promises

A Living, Loving, Lasting Union

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises Leave a comment

For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones- Ephesians 5:30

“We”, that is His believing people, “are members of His body, and of His flesh, and of His bones.” He is our Head, and we are the members of the body, and so we are joined to Him by a living, loving, lasting union.

Now what does this living union to Christ mean? It means Christ’s life laying hold of us. “For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” He is full of life, and when He takes hold of us, and raises our life into His, there is truly a living union between Him and us.

The union of a soul to Christ is made so sweet because it is as loving as it is living! Christ’s love to us begins this loving union. Its source is not in ourselves; but in love eternal, love immeasurable, love which caused itself, free-grace love, love to the unworthy, love to enemies, love to those who had no life, no strength, and no hope apart from Him. Christ loved us so that He deigned to join Himself to us in eternal union. The great Artesian well from which we drink, and which has tapped the divine fountains, is the love of Christ.

O friends, what a sad thing it would be for anyone to have only a temporary union with Christ! Why, you are not building at all unless your building stands; and you are not truly in union with Christ unless the union is lasting union; and it will not be unless it is a living union! Be satisfied with nothing short of that union which the Spirit of God works in the hearts of those who, without reserve, yield to His power.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2245.cfm

I in Them

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises Leave a comment

“I in them.” – John 17:23, 26

“I in them.” It is the most blessed word I know of. You, beloved, need not go abroad to find the Lord Jesus Christ. Where does He live? He lives within you. “I in them.” As soon as ever you pray you are sure He hears you, because He is within you. He is not knocking at your door: He has entered into you, and there He dwells, and will go no more out for ever.

What a blessed sense of power this gives to us. “I in them.” Then it is no more “I” in weakness, but, since Jesus dwells in me, “I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me.” “I in them.” It is the glory of the believer that Christ dwells in him. “Unto you that believe He is precious.”

Hence we gather the security of the believer. Brother, if Christ be in me, and I am overcome, Christ is conquered too, for He is in me. “I in them.” I cannot comprehend the doctrine of believers falling from grace. If Christ has once entered into them, will He not abide with them? Paul saith, “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” To that persuasion I set my hand and seal. Well, then, if Christ is in us, whatever happens to us will happen to Him. If it is an indissoluble union-and so He declares it is-“I in them,” then His destiny and ours are linked together; and if He wins the victory we conquer in Him: if He sits at the right hand of God we shall sit at the right hand of God with Him, for He is in us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

Love and I

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Holy Spirit 1 Comment

“…lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”  Amen. – Matthew 28:20

Jesus is ever at home where love is reigning. When love lives in His people’s hearts, Jesus lives there too. Does Jesus, then, live in the hearts of His people? Yes; wherever there is the love of the Father shed abroad in them, He must be there.

We are sure that He is where love is; for, first, where there is love there is life, and where there is life there is Christ, for He Himself says, “I am the life.” There is no true life in the believer’s soul that is divided from Christ. We are sure of that; so that where there is love there is life, and where there is life there is Christ. Again, where there is the love of God in the heart there is the Holy Spirit; but wherever the Holy Spirit is, there is Christ, for the Holy Spirit is Christ’s representative; and it is in that sense that He tells us, “Lo, I am with you alway,” namely, because the Spirit is come to be always with us. So where there is love there is the Spirit of God, and where there is the Spirit of God there is Christ. So it is always “Love and I.”

Furthermore where there is love there is faith, for faith worketh by love, and there never was true love to Christ apart from faith; but where there is faith there is always Christ, for if there is faith in Him He has been received into the soul. Jesus is ever near to that faith which has Himself for its foundation and resting place. Where there is love there is faith, where there is faith there is Christ, and so it is “love and I.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

The Love that Changes a Man

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father 3 Comments

But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. – 1 John 2:5

Oh, if the love of the Father to Christ once enters into a man’s soul it will change him; it will sway him with the noblest passion; it will make him a zealot for Christ; it will cast out his selfishness; it will change him into the image of Christ, and fit him to dwell in heaven where love is perfected…this indwelling of the Father’s love in us has the most blessed results. It has an expulsive result. As soon as ever it gets into the heart it says to all love of sin, “Get thee hence; there remains no room for thee here.” When the light enters in, the darkness receives immediate notice of ejectment; the night is gone as soon as the dawn appears. It has also a repulsive power by which it repels the assaults of sin. As though a man did snatch the sun out of the heaven and make a round shield with it, and hold it in the very face of the prince of darkness, and blind him with the light, so doth the love of God the Father repel the enemy. It girds the soul with the armour of light. It repels the devil, the love of the world, the love of sin, and all outward temptations. And then what an impulsive power it has. Get the love of Christ into you, and it is as when an engine receives fire and steam, and so obtains the force which drives it. Then have you strengthening, then have you motive power, then are you urged on to this and that heroic deed which, apart from this sublime love, you never would have thought of. For Christ you can live, for Christ you can suffer, for Christ you can die, when once the Father’s love to him has taken full possession of your spirit. And, oh, how elevating it is. How it lifts a man up above self and sin; how it makes him seek the things that are above! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

We Are to Be as the Moon

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation 6 Comments

“I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” – John 17:23

Oh, to throw back on Christ His Father’s love. The Father is the sun and we are the moon, but the moonlight is not the same light as the sunlight. We can see a difference because reflection robs the light of much of its heat and its brilliance, but it is the same light. The moon has not a ray of light but what came from the sun, and we have not a live coal of love to Christ but what came from the Father. We are as the moon, shining by reflected light, but Jesus loves the moonlight of our love and rejoices in it. Let us give Him all of it: let us try to be as the full moon always, and let us not dwindle down to a mere ring of love, or a crescent of affection; let us render no half-moon love; let us not be half dark and cold, but let us shine on Christ with all the light we can possibly reflect of His Father’s love, saying in our very soul,

“My Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine;
For Thee all the follies of sin I resign.”

This love of the Father in us is to go beaming forth from us to all around. When we get the love wherewith the Father loves the Son into our hearts, then it is to go out towards all the chosen seed…Ay, and your love is to go forth to all the sons of men, seeking their good for God’s glory, that they may be brought in to know the same Saviour in whom we rejoice. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

The Father Loves You Even as He Loves His Son

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father 1 Comment

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! – 1 John 3:1

Remember that you are to have in your heart a sense of the Father’s love to you, and to recollect that it is precisely the same love wherewith He loves His Son. “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them.” Oh, wonder of wonders, I feel more inclined to sit down and meditate upon it than to stand up and talk about it! The love wherewith He loved His Son-such is His love to all His chosen ones. Can you believe it, that you should be the object of God’s delight, even as Christ is, because you are in Christ; that you should be the object of the Father’s love as truly as Christ is, because He sees you to be part and parcel of the mystical body of His well-beloved Son? Do not tell me that God the Father does not love you as well as He does Christ: the point can be settled by the grandest matter of fact that ever was. When there was a choice between Christ and His people which should die of the two, the Father freely delivered up His own Son that we might live through Him. Oh, what a meeting there must have been of the seas of love that day, when God’s great love to us came rolling in like a glorious springtide, and His love to His Son came rolling in at the same time. If they had met and come into collision, we cannot imagine the result; but when they both took to rolling together in one mighty torrent, what a stream of love was there! The Lord Jesus sank that we might swim, He sank that we might rise; and now we are borne onward for ever by the mighty sweep of infinite love into an everlasting blessedness which tongues and lips can never fully set forth. Oh, be ravished with this. Be carried away with it; be in ecstasy at love so amazing, so divine: the Father loves you even as He loves His Son; after the same manner and sort He loveth all His redeemed.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm

“Yes, I know the Father loved Him…”

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father 3 Comments

“that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” John 17:21

Our Lord Jesus Christ desires us to have a distinct recognition of the Father’s love to Him. He wants the love wherewith the Father loves Him to be felt in us, so that we may say, “Yes, I know the Father loved Him, for I, who am such a poor, unworthy, and foolish creature, yet love Him; and, oh, how His Father must love Him.” I love Him! Ay, by His grace, it were a blessed thing to die for Him; but if I love Him, oh, how must His Father love Him who can see all His beauty, and can appreciate every distinct piece of loveliness that is in Him! …For, first and foremost, the Father and the Son are one: they are one in essence. The Saviour has been with the Father from the beginning, and His delight has been with Him, even as the Father testified, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Oh, do try to feel, if you can, the love of the Father to His Son, or else you will not love the Father as you should for the amazing sacrifice which He made in giving Jesus to us. Think what it cost Him to tear His Well-Beloved from His bosom and send Him down below to be “despised and rejected.” Think what it cost Him to nail Him up to yonder cross, and then forsake Him and hide His face from Him, because He had laid all our sins upon Him. Oh, the love He must have had to us thus to have made His best Beloved to become a curse for us, as it is written, “Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.” I want you to get this right into your souls, dear friends. Do not hold it as a dry doctrine, but let it touch your heart. Let it flow into your heart like a boiling stream, till your whole souls become like Icelandic geysers, which boil and bubble up and send their steam aloft into the clouds. Oh, to have the soul filled with the love of the Father towards Him who is altogether lovely.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1667.cfm