Reformed Christian Studies

GOD'S WAY OF PEACE A BOOK FOR THE ANXIOUS BY: HORATIUS BONAR, D.D. CHAPTER XII. JESUS ONLY You say, “I am not satisfied with the motives that have led me to seek Christ; they are selfish.” That is very likely. The feelings of a newly awakened sinner are not disinterested, neither can they be so. You have gone in quest of salvation from a sense of danger, or fear of the wrath to come, or a desire to obtain the inheritance of glory. These are some of the motives by which you are actuated. How could it be otherwise? God made you with these fears and hopes; and he appeals to them in his word. When he says, “Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?” he is appealing to your fears. When he sets eternal life before you, and the joys of an endless kingdom, he is appealing to your hopes. And when he presents these motives, he expects you to be moved by them. To act upon such motives, then, cannot be wrong. Nay, not to act upon them, would be to harden yourself against God’s most

GOD'S WAY OF PEACE A BOOK FOR THE ANXIOUS BY: HORATIUS BONAR, D.D. CHAPTER XI. INSENSIBILITY You say that you do not feel yourself to be a sinner; that you are not anxious enough; that you are not penitent enough. Be it so. Let me, however, ask you such questions as the following: – 1. Does your want of feeling alter the gospel? Does it make the good news less free, less blessed, less suitable? Is it not glad tidings of God’s love to the unworthy, the unlovable, the insensible? Your not feeling your burdens does not affect the nature of the gospel, nor change the gracious character of Him from whom it comes. It suits you as you are, and you suit it exactly. It comes up to you on the spot, and says, Here is a whole Christ for you, – a Christ containing everything you need. Your acquisition of feeling would not qualify you for it, nor bring it nearer, nor buy its blessings, nor make you more welcome, nor persuade God to do anything for you that he is not at this moment m

GOD'S WAY OF PEACE A BOOK FOR THE ANXIOUS BY: HORATIUS BONAR, D.D. CHAPTER X. THE WANT OF POWER TO BELIEVE You say, I know all these things, yet they bring me no peace. I doubt much in that case whether you do know them; and I should like you to doubt upon this point. You take for granted much too easily that you know them. Seeing they do not bring to your soul the peace which God says they are sure to do, your wisest way would be to suspect the correctness of your knowledge. If a trusty physician prescribes a sure medicine for some complaint, and if on trial I find that what I have taken does me no good, I begin to suspect that I have some wrong medicine instead of that which he prescribed. Now are you sure that the truth which, you say you know, is the very gospel of the grace of God? Or is it only something like it? And may not the reason of your getting no peace from that which you believe, just be, because it contains none? You have got hold of many of the good things,

GOD'S WAY OF PEACE A BOOK FOR THE ANXIOUS BY: HORATIUS BONAR, D.D. CHAPTER IX. BELIEVE JUST NOW You are in earnest now; but I fear you are making your earnestness your Christ, and actually using it as a reason for not trusting Christ immediately. You think your earnestness will lead on to faith, if it be but intense enough, and long enough persisted in. But there is such a thing as earnestness in the wrong direction; earnestness in unbelief, and a substitution of earnestness for simple faith in Jesus. You must not soothe the alarms of conscience by this earnestness of yours. It is unbelieving earnestness; and that will not do. What God demands is simple faith in the record which he has given you of his Son. You say, “I can’t give him faith, but I can give him earnestness; and by giving him earnestness, I hope to persuade him to give me faith.” This is self-righteousness. It shows that you regard both faith and earnestness as something to be done in order to please God, a

GOD'S WAY OF PEACE A BOOK FOR THE ANXIOUS BY: HORATIUS BONAR, D.D. CHAPTER VIII. BELIEVE AND BE SAVED It is the Holy Spirit alone that can draw us to the cross and fasten us to the Saviour. He who thinks he can do without the Spirit, has yet to learn his own sinfulness and helplessness. The gospel would be no good news to the dead in sin, if it did not tell of the love and power of the divine Spirit, as explicitly as it announces the love and power of the divine Substitute. But, while keeping this in mind, we may try to learn from Scripture what is written concerning the bond which connects us individually with the cross of Christ; making us thereby partakers of the pardon and the life which that cross reveals. Thus then it is written, “By grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” Faith then is the link, the one link, between the sinner and the Sin-bearer. It is not faith, as a work or exercise of our minds, which must

GOD'S WAY OF PEACE A BOOK FOR THE ANXIOUS BY: HORATIUS BONAR, D.D. CHAPTER VII. THE WORD OF THE TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL How shall I come before God, and stand in his presence, with happy confidence on my part, and gracious acceptance on his? This is the sinner’s question; and he asks it because he knows that there is guilt between him and God. No doubt this was Adam’s question when he stitched his fig leaves together for a covering. But he was soon made to feel that the fig leaves would not do. He must be wholly covered, not in part only; and that by something which even God’s eye cannot see through. As God comes near, the uselessness of his fig leaves is felt, and he rushes into the thick foliage of Paradise to hide from the Divine eye. The Lord approaches the trembling man, and makes him feel that his hiding place will not do. Then he began to tell him what will do. He announces a better covering and a better hiding place. He reveals himself as the God of grace, the God w