"Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for
the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right
hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:2)
Three words only —
but in three words is the whole secret of life.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS in the Scriptures,
to learn there what
He is, what He has done, what He gives, what He demands; to find in His
character our model, in His requirements our instruction, in His precepts our
law, in His promises our support, in His person and in His work a full
satisfaction to all the wants of our soul.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS crucified,
to find in His
blood our ransom, our pardon, our peace.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS risen again,
to find in Him the
righteousness which alone justified us, and permits us, all unworthy as we are,
to approach with assurance in His name, Him Who is His Father and our Father,
His God and our God.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS glorified,
to find in Him our
heavenly Advocate, appearing even now for us before the presence of God, and
supplying the imperfection of our prayers, by the efficacy of those which the
Father hears always.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS revealed by the Holy
Spirit,
to find in His
abiding communion the purification of our defiled hearts, the enlightening of
our darkened minds, the transformation of our rebellious wills; to be enabled
to triumph over all the assaults of the world and of the evil one, withstanding
their power by Jesus our strength, baffling their wiles by Jesus our wisdom;
sustained by the sympathy of Jesus who was spared no temptation, and by the
succour of Jesus Who yielded to none.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS to receive from Him,
the task and the
cross of each day, with grace sufficient to bear the cross, and to fulfill the
task: patient with His patience, active with His activity, loving with His
love, asking not, "what can I?" but what can He?" and waiting
upon His strength which is made perfect in weakness.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS in order that the
brightness of His face may be the light of our darkness;
that our joy may be
holy, and our sorrow calm; that He may humble us and He raise us up; that He
may afflict and that He may comfort us; that He may make us poor, and that He
may make us rich; that He may teach us to pray and He answers our prayers; that
even while leaving us in the world, He may separate us from it, our life being
hid with Him in God, and our conduct bearing witness to Him before men.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS Who having re-entered
His Father's house,
is preparing there
a place for us, in order that this blessed hope may encourage us to live without repining, and may prepare us to die
without regret, when the day shall come to encounter that last enemy, which He
has conquered for us, which we shall conquer through Him.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS, Who gives repentance
as well as
remission of sins, to receive from Him hearts that are conscious of their
misery
and come to
deplore it at His feet.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS, that He Who is the
Author of our faith,
as He is its
Finisher may keep us in that faith unto the end.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS, and to nothing else,
as our text
expresses it in a single untranslatable word, which enjoins us at once to fix
our eyes on Him and to turn them away from all beside.
UNTO JESUS, and not to ourselves,
to our thoughts,
our desire, our purposes.
UNTO JESUS, and not to the world,
to its lusts, its
examples, its maxims, its judgments.
UNTO JESUS, and not to Satan,
whether he seeks to frighten us by his rage,
or to seduce us by his flattery. Oh, how should we rid ourselves of useless
questions, of disquieting scruples, of dangerous parleyings with the evil one,
of dissipation of spirit, of vain fancies, of bitter disappointments, of
painful struggles, of lamentable falls, by looking straight unto Jesus and
following Him wherever He leads, too anxious not to lose sight of the path
which He marks for us, to cast even a glance to those in which He does not
think fit to lead us!
UNTO JESUS, and not at our creeds,
no matter how evangelical they may be. The faith which saves, which sanctifies, and which comforts, is not giving assent to the doctrine of salvation; it is being united to the person of the Saviour. It is not enough to know about Jesus Christ, it is necessary to have Jesus Christ. To this one may add that no one truly knows Him, if he does not first possess Him. According to the profound saying of the beloved disciple, it is in the Life there is Light, and it is in Jesus there is Life (John 1:4).
no matter how evangelical they may be. The faith which saves, which sanctifies, and which comforts, is not giving assent to the doctrine of salvation; it is being united to the person of the Saviour. It is not enough to know about Jesus Christ, it is necessary to have Jesus Christ. To this one may add that no one truly knows Him, if he does not first possess Him. According to the profound saying of the beloved disciple, it is in the Life there is Light, and it is in Jesus there is Life (John 1:4).
UNTO JESUS. and not to our meditations and our prayers,
to our pious
conversations, or to our edifying reading, neither to the holy assemblies we
frequent, nor even to our partaking of the Supper of the Lord. Let us
faithfully use all these means of grace, but without confounding them with
grace itself, and without turning off our looks from Him, who alone can render
them efficacious, by communicating Himself to us by their means.
UNTO JESUS, and not to our position in the Christian Church,
to the name which
we bear, to the doctrine which we profess, to the idea which others form of our piety, or to that which we form
of it ourselves. Many of those who have prophesied in the name of Jesus will
hear Him one day say to them, "I never knew you," but He will confess
before His Father and before His angels, even the most humble of those who
have looked unto Him.
UNTO JESUS, and not our brethren,
not even to the
best and most beloved among them. In following a man we run a risk of going
wrong; in following Jesus we are certain never to go wrong. Besides, by putting
a man between Jesus and ourselves, it comes to pass that the man insensibly
becomes more to us, and Jesus becomes less. Soon we no longer know how to find
Jesus, when we cannot find the man, and so if man's help fails, our all fails.
On the contrary, if Jesus keeps His place between us and our nearest friends,
our attachment to man will be at once less direct and more sweet, less
passionate and more pure, less indispensable and more useful, an instrument of
rich blessings in the hands of God when He pleases to make use of it, and in
its absence a blessing still, when He pleases to do without it.
UNTO JESUS, and not to the
obstacles which meet us on our journey,
for as soon as we
stop to consider them they startle us, they stagger us, they overthrow us,
incapable as we are of understanding either the reason for which they are
permitted, or the means by which we may overcome them. The apostle was engulfed
as soon as he set himself to look at the billows, agitated by the tempest; so
long as he looked unto Jesus, he walked upon the waves as upon a rock. The more
difficult our task, the heavier our cross, the more needful it is that we
should look only unto Jesus.
UNTO JESUS, and not to the
temporal blessings which we enjoy.
To look first to
these blessings is to expose ourselves to be so captivated by them that they
hide from us the light of Him who gives them to us. To look first unto Jesus is
to receive from Him all these benefits, chosen by His wisdom, bestowed by His
love, a thousand times more precious because we take them at His hand, to
enjoy them in His fellowship and to use them to His glory.
UNTO JESUS, and not at our own
strength.
Our strength is
good only to glorify ourselves; to glorify God one must have the strength of
God.
UNTO JESUS, and not to our own
weakness.
By lamenting our
weakness, have we ever become more strong? By looking unto Jesus, His strength
will communicate itself to our hearts, and His praise will burst forth from our
lips.
UNTO JESUS, and not to our sins.
The contemplation
of sin only brings death; the contemplations of Jesus bring life. It was not
looking to his wounds, but looking to the serpent of brass that healed the
Israelite.
UNTO JESUS, and not to the law;
the law gives
commands, and does not give strength to perform them. The law always condemns,
and never pardons; to place ourselves again under the law is to withdraw
ourselves from grace. In proportion as we make our obedience the means of our
salvation, we lose our peace, our strength, our joy, because we have forgotten
that Jesus is "the end of the law for righteousness to every one that
believeth." As soon as the law has constrained us to seek Him, our only
Savior, it is for Him only to require of us obedience; an obedience which
extends to nothing less than our whole heart and our most secret thought, but
which has ceased to be an iron yoke and an insupportable burden, to become an
easy yoke and a light burden; an obedience which He makes at once pleasant and
binding; an obedience which He at once bestows and prescribes, and which,
rightly understood, is less a consequence of our salvation, than it is a part
of that salvation itself, and like all the rest, a grace.
UNTO JESUS, and not to what we
do for Him.
Too much taken up
with our work, we may forget our Master; it is possible to have the hands full
and the heart empty. Taken up with our Master, we cannot forget our work; if
the heart is filled with His love, how can the hands not be active in His
service?
UNTO JESUS, and not to the apparent
success of our efforts.
Apparent success is
not the measure of real success, and besides, God has not commanded us to succeed,
but to work. It is of our work that He will require an account and not of our
success; why then take thought about it before the time? It is for us to sow
the seed; it is for God to gather the fruit: if not today, it will be tomorrow;
if not by us, it will be by others. Even when success is granted, it is always
dangerous to let our eyes rest upon it complacently; on the one hand we are
tempted to attribute something of it to ourselves; on the other hand we thus
accustom ourselves to give way to relaxing our zeal when we cease to perceive
its effects, that is to say, at the very time when we ought to redouble our
energy. To look to success is to walk by sight; to look to Jesus, and to
persevere in following and serving Him in spite of all discouragements, is to
walk by faith.
UNTO JESUS, and not to the
spiritual gifts which we have received already,
or which we are receiving
now from Him. As for yesterday's grace, it passed away with yesterday's work;
we can no longer use it, we ought no longer to dwell upon it. As for today's
grace, given for the work of today, it is entrusted to us not to look at but to
use; not to make it ring in our hands and count ourselves rich, but to spend,
and to live poor, looking unto Jesus.
UNTO JESUS, and not to the degree
of grief which our sins have caused us,
or to the degree of
humiliation which they produce in us. If only we are so humbled by them as to
be no longer satisfied with ourselves, if only we are so grieved by them as to
look unto Jesus that He may deliver us from them, it is all He demands of us,
and it is moreover this look more than all besides, that will make our tears
flow and our pride fall.
UNTO JESUS, and not to the
liveliness of our joy,
or to the sensible
fervor of our love; otherwise if only this love seem to cool, if only this joy
chance to fail us—whether as the consequence of our sloth, or for the trial of
our faith, immediately, our emotion being lost, we shall think we have lost our
strength, and shall abandon ourselves to melancholy depression, if not to
culpable inactivity. Oh, rather let us remember that, if sometimes the emotion
and its sweetness fail us, faith and its power remain to us; and that we may be
able "always to abound in the work
of the Lord," let us look without ceasing not to our hearts, which are
always changing, but to Jesus Who is always the same!
UNTO JESUS, and not to our faith.
The last device of
the Adversary when he cannot make us look elsewhere, is to turn off our eyes
from our Savior to our faith, and thus to discourage us if it is weak, and to
fill us with pride if it is strong, and both in the one case and in the other
to enfeeble us: for it is not from faith that strength comes, but it is from
the Savior by faith; it is not by looking unto our look, it is by looking unto
Jesus.
UNTO JESUS; and it is from Him
and in Him that we
learn to know, not only without danger but for the good of our souls, that
which is good for us to know of the world and of ourselves, of our misery, of
our dangers, of our resources, of our victories; seeing all things in their
true light, because it is He Who makes us see them, and that only in the time
and in the measure, in which this knowledge shall bring forth in us the fruits
of humility and of wisdom, of gratitude and of courage, of watchfulness and of
prayer. All that is desirable for us to know, Jesus will teach us; all that we
do not learn from Him, it is better for us not to know.
LOOKING UNTO JESUS, while we remain upon
earth;
to Jesus from
moment to moment, without suffering ourselves to be distracted either by the
recollections of a past, which we should leave behind, or by the anticipations
of a future.
UNTO JESUS NOW,
if we have
never looked to Him.
UNTO JESUS ANEW,
if we have ceased
to do so.
UNTO JESUS ALONE.
UNTO JESUS AGAIN.
UNTO JESUS ALWAYS,
with a look more
and more earnest, more and more confident; "transformed into the image from glory to glory"; and thus
waiting for the hour when He shall call us to pass from earth to heaven, and
from time to eternity— the promised hour, the blessed hour, when at length
"we shall be like Him, for we shall
see Him as He is."
(This article was scanned from a tract which was previously
published by W.J. Berry in the periodical Old Faith Contender from Elon
College, NC. Brother Berry passed away in 1986. The Old Faith Contender is no
longer published. As far as I can tell from searching, the article is out of
print, except for two shorter versions I found. This excellent meditation was
largely unavailable until now. I also noticed that Chapel Library of Pensacola,
Florida is distributing it now in 2013 as I reprint it for you.)
ADOLPHE MONOD (1802-1856), French Protestant divine, was born
on the 21st of January 1802, in Copenhagen, where his father was pastor of the
French church. He was educated at Paris and Geneva, and began his life-work in
1825 as founder and pastor of a Protestant church in Naples, whence he removed
in 1827 to Lyons. Here his evangelical preaching, and especially a sermon on
the duties of communicants ("Qui doit cornmunier"?), led to his
deposition by the Catholic Minister of education and religion. Instead of
leaving Lyons he began to preach in a hall and then in a chapel. In 1836 he
took a professorship in the theological college of Montauban, removing in 1847
to Paris as preacher at the Oratoire. He died on the 6th of April, 1856. Monod
was undoubtedly the foremost Protestant preacher of 19th-century France. He
published three volumes of sermons in 1830, another, La Credulite de
l'incredule in 1844, and two more in 1855. Two further volumes appeared after
his death. His elder brother Frederic (1794-1863), who was influenced by Robert
Haldane, was also a distinguished French pastor, who with Count Gasparin
founded the Union of the Evangelical Churches of France; and Frederic's son
Theodore (b. 1836) followed in his footsteps.
The excellent book,
Adolpe
Monod’s Farewell (original English printing by Banner of Truth), is out
of print, but you can find used copies.
A revised edition published by Presbyterian
and Reformed titled Living in the Hope of Glory
by Adolphe Monod is available online from Amazon, Christian Book
Distributors, and P& R Publishing (all online).
THE
CROSS OUR GLORY
John L. Dagg
(1794-1884)
When Paul preached
the gospel of salvation, he knew nothing but Jesus Christ and him
crucified (I
Corinthians 2:2). He gloried in nothing, save the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ (Galatians
6:14).
In the cross of
Christ all the divine perfections are gloriously and harmoniously displayed.
Infinite love,
inviolable truth, and inflexible justice are all seen, in their brightest and
most
beautifully mingled
colors. The heavens declare the glory of God, but the glory of the cross outshines the
wonders of the skies. God's moral perfections are here displayed, which
are the highest glory of his character.
The cross of Christ
is our only hope of life everlasting. On him who hangs there, our
iniquities were laid, and
from his wounds flows the blood that cleanses from all sin (Isaiah 53:5-6).
Our faith views the bleeding victim, and peacefully relies on the great
atoning sacrifice. It views mercy streaming from the cross; and to the
cross it comes to obtain every needed blessing.
In the cross the
believer finds the strongest motive to holiness. As we stand before it,
and view the exhibition of the Saviour's love, we resolve to live to him who
died for us. The world ceases to charm. We become crucified to the world, and the world crucified to
us. Sin appears infinitely hateful. The cross is the place for
penitential tears. We look to him, whom we have pierced, and mourn
(Zechariah 12:10). The cross is a holy place, where we learn to be like
Christ, to hate sin as he hated it, and to delight in the law of God which was
in his heart (Psalm 40:8).
In the presence of
the cross we feel that omnipotent grace has hold of our heart; and we
surrender to dying
love. To the Christian heart, Christ crucified is the power of God, and
the wisdom of God (I Corinthians 1:24). The doctrine of the cross needs
no other demonstration of its divine origin, than its power to sanctify the
heart, and bring it into willing and joyful subjection to Christ.
Here's the message the Southern Baptists and all Baptists
need to get back to: THE CROSS ALONE IS OUR GLORY. We rejoice in this
message from one of the early presidents of Mercer University. wf
Manual of Theology,
1857, pp. 232-233, adapted by W. F. Bell 10/23/06
