Reformed Christian Studies

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "Looking for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." –Titus 2:13 A Savior 'to come' has been the hope of the Church of God in every age and dispensation. The Old Testament saints looked for His coming to save; the saints of the New Testament look for His coming to reign--even "The GLORIOUS appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." There are, in fact, three personal appearances of our Lord mentioned in the Scriptures. His first, when "He APPEARED to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." The second, "Now to APPEAR in the presence of God forever." The third, when "He shall APPEAR the second time without sin (that is, without a sin-offering) unto salvation." In each of these appearances of Jesus, my soul! you have a personal and precious interest. His past appearance wa

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection." –Phil. 3:10 Is there not some danger of lingering too exclusively at the cross, to the exclusion of the grave of Jesus? In other words, do we give the subject of Christ's RESURRECTION that place in our faith and meditation which we give to His Death, and which God gives it in the great scheme of our salvation? Essential and precious as the atoning Death of Jesus is, it had availed us nothing apart from His Resurrection. We needed more than death--we needed life! We needed more than the bond presented by Divine justice, and paid--we needed the seal of its acceptance on the part of God. This was given when God raised up Jesus from the dead, "who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification." Christ's Resurrection from the grave by the power of God was the Father's attestatio

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "The blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from every sin." 1 John 1:7 The blood of Jesus is everything. It is the central doctrine of our faith, the present and eternal life of our souls. There is no pardon, no salvation, no heaven but by blood--the blood of the Lord Jesus. Were we to relinquish every other revealed truth, and concentrate upon this one our supreme and lasting study, resolving all our knowledge of the Bible into an 'experimental and personal acquaintance' with ATONING BLOOD--as, like a purple thread, it runs from Genesis to Revelation, it would not be a too exaggerated view of this vital and momentous subject. The blood is everything to us--it is everything to God. He provided it, is satisfied with it, beholds it, and when He sees it on the soul, that soul becomes a living and a lovely soul in His sight. May our meditation on atoning blood exalt our view

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "This man receives sinners!" –Luke 15:2 Nothing gave greater offence to the scribes and Pharisees than the divine mission of Jesus to save sinners. No greater and more virulent accusation could they allege against Him, than that, He extended His compassionate regards to the vile and the wretched, admitting the most flagrant offenders to His mercy, and inviting the most notorious sinners to His fellowship. And yet this, His greatest reproach, was His highest honor. Pluck this jewel from His mediatorial crown, and it has lost its costliest gem. Extract this note from the "joyful sound," and you have hushed its sweetest melody. Remove this object of His mission from His coming, and you have reduced His incarnation, sufferings, and death to a gigantic waste. Oh, with what glory does the fact that, "This man receives sinners," invest the Son of God! How should our h

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "Jesus wept." –John 6:35 With what baptism of suffering was not Jesus baptized? What cup of sorrow did not He drink? Well may He ask, "Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" "Yes, Lord," every believing saint may reply, "by Your grace I AM ABLE; for, while without You I can do nothing, with You strengthening me I can do all things." Jesus replies, "You shall, indeed, drink of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with; for all My members shall be conformed to Me, their Head." "Dear Lord," responds the believing soul, "if affliction, temptation, and sorrow but mold me into Your image, and conform me to Your life, do with me as seems good in Your sight." There are few sorrows more bitter and more keenly felt, than the sorrow

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "I pray for them." –John 17:9 There is no part of Christ's Priestly office more soothing to the sick, tried, and suffering believer, than His intercessory supplication on their behalf. To know that we are borne upon the prayerful hearts of our fellow-Christians, in times when providences are trying, and our hearts are breaking, is unspeakably soothing. How much more so is the thought that Jesus, our merciful High Priest, Friend and Brother born for adversity, is praying for us in heaven--our names worn upon His heart, our woes and needs, sins and sorrows entwined with His prayers before the throne; that, His intercession for us is not a past, nor even an anticipatory intercession alone; but, that it is a present intercession, an intercession moment by moment, "NOW appearing in the presence of God for us." O sweet thought that, when some new trial comes, and som

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "Father, save Me from this hour." –John 12:27 There were some expressions of feeling in our Lord's life which can only be accounted for on the ground of His perfect humanity. Such, for example, as His apparent shrinking from suffering and death. And this, in its turn, can only find a solution in the fact that, He was not suffering as a common sufferer, but as the Sin-Bearer of His Church. We read of martyrs going to the stake displaying, apparently, much more fortitude than Jesus did in view of His death. The reason is obvious. In the case of the Christian martyr there was no burden of sin, no mental anguish increasing the tortures through which they passed to glory. The sense of God's forgiving love, and of acceptance in Christ, transformed the fiery chariot in which they ascended to heaven into a 'chariot of love'. But the case of our Lord Jesus was essentially and

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "He Himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses." –Matthew 8:17 How closely and tenderly is Jesus one with His Church! Take the subject of the present meditation as an illustration. There is not a chamber of pining sickness, nor a couch of suffering languor, at which His presence may not be experienced in all the divine power and human sympathy of His nature. The careful reader of His life must have been deeply impressed with the frequency with which His personal contact with bodily infirmity and disease is recorded, and with what promptness and skill He addressed Himself to the task of alleviation and cure. "And He healed people who had every kind of sickness and disease." And still His power and skill are needed, and still are the same. Into the shaded chamber of how many a sick one whom Jesus loves will these pages come, breathing, it is humbly prayed, the s

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "Lest we should offend." –Matt. 17:27 How truly was our Lord Jesus 'harmless' because He was 'undefiled.' In Him was no sin. That His Gospel should have been an offence to the scribes and Pharisees, and that His cross was an offence to the world, is no marvel. It was so then, it is so now, and it will be so to the end. But our Lord never, in any one instance, gave NEEDLESS offence. His heart was too tender, His disposition too kind, His nature too holy, maliciously and thoughtlessly to wound the feelings or offend the 'innocent sentiments' of others. Maligned by His enemies, misunderstood and neglected by His friends, yet on no occasion did He retort, revile, or wound; but, with the harmlessness of the dove and the innocence of the lamb. He opened not His mouth. Let us learn of Him in this holy feature of His character, study it closely, and imitate it fait

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises." –Hebrews 2:12 These are the words of Jesus quoted by the apostle from a prophetical psalm concerning Him. We have considered Him as teaching us by His example to pray; it may promote our personal holiness by considering Him as teaching us to PRAISE. Praise is an element of the gospel. It entered essentially, if not prominently, into our Lord's personal life. "A man of sorrow," though He was--oftener seen to weep than to smile--yet there were moments when gleams of joy shone upon His soul, and strains of praise breathed from His lips. Our Lord was of a THANKFUL spirit, and a thankful spirit is a praiseful spirit. How often the words were on His lips, "I thank You, O Father." He thanked God for the sovereignty of His grace for manifesting Himself to His di

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." –Luke 23:34 If the Christian precept of FORGIVENESS be estimated by the magnitude of the injury forgiven, then these words of Jesus present to our view a forgiveness of an inconceivable and unparalleled injury. The greatest crime man ever committed was the crucifixion of the Son of God; and yet, for the forgiveness of that crime, the Savior prays at the very moment of its perpetration, fully persuaded of the sovereign efficacy of the blood His enemies were now shedding, to blot out the enormous guilt of the sin of shedding it. This interceding prayer of Jesus for His murderers was in the sweetest harmony with all He had previously taught. On no gospel precept did He seem to lay greater stress than the precept of forgiveness of injury. "FORGIVE, and you shall be forgiven." "When you stand praying, FORGIVE, if yo

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed." –Mark 1:35 To whom can this impressive picture of high devotion properly apply but to Him whose life was one continuous act of prayer; whose vital and all-pervading atmosphere was communion with God? Jesus literally "walked with God." As man, He was deeply conscious of the spiritual necessities of man; and as the God-man Mediator, He felt the need of looking up to the Strong One for strength, to the Wise One for wisdom, to the Loving One for sympathy--in a word, to His Father in Heaven for the constant replenishing of His daily need from the boundless resources of His own Infinite Being, for the great work His Father had given Him to do. Wise will it be for us to consider Jesus touching the article of prayer. If He, the sinless One, He the mighty O

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "Now My soul is deeply troubled." –John 12:27 In this lay our Lord's greatest suffering--His soul-sorrow. Compared with this, the lingering, excruciating tortures of the cross--the extended limbs, the quivering nerves, the bleeding wounds, the burning thirst--were, as nothing. This was physical, the other spiritual; the one, the suffering of the body, the other, the anguish of the soul. Let a vessel traversing the ocean keep afloat, and she may still plough the deep and brave the tempest; but let the proud waves burst in upon her and she sinks. So long as our blessed Lord endured outwardly the gibes and insults and calumnies of men, not a complaint escaped His lips; but, when the wrath of God, endured as the Surety-Head of His people, entered within His holy soul, then the wail of agony rose strong and piercing--"Save Me, O God, for the floodwaters are up to My neck. Deep

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." –John 16:32 There is a sweetness in every cup, a light in every cloud, a presence in every solitude of the Christian's experience. It was so with Jesus, who will mold all His followers like unto Himself. We have just considered Him in loneliness--forsaken by man, deserted by God. But now comes the alleviation--the sweetening of the bitter, the gilding of the cloud, the soothing of the solitude. He was never less alone than at the moment that He mournfully said to His retiring disciples, "You shall leave me alone;" for, as if immediately recovering Himself from the painful sense of MAN'S DESERTION, He added, "And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me." No; Jesus never was really alone. Shunning human society, and plunging into solitude the most profound, as He often did, His Father's

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "And shall leave me alone." –John 16:32 Jesus, for the most part, lived a lonely and solitary life. It was of necessity so. There was much in His mission, more in His character, still more in His person, that would baffle the comprehension, and estrange from Him the interest and the sympathy of the world; compelling Him to retire within the profound solitude of His own wondrous Being. The TWOFOLD NATURE of Jesus contributed essentially to the loneliness of His life. The 'great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh,' would of itself confine Him to an orbit of being infinitely remote from all others. Few could sympathize with His perfect sinlessness as man, fewer still with His essential dignity as God. As it was with the Lord, so, in a measure, is it with the disciple. The spiritual life of the renewed man is a profound mystery to the unregenerate. Strangers exper

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" ~ Matt. 27:46 My soul! was it not enough that your Lord should be forsaken of man in His sorrow? Was it essential to the accomplishment of your salvation, and to your support and comfort in seasons of soul desertion and darkness, that He should likewise be forsaken of God? Yes! it must be so. The history of the universe never presented such an abandonment--a being so holy, and yet so entirely and so severely forsaken of God and man--as that which Jesus was now experiencing upon the accursed tree. With what a depth of emphasis that word must have sounded from His pale lips, quivering with agony--"'My God, my God, why have YOU FORSAKEN me?' You, my Father--You whose glory I am vindicating, whose government I am honoring, whose Name I am glorifying, whose Church I am redeeming--why, my God, my God, have YOU forsaken me?

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "Then all the disciples forsook Him, and fled." –Matt. 26:56 What a sad contrast does this picture present to the one we have just been viewing--"Jesus, our fellow-sufferer." His time of suffering has now come, but, lo! "all His disciples have forsaken Him, and fled." Is there nothing, my soul, in this affecting and significant fact from which you may gather much that is instructive and consolatory concerning your own condition? We have been contemplating the sympathy of Jesus with His afflicted saints. And oh, what heart can conceive, or imagery portray, the reality, humanity, and tenderness of that sympathy! In all our afflictions He is afflicted, in all our trials He is tried, in all our persecutions He is persecuted, in all our temptations He is tempted. My soul! there is no sympathy among men, saints, or angels, that can compare with Christ's. And

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "He was oppressed." –Isa. 53:7 The Hebrew word here rendered "oppressed," signifies to exact, or, to demand payment. It is so rendered in the following passage--"The creditor shall not EXACT of his neighbor, nor of his brother, in the year of release." The word taskmaster comes from the same root; and as there is no noun prefixed to the original, the words may be fitly rendered--it was exacted of Him, demanded, required, and He was 'afflicted,' or, He answered. A truer view of the office and work of the Lord Jesus does not exist; nor is there a more gracious and comforting point of light in which a poor, sin-burdened, guilt-oppressed soul can study Him. By nature all are God's debtors, owing Him supreme love, perfect holiness, entire obedience, and unreserved service--yes, our whole being, body, soul, and spirit. To meet this great debt, we a

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "He was afflicted." –Isa. 53:7 For this Jesus was born. His mission to our world involved it. In the righteous arrangement of God, sin and suffering, even as holiness and happiness, are one and inseparable. He came to destroy the works of the devil; and sin, being Satan's master-work, Jesus could only destroy it as He Himself suffered, just as He could only 'abolish death' as He Himself died. He was truly "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." In the gospel according to Isaiah--the fifty-third chapter of which might have been written by a historian recording the event of the Savior's sufferings after it had transpired, rather than by a prophet predicting it seven hundred years before it took place--the circumstances of our Lord's afflictive life are portrayed with a fidelity of narration and vividness of description which can only find their e

CONSIDER JESUS Thoughts for Daily Duty, Service, and Suffering by Octavius Winslow, 1870 "Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." –Matt. 4:1 It is a consolatory reflection to the child of God that, since the temptations of Satan constitute so severe, yet so essential a part of his spiritual training for glory, Jesus, his Surety-Head, was Himself subjected to a like discipline, equally as essential, yet infinitely more severe, to the completeness of His mediatorial character as the High Priest "touched with the feeling of our infirmities." My soul! devoutly consider your Jesus in this interesting point of light, and with faith's lowly hand pluck a rich cluster of refreshing fruit from Him, your living, life-giving, and life-sustaining Vine. Never forget that, through electing love, and most free and sovereign grace, you are an engrafted branch of that Vine; and that all the fruit that grows upon, and that all th