December 24 - Morning"For your sakes he became poor." — 2 Corinthians 8:9
The Lord Jesus Christ was eternally rich, glorious, and exalted; but
"though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor." As the rich
saint cannot be true in his communion with his poor brethren unless of his
substance he ministers to their necessities, so (the same rule holding with
the head as between the members), it is impossible that our Divine Lord
could have had fellowship with us unless He had imparted to us of His
own abounding wealth, and had become poor to make us rich. Had He
remained upon His throne of glory, and had we continued in the ruins of
the fall without receiving His salvation, communion would have been
impossible on both sides. Our position by the fall, apart from the covenant
of grace, made it as impossible for fallen man to communicate with God as
it is for Belial to be in concord with Christ.
In order, therefore, that
communion might be compassed, it was necessary that the rich kinsman
should bestow his estate upon his poor relatives, that the righteous
Saviour should give to His sinning brethren of His own perfection, and that
we, the poor and guilty, should receive of His fulness grace for grace; that
thus in giving and receiving, the One might descend from the heights, and
the other ascend from the depths, and so be able to embrace each other in
true and hearty fellowship. Poverty must be enriched by Him in whom are
infinite treasures before it can venture to commune; and guilt must lose
itself in imputed and imparted righteousness ere the soul can walk in
fellowship with purity. Jesus must clothe His people in His own
garments, or He cannot admit them into His palace of glory; and He must
wash them in His own blood, or else they will be too defiled for the
embrace of His fellowship.
O believer, herein is love! For your sake the Lord Jesus "became poor"
that He might lift you up into communion with Himself. December 24 - Evening"The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." — Isaiah 40:5
We anticipate the happy day when the whole world shall be converted to
Christ; when the gods of the heathen shall be cast to the moles and the
bats; when Romanism shall be exploded, and the crescent of Mohammed
shall wane, never again to cast its baleful rays upon the nations; when
kings shall bow down before the Prince of Peace, and all nations shall call
their Redeemer blessed. Some despair of this. They look upon the world as
a vessel breaking up and going to pieces, never to float again. We know
that the world and all that is therein is one day to be burnt up, and
afterwards we look for new heavens and for a new earth; but we cannot
read our Bibles without the conviction that —
"Jesus shall reign where'er the sun We are not discouraged by the length of His delays; we are not
disheartened by the long period which He allots to the church in which to
struggle with little success and much defeat. We believe that God will
never suffer this world, which has once seen Christ's blood shed upon it,
to be always the devil's stronghold. Christ came hither to deliver this
world from the detested sway of the powers of darkness. What a shout
shall that be when men and angels shall unite to cry "Hallelujah, hallelujah,
for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!" What a satisfaction will it be in
that day to have had a share in the fight, to have helped to break the
arrows of the bow, and to have aided in winning the victory for our Lord!
Happy are they who trust themselves with this conquering Lord, and who
fight side by side with Him, doing their little in His name and by His
strength! How unhappy are those on the side of evil! It is a losing side,
and it is a matter wherein to lose is to lose and to be lost for ever. On
whose side are you? December 24 |