SLOW LEARNERS

By on Jun 30, 2012 in Devotions

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. (Philippians 2:1-2)

You and I are neither the Alpha nor Omega to the law, for we have broken it altogether. We have not even learned its first letter—”Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” and certain I am we know very little of the next—”Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Even though renewed by grace, we are very slow to learn the holiness and spirituality of the law; we are so staggered by the letter that we often miss its spirit altogether. But, beloved, if you would see the law fulfilled, look to the person of our blessed Lord and Master.

What love to God is there! Jesus loved in such a way that all the love that ever gleaned in human bosom, if it could be gathered together, would be but as a spark; while his great love to man would be but as a spark, while his great love to man would be as a flaming furnace heated seven times hotter than human imagination can conceive.

Do not, beloved friends, if you are in Christ Jesus, permit legal fears to distress you at the remembrance of your failures in obedience,as though they would destroy your soul. Seek after holiness, but never make holiness your trust. Seek after virtue, pant for it; but when you see your own imperfections, do not therefore despair.

Your saving righteousness is the righteousness of Christ; that in which God accepts you is Christ’s perfect obedience, and we say of that again, in the words of the text, Jesus Christ is “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). ((Charles Spurgeon, At the Master’s Feet [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005], June 30.))

Charles Spurgeon

Further reading