Prize the Lord Jesus Christ
Mar 3rd, 2009 by Nathan White
“When Christ, who is our life, shall appear…” – Col 3:4″
Life here is, by a metonymy, put for the author of life.
We have shewed that Jesus Christ, He is first the author of a believer’s spiritual life… “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
Secondly, Jesus Christ, he is the matter of a believer’s spritual life…”I am the bread of life.”
Thirdly, Jesus Christ is the exerciser and actor of the spiritual life of believers… “Without me, ye can do nothing.”
Fourthly, the Lord Jesus Christ, he is the strengthener and the cherisher of a believers’s life… “In the day when I cried, thou didst answer me, and strengthen me with strength in my soul.”
Lastly, the Lord Jesus Christ, he is the completer, he is the finisher of the spiritual life of a saint… “the author and finisher of our faith.”
…If the Lord Jesus Christ be a believer’s life, then this serves to bespeak all believers highly to price the Lord Jesus. Oh, it is this Christ that is thy life; it is not they husband, it is not thy child, it is not this or that thing; neither is it this ordinance or that that is a believer’s life. No; it is the Lord Jesus Christ that is the author, that is the matter, that is the excerciser, that is the strengthener, that is the completer, of a believer’s life.
You prize great ones; the Lord Jesus Christ is great -He is King of kings, and Lord of lords. You prize others for their wisdom and knowledge: the Lord Jesus hath in Himself all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, Col 2:3. You prize others for their beauty: the Lord Jesus Christ is the beautifullest of ten thousand, Cant. 5:10. You prize others for their usefulness: the Lord Jesus Christ is the right hand of a believer, without which he can do nothing.
The believer may say of Christ as the philosopher said of the heavens…’Take away the heavens, and I shall be nobody’; so take away Jesus Christ, and a believer is nobody -nobody to perform any action, nobody to bear any affliction, nobody to conquer corruption, nobody to withstand temptation, nobody to improve mercies, nor nobody to joy in others’ grace. Oh, prize Jesus Christ!”
Thomas Brooks, Christ is the Life of Believers, Works, Volume 6, P319
And I...