Maclaren: A little faith all undisproved

Saturday, February 18, 2012
Meditation:
    A servant girl saw [Peter] seated there in the firelight. She looked closely at him and said, “This man was with him.”
    But he denied it. “Woman, I don’t know him,” he said.
    A little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.”
    “Man, I am not!” Peter replied.
    About an hour later another asserted, “Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean.”
    Peter replied, “Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.
&nbs! p;   —Luke 22:56-62 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The dear Lord accepts imperfect surrender, ignorant faith and love, of which He knows that it will soon turn to denial. Oh! if He did not, what would become of us all? We reject half hearts; we will not have a friendship on which we cannot rely. The sweetness of vows is all sucked out of them to our apprehension, if we have reason to believe that they will be falsified in an hour. But the patient Master was willing to put up with what you and I will not put up with; and to accept what we reject; and be pleased that they gave Him even that. His “charity suffereth long, and is kind.” Let us not be afraid to bring even imperfect consecration... to His merciful feet.
    ... Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910), The Holy of Holies, London: Alexander & Shepheard, 1890, p. 364 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You accept my tarnished gifts. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Origen: outward sign, inward grace

Friday, February 17, 2012
    Feast of Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda, Martyr, 1977
Meditation:
    It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.
    —Romans 9:6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    “For not all those are Israelites who are of Israel” nor are all those straightway washed with the Holy Spirit who are washed with water; just as, conversely, those who are numbered among the catechumens are not all deprived and bereft of the Holy Spirit. For I find in the divine Scriptures several catechumens who were held worthy of the Holy Spirit and that others after receiving baptism were unworthy of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Cornelius was a catechumens and before he came to the water he desired to receive the Holy Spirit. Simon [Magus] had received baptism but he was refused the gift of the Holy Spirit because he approached the grace with hypocrisy.
    ... Origen (185?-254?), from Hom. in Numeros, iii.1, in The Early Christian Fathers, Henry Scowcroft Bettenson, London: Oxford University Press, 1969, p. 342 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, correct me whenever I use the Gospel instead of permitting the Gospel to use me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Ryle: hating sin

Thursday, February 16, 2012
Meditation:
    Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.
    —Romans 12:9 (NIV)
Quotation:
    How much we ought to hate sin! Instead of loving it, cleaving to it, dallying with it, excusing it, playing with it, we ought to hate it with a deadly hatred. Sin is the great murderer, and thief, and pestilence, and nuisance of this world. Let us make no peace with it. Let us wage a ceaseless warfare against it. It is “the abominable thing which God hateth.” Happy is he who is of one mind with God, and can say, I “abhor that which is evil.”
    ... J. C. Ryle (1816-1900), Expository thoughts on the Gospels, with the text complete, St. Luke, v. I, Ipswitch: William Hunt, 1858, p. 209 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, help me to hate my sin. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Faber: Thou hadst no youth, great God

Wednesday, February 15, 2012
    Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730
Meditation:
You, O LORD, reign forever;
    your throne endures from generation to generation.
    —Lamentations 5:19 (NIV)
Quotation:
            Thou hadst no youth, great God,
        An Unbeginning End Thou art;
            Thy glory in itself abode,
        And still abides in its own tranquil heart:
    No age can heap its outward years on Thee:
Dear God! Thou art Thyself Thine own eternity!
    ... Frederick William Faber (1814-1863), Hymns, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1877, p. 18-19 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You reign supreme forever. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Owen: the secret of communion with God

Tuesday, February 14, 2012
    Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885
    Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269
Meditation:
    Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?
    —Habakkuk 1:13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I come now to declare what it is wherein peculiarly and eminently the saints have communion with the Father; and this is LOVE,—free, undeserved, and eternal love. This the Father peculiarly fixes upon the saints; this they are immediately to eye in him, to receive of him, and to make such returns thereof as he is delighted withal. This is the great discovery of the gospel: for whereas the Father, as the fountain of the Deity, is not known any other way but as full of wrath, anger, and indignation against sin, nor can the sons of men have any other thoughts of him,—here he is now revealed peculiarly as love, as full of it unto us; the manifestation whereof is the peculiar work of the gospel.
    ... John Owen (1616-1683), Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost [1657], in Works of John Owen, v. II, London: Johnson & Hunter, 1851, p. 19 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, fill my heart with Your love. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Rees: the Spirit acts on humanity

Monday, February 13, 2012
Meditation:
    The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”
    —Luke 1:35 (NIV)
Quotation:
    One notable limitation of the sphere assigned to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, as compared with Hebrew and Jewish literature, is that it is nowhere described as the agent of creation or as a cosmic principle. It does not act upon external nature, and it stands in no causal relation to the physical universe. God made the world and all things therein (Acts 17:24; Rom. 1:20); and both Paul and John conceive Christ or the Logos as the medium of creation and as the reason and end of the universe (1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16; John 1:3; cf. Heb. 1:2). But in their teaching, as in the rest of the New Testament, the Holy Spirit acts only upon humanity. In one instance only was it conceived as acting in any way in the physical sphere, where it mediated the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ (Matt. 1:18; Luke 1:35), and that act lay within the sphere of human life. Otherwise its operations lay entirely within the field of conscious experience. The Christian Church realised the fact of the Spirit first as a living, present, overpowering, unique, and exalted experience.
    ... Thomas Rees (1869-1926), The Holy Spirit in Thought and Experience, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1915, p. 84 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your Spirit animates the whole church. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Machen: all is denied

Sunday, February 12, 2012
Meditation:
    When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
    —Luke 24:9-11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It makes very little difference how much or how little of the creeds of the Church the Modernist preacher affirms, or how much or how little of the Biblical teaching from which the creeds are derived. He might affirm every jot and tittle of the Westminster Confession, for example, and yet be separated by a great gulf from the Reformed Faith. It is not that part is denied and the rest affirmed; but all is denied, because all is affirmed merely as useful or symbolic and not as true.
    ... J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937), What is Faith? [1925], Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1962, p. 34 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your word is true. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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