I just want to take a minute to say “Merry Christmas” to you all. You’ve made a hard year easier to bear. Your prayers are greatly appreciated, and your support, and encouragement have been blessings from our wonderful God. To you all I wish every good and beautiful thing, and that your best year in life be the one ahead of you. I’m deeply appreciative for all that I’ve been given by you all.
On this most glorious day, let us praise the Lord for the love and grace He came to give us. Knowing what we were, and how we would treat Him, He came to earth to become one of us, to live as one of us, and to die for us. When I think of the way I love the Lord Jesus I’m ashamed for I know that I don’t give Him what He deserves, but when I think of the way He loves me, and what He did for me I’m humbled. I’m grateful and filled with joy that someone so undeserving of such love could be loved so much by someone so deserving of so much more than I can ever give.
December 25
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
Romans 8:35
OF whose love does the apostle speak? The believer’s love to Christ? On the contrary, it is Christ’s love to the believer. And this view of the subject makes all the difference in its influence upon our minds. What true satisfaction and real consolation, at least how small its measure, can the believer derive from a contemplation of his love to Christ? It is true, when sensible of its glow, and conscious of its power, he cannot but rejoice in any evidence, the smallest, of the work of the Holy Spirit in his soul. Yet this is not the legitimate ground of his confidence, not the proper source of his comfort. It is Christ’s love to him! And this is just the truth the Christian mind needs for its repose. To whom did Paul originally address this letter? To the saints of the early and suffering age of the Christian Church. And this truth-Christ’s love to His people-would be just the truth calculated to comfort, and strengthen, and animate them. To have declared that nothing should prevail to induce them to forsake Christ would have been but poor consolation to individuals who had witnessed many a fearful apostasy from Christ in others, and who had often detected the working of the same principle in themselves. Calling to mind the strong asseveration of Peter, “Although all shall be offended, yet will not I,” and remembering how their Master was denied by one, betrayed by another, and forsaken by all His disciples, their hearts would fail them. But let the apostle allure their minds from a contemplation of their love to Christ, to a contemplation of Christ’s love to them, assuring them, upon the strongest grounds, that whatever sufferings they should endure, or by whatever temptations they should be assailed, nothing should prevail to sever them from their interest in the reality, sympathy, and constancy of that love, and he has at once brought them to the most perfect repose. The affection, then, of which the apostle speaks, is the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
The love of Christ! such is our precious theme. Of it can we ever weary? Its greatness can we fully know? Its plenitude can we fully contain? Never. Its depths cannot be fathomed, its dimensions cannot be measured. It “passes knowledge.” All that Jesus did for His Church was but the unfolding and expression of His love. Traveling to Bethlehem-I see love incarnate. Tracking His steps as He went about doing good-I see love laboring. Visiting the house of Bethany-I see love sympathizing. Standing by the grave of Lazarus-I see love weeping. Entering the gloomy precincts of Gethsemane-I see love sorrowing. Passing on to Calvary-I see love suffering, bleeding, and expiring. The whole scene of His life is but an unfolding of the deep, awful, and precious mystery of redeeming love.
wayneaugden 