Encouragement in CHRIST JESUS ~ 11 March, 2024 A.D.

"Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" -II Corinthians 13:5 [KJV]

Happy for ministers, when their mission from Christ is called in question, they can appeal to their people’s hearts, to prove that Christ is spoken to them. Happy for Christians, to examine, prove, and know themselves, and to find Christ is in them. Ignorance of ourselves lies at the bottom of all error, and self deceit. Lord help us deeply to consider of this important question. 

(1st.) Know ye not your own selves? Come you are very ready to judge ministers, find fault with them, and call their gifts and graces in question. Look at home. Know yourselves. Be not puffed up. Consider yourselves. Be humble. Your hearts are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Your nature is totally corrupt and abominable. In your flesh dwelleth no good thing. Its motions are, to bring forth fruit unto death. Its lustings are, continually unto sin. Know, there is no difference in your nature, from that of the most vile and abandoned sinner upon the face of the earth. 

If left to yourselves, there is not the most atrocious sin, but you might commit. There is not a hell in which others are eternally suffering for sin, but what you justly deserve, and would fall into. For your sinful nature is as reprobate, corrupt, and adulterate as others, even as the most vile. Yea, and your state is also by nature, as bad as others, even children of wrath. Know ye not your own selves? Has the Spirit of truth made you thus acquainted with yourselves? Be not afraid to see and know the very worst of yourselves. 

For. (2d.) “Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you [148 A Spiritual Treasury For The Children of God Vol 2 - W. Mason] except ye be reprobates?” Blessed distinction! In this the elect differ from the reprobate. The former have Christ in them. The latter reject Christ, and are without any true knowledge of Him, faith in Him, and love to Him. What is implied in Christ being in us? (1st.) Dwelling in our hearts by faith. A clear knowledge of Him, cordially receiving Him, heartily believing on Him, stedfastly cleaving to Him, constantly abiding in Him, steadily looking to Him, as He is revealed in the word, the righteousness of sinners, the atonement for the guilty, justification for the ungodly, and the Saviour of the hopeless, helpless, and desperate. 

Therefore, (2d.) He is precious, as being suitable to us, in His glorious person, and His blessed offices. Hence our hearts go after Him, our affections are placed on Him, and it is the desire and delight of our souls, to honour, serve, and obey Him. Thus self knowledge, and the knowledge of Christ, are the very criterion of salvation. O that we may sink into the depths of the deepest humility by the one, and rise into the heights of the highest comfort, peace and joy by the other. So shall we prove, that we have true Christian experience of the love and grace of Christ.

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