He made your purchase with His eyes wideopen, and He knew the exact value of that which He bought. He is not at all disappointed when you come to Him and He finds that you are worthless. You are not to worry over the question of your worth; if He, with His perfect knowledge of yourcase, was satisfied to make the bargain, you should be the last one to complain.
Sunday is and always will be only “the venerable day of the sun,” and its heathen character can no more be changed by a change of spelling than the character of a thief can be changed by an alias.
All men are chosen to be witnesses for God, and to each is his labor appointed. All through life the Spirit is striving with every man, to induce him to allow himself to be used for the work to which God has called him. Only the judgment day will reveal what wonderful opportunities men have recklessly flung away.
When Christ comes to help man out of the pit, He does not come to the edge of the pit and look over, and say, “Come up here, and I will help you back.” If man could help himself up to the point from whence he has fallen, he could do all the rest. If he could help himself one step, he could help himself all the way; but it is because man is utterly ruined, weak, and wounded and broken to pieces, in fact, perfectly helpless, that Jesus Christ come right down where He is, and meets him there. He takes his flesh and He becomes a brother to him. Jesus Christ is a brother to us in the flesh: He was born into the family.
But why should one be accursed for preaching a different gospel? - Because he is the means of fastening others in the curse. “Cursed be he that makes the blind to wander out of the way.” Deuteronomy 27:18. If this is so of the one who causes a physically blind man to stumble, how much more must it apply to one who causes a soul to stumble to its eternal ruin! To delude people with a false hope of salvation, - to cause them to put their trust in that which can by no means deliver them, - what could possibly be more wicked?
If it were possible, he (Satan) would deceive the very elect. And why is it not possible to deceive them? Christ gives the answer. He said of the shepherd of the sheep, “When He puts forth His own sheep, He goes before them, and the sheep follow Him; for they know His voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him; for they know not the voice of strangers.” John 10:4, 5
In His own flesh He has “abolished the enmity”, which is the carnal mind. Although He was in the flesh, the mind of the flesh had no control over Him. It was our flesh that He took; therefore He has abolished sin in the flesh of every one who will confess Him.
The truth is that the facts of the Gospel cannot be reasoned out by man. They are altogether above and beyond the reach of human reason. Man left to his own reason will reason himself into hedonism every time. See Romans 1.20-25. “But doesn’t God tell us to reason together?” some will ask. Yes; and here is where so many pervert the text with which we started. They use their reason as a basis for faith, forgetting that faith must be the instructor of reason.
That faith which He exercised, and by which He obtained the victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil, —that faith is His free gift to every lost man in the world. And thus "this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith;" and this is the faith of which He is the Author and Finisher.