Every thing, and every service, in the Old Testament dispensation, as well as in the gospel Church, points to Christ. Behold, my soul, in the LORD’S appointment of “an altar of earth,” how jealous the LORD is of His honor. If the altar dedicated to the LORD’S service, be of earth, or if it be of stone, there was not to be the least mixture. Nothing hewn, nothing polished by man’s art, or man’s device: “for if,” saith Jehovah “thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.”

If you are openly profane, when God the Spirit is pleased to reveal the communicable nature of Christ to you, it will not be such a hard struggle to part with open profaneness; but to part with piety and religious duties and church-going and chapel-going and [ordinance]-going and reading the “Whole Duty of Man,” and all those pious things—O bless me, it is just like driving a man mad. He imagines he had been a little remiss in some of these things; but then he will not be so again; he will be more diligent and more cautious. But no; God’s Christ cuts the man up, root and branch, and leaves him no more help in himself than the damned in hell; and he feels himself as truly cut down as a wretch can be, before a heart-searching God [Romans 7:24-25].

We read in Acts chapter 16 verse 9 how “a vision appeared to Paul in the night; [and] There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us.” Notice what the man of Macedonia besought Paul for—“help!” So what was the response of Paul, this servant, this bond-slave of Christ? Did he go to them to help them sort out their financial ills? Did he go to them to help them sort out their social ills? Did he go to them to help them sort out their health ills? We read the answer to those questions is emphatically no. Rather, we read in the next verse, “And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured [Paul and those with him] to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us to preach the gospel unto them” (Acts 16:10).

Our God does not lie to us: Beloved, just as sure and steadfast was the promise of God to Abraham, to be both his shield and great reward; so too the Lord Jesus Christ is our shield and great reward. Indeed, the Lord Jesus Christ is our shield from every enemy of our salvation: Satan, self, sin, and death itself [Genesis 15:1, 2 Samuel 22:3, Psalm 62:7]. Our exceeding great reward shall be to be in the presence of Him “that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood” (Revelation 1:5).

Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. God has made Christ all these to His people. He has set Him up as their eternal Head, made Him the Bridegroom of their souls, that out of His fullness they may all receive. Then, just in proportion as they learn these two lessons—what they are, and what He is—they receive Him into their hearts actually what He is to them in the purpose of God.

If Holy Scripture was a ring and the Epistle to the Romans its precious stone, chapter 8 would be the sparkling point of the radiant gem. Reading this chapter, I see several things that we who trust in the Lord Jesus Christ know.

Feeling is the first evidence of supernatural life; a feeling compounded of two distinct sensations, one referring to God, and the other referring to self. The same ray of light has manifested two opposite things, “for that which makes manifest is light;” and the sinner sees at one and the same moment God and self, justice and guilt, power and helplessness, a holy law and a broken commandment, eternity and time, the purity of the Creator and the filthiness of the creature. And these things he sees, not merely as declared in the Bible, but as revealed in himself as personal realities, involving all his happiness or all his misery in time and in eternity.

Reader, upon what do you rest your hope of acceptance before a holy God? Baptism? Church work? A religious experience? A moral reformation? All these things, in themselves, are vain, empty and useless. They are worse! Apart from the knowledge of Christ, they are a positive curse. If you and I trust anything, in any measure, for our total acceptance before God, other than Jesus Christ, we shall surely perish! ‘Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace’ [Galatians 5:4].

Who can this be but JESUS? Of whom, among the sons of men, could it ever be said that he was as a morning without clouds? Neither angels, nor men; nor ordinances, nor graces, nor all the moons of the night, nor the suns of the day, ever shone as a morning without clouds. What a sweet similitude to represent Him, and His all-perfect salvation, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning!