Brothers and sisters in Christ, just in case you’ve not been blessed today by considering who you are in Christ Jesus, would you please read—slowly and carefully—the following verses from 2nd Peter 1, and then meditate on two paragraphs from a sermon on Isaiah 49:8 from Charles Spurgeon? May grace and peace, indeed, be multiplied to you (as it has been to me).
2 Peter 1:2-4: “May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.” (Italics mine.)
The following paragraphs are excerpted from Charles Spurgeon’s sermon “Christ in the Everlasting Covenant”:
“I will give you as a covenant to the people.” (Isaiah 49:8)
Here is a GREAT POSSESSION—Jesus Christ, by the covenant, is the property of every believer! By this we must understand Jesus Christ in many different senses. We will begin, first of all, by declaring that Jesus Christ is ours, in all His attributes. He has a double set of attributes, seeing that there are two natures joined in glorious union in one person. He has the attributes of very God and He has the attributes of perfect man; whatever these may be, they are each one of them, the perpetual property of every believing child of God! I need not dwell on His attributes as God—you all know how Infinite is His love, how vast His grace, how firm His faithfulness, how unswerving His veracity. You know that He is omniscient. You know that He is omnipresent. You know that He is omnipotent and it will console you if you will but think that all these great and glorious attributes which belong to God are all yours! Has He power? That power is yours—yours to support and strengthen you—yours to overcome your enemies, yours to keep you immutably secure! Has He love? Well, there is not a particle of His love in His great heart which is not yours. All His love belongs to you! You may dive into the immense, bottomless ocean of His love and you may say of it all, “It is mine.” Has He justice? It may seem a stern attribute. But even that is yours for He will, by His justice, see to it that all which is covenanted to you by the oath and promise of God shall be most certainly secured to you. Mention whatever you please which is a characteristic of Christ as the ever-glorious Son of God and, O faithful one, you may put your hand upon it and say, “It is mine!” Your arms, O Jesus, upon which the pillars of the earth hang, are mine! Those eyes, O Jesus, which pierce through the thick darkness and behold the future—your eyes are mine to look on me with love! Those lips, O Christ, which sometimes speak words louder than ten thousand thunders, or whisper syllables sweeter than the music of the harps of the glorified—those lips are mine! And that great heart which beats high with such unselfish, pure and unaffected love—that heart is mine! The whole of Christ, in all His glorious nature as the Son of God, as God over all, blessed forever, is yours, positively, actually, without metaphor, in reality yours!
Consider Him as man, too. All that He has as perfect man is yours. As a perfect man He stood before His Father, “full of grace and Truth,” full of favor and accepted by God as a perfect being. O believer, God’s acceptance of Christ is your acceptance! Do you not know that that love which the Father set on a perfect Christ, He now sets on you? For all that Christ did is yours. That perfect righteousness which Jesus worked out, when through His stainless life He kept the law and made it honorable, is yours. There is not a virtue which Christ ever had, that is not yours! There is not a holy deed which He ever did which is not yours! There is not a prayer He ever sent to heaven that is not yours! There is not one solitary thought towards God which it was His duty to think and which He thought as man serving His God, which is not yours! All His righteousness, in its vast extent and in all the perfection of His character, is imputed to you! Oh, can you think what you have gotten in the word, “Christ?” Come, believer, consider that word, “God,” and think how mighty it is. And then meditate upon that word, “perfect man,” for all that the Man-God, Christ, and the glorious God-man, Christ, ever had, or ever can have as the characteristic of either of His natures—all that is yours! It all belongs to you—it is out of pure free favor, beyond the fear of revocation, passed over to you to be your actual property—and that forever!in glorious union in one person. He has the attributes of very God and He has the attributes of perfect man; whatever these may be, they are each one of them, the perpetual property of every believing child of God! I need not dwell on His attributes as God—you all know how Infinite is His love, how vast His grace, how firm His faithfulness, how unswerving His veracity. You know that He is omniscient. You know that He is omnipresent. You know that He is omnipotent and it will console you if you will but think that all these great and glorious attributes which belong to God are all yours! Has He power? That power is yours—yours to support and strengthen you—yours to overcome your enemies, yours to keep you immutably secure! Has He love? Well, there is not a particle of His love in His great heart which is not yours. All His love belongs to you! You may dive into the immense, bottomless ocean of His love and you may say of it all, “It is mine.” Has He justice? It may seem a stern attribute. But even that is yours for He will, by His justice, see to it that all which is covenanted to you by the oath and promise of God shall be most certainly secured to you. Mention whatever you please which is a characteristic of Christ as the ever-glorious Son of God and, O faithful one, you may put your hand upon it and say, “It is mine!” Your arms, O Jesus, upon which the pillars of the earth hang, are mine! Those eyes, O Jesus, which pierce through the thick darkness and behold the future—your eyes are mine to look on me with love! Those lips, O Christ, which sometimes speak words louder than ten thousand thunders, or whisper syllables sweeter than the music of the harps of the glorified—those lips are mine! And that great heart which beats high with such unselfish, pure and unaffected love—that heart is mine! The whole of Christ, in all His glorious nature as the Son of God, as God over all, blessed forever, is yours, positively, actually, without metaphor, in reality yours!
She Seeks Wisdom 