual search after the enjoyment of new delights from the gay surrounding objects of a perishing world. Infinitely greater blessings are Christians called to. O, believer, Jesus is thine. In the exercise of thy mind and the affections of thy soul; put on thy Lord continually as thy righteousness, thy strength, thy riches, thy pleasure, thy honor, thy glory, thy ALL. 

Oppose Christ to all the pleasures of the world, to all the delights of sense, and every scene of vanity. Put on Christ in thy conscience; there plead the atonement of HIS PRECIOUS BLOOD against the guilt of sin, the perfection of His righteousness to every demand of the law, the prevalency of His intercession against all thy fears, the freeness and fulness of His promises against all thy doubts. Boldly withstand every accusation from Satan with, "Christ hath died, yea rather is risen again; and ever lives to make intercession for us:" "Who is he that condemned?"— Romans 8:34.

Strangely, my soul, art thou array'd 

By the great sacred Three! 

In sweetest harmony of praise 

Let all Thy powers agree.

 

-preacher William Mason (1724-1797 A.D.)