“You were bought at a price,” (1 Cor. 7:23).
We are not our own. We have been bought with a price, let us glorify him that bought us. How shall we do this?
In adoring this great mystery brought about by the examination of the Son of God, and the humbling of him to our curse for though the Omnipotent Lord wanted no other means to have wrought this deliverance; yet herein hath he magnified his power, wisdom, justice, mercy, and love, in doing it by the incarnation and suffering of his eternal Son; that as the first Adam made us sinners “in him,” so the second makes us righteous in his work. To adore the freeness of it, in that he came unsought to “seek,” as well as to “save.” (Luke 19:10) And the discrimination which is therein made, between us and angels; for he took not the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. (Heb. 2:16) Though the devil attempts to steal that comfort away.
We should adore and admire the severity of divine justice, which would not suffer sin to go unpunished, or the sentence of death against it unexecuted, though it were in his own Son. The unsearchableness of divine mercy, in accepting a commutation, a Son for a servant, a sacrifice for a sinner. The infinite depth of divine wisdom, in finding out a way to punish the sin, and to save the sinner; to punish it thoroughly, and as thoroughly to pardon it; to cause him that was eternal, to be made; him that was impassible, to suffer; him that was Lord of life, to die: to make our nature in that person pay a debt, which all the angels in heaven could never have discharged.
Have you ever had the devil steal away your comfort that you were unable to adore God as God desires? What did you do to remedy that?
Edward Reynolds said, “We should believe and apply the comfort of so precious a doctrine to ourselves, and to put in for a share in it, and so to glorify God, as Abraham did, (Rom. 5:20). Without it I am a captive to sin and Satan, cursed in body, and cursed in soul, (Deut. 27:15-26).” Edward Reynolds, The Works of Edward Reynolds.
Our devotions is a primary place for us to believe and apply the promises of God. It is where we read and study Scripture, meditate on it, and pray about it as it concerns our lives.
Contemplation:
Eternal Father, it is amazing love, that You have sent Your Son to suffer in my stead, that You have added the Spirit to teach, comfort, guide, that You have allowed the ministry of angels to build up a wall around me; all heaven subserves the welfare of a poor worm. Permit Your unseen servants to be ever active on my behalf, and to rejoice when grace expands in me. Suffer them never to rest until my conflict is over, and I stand victorious on salvation’s shore.
Grant that my proneness to evil, deadness to good, resistance to Your Spirit’s motions, may never provoke You to abandon me. May my hard heart awake Your pity, not Your wrath, And if the enemy gets an advantage through my corruption, let it be seen that heaven is mightier than hell, that those for me are greater than those against me. Arise to my help in richness of covenant blessings, keep me feeding in the pastures of Your strengthening Word, searching Scripture to find You there.
If my waywardness is visited with a scourge, enable me to receive correction meekly, to bless the reproving hand, to discern the motive of rebuke, to respond promptly, and do the first work. Let all Your fatherly dealings make me a partaker of Your holiness. Grant that in every fall I may sink lower on my knees, and that when I rise it may be to loftier heights of devotion. May my every cross be sanctified, every loss be gain, every denial a spiritual advantage, every dark day a light of the Holy Spirit, every night of trial a song.
