True Christian Experience of the Love & Grace of Christ

"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, 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?

(a.) 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, (b.) 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.)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Putrid Cup of Tolerance: When Evil Poses as Progress

"Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: He preserveth the souls of His saints; He delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked." -Psalm 97:10 [KJV] "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." Thomas Mann's chilling words pierce through the fog of modern moral relativism like a shard of ice. It's a warning that echoes through the blood-soaked pages of history, a truth we ignore at our peril. The Seduction of False Neutrality We live in an age where tolerance is held up as the supreme virtue, the golden idol before which we must all bow. We're told to accept everything, question nothing, and embrace a faux-unity that sacrifices truth on the altar of political correctness. But what happens when this tolerance becomes a blindfold, obscuring the stark reality of evil lurking in our midst? Like a ravenous wolf, evil doesn't care for our carefully crafted social constructs. It doesn't respect boundaries, it doesn't play fair, and it ce...
Read more

According to God's Good Pleasure...

"According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will." -Ephesians 1:4, 5 [KJV] It is a very solemn but a very true assertion, that no man can quicken his own soul; and it is an equally solemn, we might almost say, a tremendous truth, that the gospel only comes in power to those whom God has chosen unto eternal life.  Indeed the one flows from the other; for if no man can quicken his own soul, it necessarily follows it must be of sovereign grace that it is quickened at all. Once you allow the fall, and acknowledge that a man is by nature so thoroughly dead in trespasses and sins that he cannot raise himself up out of this state to newness of life, then the doctrine of election necessarily follows.   A living soul may reason thus: "Am I quickened? Yes. Di...
Read more

Christ Alone Be Magnified!

"He MUST Increase, but I MUST Decrease" -J OHN 3:30 [KJV] This was spoken of the Redeemer by His forerunner John. And it is not to be considered as the language of complaint or sullen agreement as if he would say, "I dislike it; but it is unavoidable. It is my grief; and I must bear it." No. It was as agreeable to his feelings as it was firm in his belief. And it showed a fine and a noble soul in John. The spirit that is in us lusteth to envy. We love to be distinguished above others. We wish to rise, even by the fall of others. It is trying, even to a good man, to withdraw, and see a successor filling his place better than himself, and, as the honors he has worn are transferred to another, to say, "He must increase, but I must decrease." It is not an easy thing to go down well, or for a setting star to exult in a rising sun. But it was thus to John. He knew his rank and approved his place. He was the servant, not the Master: the friend, ...
Read more