As the years pass, I come to a greater and greater realization of how much I must depend upon the grace of God for my salvation. My righteousness appears less and less acceptable in my sight: and if it looks poor in my sight, how awful it must appear in God’s sight! My will and determination do not appear half so strong as they once did, and I feel a greater need to rely upon the unchangeable will of God if I am to persevere. This business of growing in grace is not at all what I once thought it would be. Rather than growing stronger, it seems I am growing weaker. Rather than growing more self-sufficient, it appears that I am growing more Christ – dependent. My utter dependence on Christ for all things is more evident to me now than before. I suppose this is why Peter united growing in grace with growing in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus.  So, if your desire is to grow in grace, then prepare yourself to diminish; prepare yourself to reduce in the flesh, for growth in grace is a growth in “Christ being formed in you,” which always follows the old pattern “He must increase, I must decrease.”

-Joe Terrell

First, By this word grace, we are to understand God’s free, sovereign, good
pleasure, whereby he acteth in Christ towards his people. Grace and mercy therefore are terms that have their distinct significations; mercy signifies pitifulness, or a running over of infinite bowels to objects in a miserable and helpless condition. But grace signifies that God still acts in this as a free agent, not being wrought upon by the misery of the creature, as a procuring cause; but of his own princely mind.

Were there no objects of pity among those that in the old world perished by the flood, or
that in Sodom were burned with fire from heaven? doubtless, according to our
apprehension, there were many: but Noah, and he only, found grace in God’s eyes; not because that of himself he was better than the rest, but God acted as a gracious prince towards him, savory, significant, and suitable, that this form of speaking is become famous among Christians, and will be used to the end of time and let him share in mercy of his own sovereign will and pleasure.

-John Bunyan

“May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble. May the name of
the God of Jacob set you up on high, send you help from the
sanctuary, grant you support from Zion.” Psalm 20:1, 2
When the soul has to pass through the trying hour of temptation,
it needs help from the sanctuary. All other help leaves the soul
just where it found it. Help is sent from the sanctuary because his
name has been from all eternity, registered in the Lamb’s book of
life—engraved upon the palms of His hands—borne on His
shoulder—and worn on His heart. Communications of life and
grace from the sanctuary produce spirituality and heavenlymindedness.
The breath of heaven in his soul draws his affections
upward—weans him from earth—and makes him a pilgrim and a
sojourner here below, looking for a city with eternal
foundations—a city designed and built by God!

-J.C Philpot

It is our dim, scanty, and imperfect knowledge of the Lord Jesus
Christ in His eternal love—and in His grace and glory—which
leaves us so often cold, lifeless, and dead in our affections towards
Him. If there were more blessed revelations to our soul of the
Person and work, grace and glory, beauty and blessedness of the
Lord Jesus Christ—it is impossible but that we would more and
more warmly and tenderly fall in love with Him—for He is the
most glorious object that the eyes of faith can see! He fills heaven
with the resplendent beams of His glorious majesty—and has
ravished the hearts of thousands of His dear family upon earth by
the manifestations of His bleeding, dying love. Just in proportion
to our personal, spiritual, experimental knowledge of Him, will be
our love to Him.

-J.C Philpot

Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked? (Ecclesiastes 7:13)

It cannot be questioned but the crook in the lot, considered as a crook, is a penal evil, whatever it is for the matter of it; that is, whether the thing in itself, its immediate
cause and occasion, are sinful or not, it is certainly a punishment of affliction. Now, as it may be, as such, holily and justly brought on us, by our Sovereign Lord and Judge, so he
expressly claims the doing or making of it. “Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord has not done it?” Wherefore, since there can be no penal evil but of God’s making, and the crook in the lot is such an evil, it is necessarily concluded to be of
God’s making.

Secondly, it is evident, from the Scripture doctrines of divine providence, that God brings about every man’s lot, and all the parts of it. He sits at the helm of human affairs, and turns them about in whatever way he lists. “Whatever the Lord pleased, that He did in heaven and in earth, in the seas and all deep places. ” There is not anything whatever befalls us without his overruling hand. The same providence that brought us out of the womb, brings us to, and fixes us in the condition and place allotted for us, by him who “has
determined the times and the bounds of our habitation. ” It overrules the smallest and most casual things about us, such as “hairs of our head being all numbered;” a “lot cast into the lap. ” Yea, the free acts of our will, by which we choose for ourselves: for even “the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as rivers of water. “And the whole steps we make, and which others make in reference to us; for “the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walks to direct his steps. ” And this, whether these steps causing the crook are deliberate and sinful ones, such as Joseph s brothers selling him into Egypt; or whether they are undesigned, such as manslaughter purely casual, as when one hewing wood kills his neighbor with “the head of the ax slipping from the helve. ” For there is a holy and wise providence that governs the sinful and the heedless actions of men, as a rider does a lame horse, of whose halting, not he, but the horse’s lameness is the true and proper cause; wherefore in the former of these cases, God is said to have sent Joseph into Egypt, and in the latter, to deliver one into his neighbor’s hand.
Lastly, God has, by an eternal decree, immovable as mountains of brass appointed the whole of every one’s lot, the crooked part of it, as well as the straight. By the same eternal
decree, by which the high and low parts of the earth, the mountains and the valleys, were appointed, are the heights and the depths, the prosperity and adversity, in the lot of the
inhabitants of there determined; and they are brought about, in time, in a perfect agreeableness there.

-Thomas Boston

A friend of mine once asked a certain divine in London what he thought of the law as the believer’s only rule of life? He replied, “The believer must look with one eye to Christ, and with the other to the law.” But he brought no more proof from the word of God than this author has, who attempts to prove it by the fitness of things. My friend replied, “Then every believer must squint.” However, there is no call for squinting in this matter; Christ says, “Look unto me, and be saved, all ye ends of the earth;” and adds, “I will keep that man in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on me ” and Paul tells us to “run the race set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Looking with one eye to the law, and with the other to Christ, is erring from wisdom’s rule of direction; which is, “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.”

William Huntington

What is the heresy of Rome, but the addition of something to the perfect merits of Jesus Christ—the bringing in of the works of the flesh, to assist in our justification? And what is the heresy of Arminianism but the addition of something to the work of the Redeemer? Every heresy, if brought to the touchstone, will discover itself here. I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus. Such a gospel I abhor.

-C.H Spurgeon

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Romans 8:4

…Believers are to be justified, not by works of righteousness which they have done, of whatever description, but solely by faith in Jesus Christ, in whom their reconciliation with God is complete. It is this grand truth which, from the beginning of the Epistle, he had been exhibiting, for the conviction and establishment in the faith of those whom he addressed. It is indeed a truth in which Christians need to be fully instructed, which they are all apt to let slip out of their minds, but by which they are saved, if they keep it in memory. There is nothing which so much retards them in their course as their proneness to walk according to the flesh, in seeking to establish their own righteousness; and nothing more powerfully tends, when giving way to it in any degree, to bring them into bondage, to lead them to serve in the oldness of the letter, and not in newness of spirit, and to mar their joy and peace in believing.

-Robert Haldane

“Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.” 1 Corinthians 3:18

The fruit and effect of divine teaching is to cut in pieces, and root up all our fleshly wisdom, strength, and righteousness. God never means to patch a new piece upon an old garment. All our wisdom, our strength, our righteousness must be torn to pieces! It must all be plucked up by the roots—that a new wisdom, a new strength, and a new righteousness may arise upon its ruins.

But until the Lord is pleased to teach us, we never can part with our own righteousness—never give up our own wisdom—never abandon our own strength. These things are a part and parcel of ourselves—so ingrained within us—so innate in us—so growing with our growth—that we cannot willingly part with an atom of them until the Lord Himself breaks them up, and plucks them away.

Then, as He brings into our souls some spiritual knowledge of our own dreadful corruptions and horrible wickedness—our righteousness crumbles away at the divine touch. As He leads us to see and feel our ignorance and folly in a thousand instances, and how unable we are to understand anything aright but by divine teaching—our wisdom fades away. As He shows us our inability to resist temptation and overcome sin, by any exertion of our own— our strength gradually departs, and we become like Samson, when his locks were cut off.

Upon the ruins, then, of our own wisdom, righteousness and strength, does God build up Christ’s wisdom, Christ’s righteousness, and Christ’s strength. But only so far as we are favored with this special teaching are we brought to pass a solemn sentence of condemnation upon our own wisdom, strength, and righteousness—and sincerely seek after the Lord’s.

-J.C Philpot

Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

Friends there is only one God.  Though there are many false gods of the imagination of men,  there is only one true and living God.  And God here by the mouth of His prophet declares who He is, so that there is no confusion or mistaking Him for the gods of men.  God declares to us here that He is Sovereign.  God tells us that He is altogether in a class by Himself, for He has decreed the end of all things from the beginning.  Before anything was created, God dwelling alone in eternity by Himself, without the counsel of any of His creation purposed all things that should happen in time and eternity after the counsel of His own Sovereign Free will.  All things that have been done and all things that are being done, and all things that shall be done in time were purposed of God from eternity.

Therefore, seeing that the only True God has purposed ALL THINGS before any of them were made, who then shall prevent Him from accomplishing All His decrees?   If your god can be thwarted by the will or works of men, then your god IS NOT GOD!  Our God who is Sovereign in ALL THINGS (in the creation of the world, in the providence of time and especially in the salvation of His elect people that Jesus Christ has redeemed) nothing shall stop Him from Doing ALL His sovereign will.

God says that He WILL DO ALL His pleasure.  There is nothing that God was pleased to do that He has not or will not do.  God cannot deny Himself, for all He is and all He does is Holy and Good.

Therefore, consider that it pleased the Father to elect a people to be His Holy children. (Ephesians 1:3-6) It pleased the Father to give them to Jesus Christ the Son of God. (John 6:36-40)  It pleased the Father that Jesus Christ should be made all their wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1:30-31) It pleased the Son of God to accomplish all their righteousness and give Himself a ransom for their sins. (Isaiah 42:21; 1 Timothy 2:3-6) It pleased the Holy Spirit of God to come at the appointed time and give to us life and faith and to keep us until we are safe in heaven with Him. (John 3:8-9; 2 Timothy 1:9; 1 Peter 1:3-5) This is our Sovereign God; Worship Him Alone for He Alone is God.

-Fred Evans