Nick Roark's Blog, page 28

“The Man of Joy” by B.B. Warfield

“Jesus came into the world on a mission of ministering mercy to the lost, giving His life as a ransom for many (Luke 19:10; Mark 10:4; Matt. 20:28).

And from the beginning He set His feet steadfastly in the path of suffering (Matt. 4:3ff; Luke 4:3ff) which He knew led straight onward to death (John 2:19, 3:14; Matt. 12:40; Luke 12:49-50; Matt. 9:15; Mark 2:1-9; Luke 5:34).

Joy He had: but it was not the shallow joy of mere pagan delight in living, nor the delusive joy of a hope destined to failure; but the deep exultation of a conqueror setting captives free.

This joy underlay all His sufferings and shed its light along the whole thorn-beset path which was trodden by His torn feet.

We hear but little of it, however, as we hear but little of His sorrows: the narratives are not given to descriptions of the mental states of the great actor whose work they illustrate.

We hear just enough of it to assure us of its presence underlying and giving its color to all His life.

If our Lord was ‘the Man of Sorrows,’ He was more profoundly still ‘the Man of Joy.‘”

–Benjamin B. Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1950), 125-126.

“Jesus Christ plenty for everybody” by J.C. Ryle

“The whole world is full of restlessness and disappointment, weariness and emptiness.

The very faces of worldly men let out the secret; their countenances give evidence that the Bible is true; they find no rest.

“Vanity and vexation of spirit” is the true report of all here below. “Who will show us any good?” the bitter confession of many now, just as in David’s time.

Take warning, young men and women. Do not think that happiness is to be found in any earthly thing.

Do not have to learn this by bitter experience. Realize it while young, and do not waste your time in hewing out “cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”

But Jesus offers rest to all who will come to Him. “Come unto Me,” He says, “and I will give you rest.”

He will give it.

He will not SELL it, as the Pharisee supposes—so much rest and peace in return for so many good works. He gives it freely to every coming sinner, without money and without price.

He will not LEND, as the Arminian supposes, so much peace and rest, all to be taken away by-and-by if we do not please Him; He gives it for ever and for aye. His gifts are “without repentance.”

“But what kind of rest will Jesus give me?” some men will say. “He will not give me freedom from labour and trouble. What kind of rest will He give?”

Listen a few minutes, and I will tell you.

He will give you rest from fear of sin. The sins of the man who comes to Christ are completely taken away; they are forgiven, pardoned, removed, blotted out. They can no longer appear in condemnation against him. They are sunk in the depths of the sea. Ah! brethren, that is rest.

He will give you rest from fear of law. The law has no further claim on the man who has come to Christ. Its debts are all paid; its requirements are all satisfied. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of law. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect in the day of Judgment?” No believer can run his eye over the fifth chapter of Matthew, and not feel comforted. And that is rest.

He will give you rest from fear of hell. Hell cannot touch the man who has come to Christ. The punishment has been borne, the pain and suffering have been undergone by another, and he is free. And that, too, is rest.

He will give you rest from fear of the devil. The devil is mighty, but he cannot touch those who have come to Christ. Their Redeemer is strong. He will set a hedge around them that Satan cannot overthrow. He may sift and buffet and vex, but he cannot destroy such. And that, too, is rest.

He will give you rest from fear of death. The sting of death is taken away when a man comes to Christ. Jesus has overcome death, and it is a conquered enemy. The grave loses half its terrors when we think it is “the place where the Lord lay.” The believer’s soul is safe whatever happens to his body. His flesh rests in hope. This also is rest.

He will give you rest in the storm of affliction. He will comfort you with comfort the world knows nothing of. He will cheer your heart, and sustain your fainting spirit. He will enable you to bear loss patiently, and to hold your peace in the day of wrath. Oh! this is rest indeed.

I know well, brethren, that believers do not enjoy so much rest as they might. I know well that they “bring a bad report of the land,” and live below their privileges.

It is their unbelief; it is their indwelling sin. There was a well near Hagar, but she never saw it.

There was safety for Peter on the water, but he did not look to Jesus, and was afraid. And just so it is with many believers: they give way to needless fear—are straitened in themselves.

But still there is a real rest and peace in Christ for all who come to Him. The man that fled to the city of refuge was safe when once within the walls, though perhaps at first he hardly believed it; and so it is with the believer.

And, after all, the most downcast and complaining child of God has got a something within him he would not exchange for all the world.

I never met with one, however low and desponding, who would consent to part with the rest and peace he had, however small. Like Naboth he prizes his little vineyard like a kingdom. And this shows me that coming to Christ can give rest.

Be advised, every one of you who is now seeking rest in the world. Be advised, and come and seek rest in Christ.

You have no home, no refuge, no hiding-place, no portion. Sickness and death will soon be upon you, and you are unprepared.

Be advised, and seek rest in Christ. There is enough in Him and to spare.

Who has tried and did not find? A dying Welsh boy said, in broken English, “Jesus Christ plenty for everybody.”

Know your privileges, all you who have come to Christ.

You have something solid under foot and something firm under hand. You have a rest even now, and you shall have more abundantly.”

–J.C. Ryle, The Christian Race and Other Sermons (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2024), 64–66.

“Nothing more remains to be done” by Jerry Bridges

“It is not necessary in your Christian growth that you make expiation a part of your vocabulary, but it is necessary that you make the concept of sin’s removal, symbolized by the scapegoat, a part of your thinking and theology.

Only then, as we saw in Hebrews 9:14, will you be freed from your guilt so that you can serve God effectively.

Do you grasp in both your heart and mind what the message of the scapegoat says to you?

Do you believe that Jesus really has carried away your sin and that God has indeed removed it as far as the east is from the west?

Do you by faith lay hold of the glorious truth that God has put all your sin behind His back, that He has blotted it from His record and remembers it no more?

Do you rejoice in the fact that God has hurled your sin into the depths of the sea and will never count it against you?

Do you see God showing us in all these wonderful Old Testament metaphors that the work of Christ is infinitely greater than the greatest depth of your sin?

The work of Christ is finished. Nothing more remains to be done.

God’s wrath has been propitiated. Our sins have been removed.

The question is, will we appreciate it, not only at our initial moment of salvation, but for our day-to-day acceptance with God?

It is only as we do the latter that we will truly begin to appreciate the glory of the cross and the unsearchable riches of Christ.”

–Jerry Bridges, The Gospel for Real Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2003), 67–68.

“The beams of infinite brightness” by John Owen

“We know so little of God, because it is God who is thus to be known,— that is, He who hath described Himself to us very much by this, that we cannot know Him.

What else doth God intend where He calls himself invisible, incomprehensible, and the like?— that is, He whom we do not, cannot, know as He is.

And our farther progress consists more in knowing what he is not, than what he is.

Thus is He described to be immortal, infinite,— that is, he is not, as we are, mortal, finite, and limited.

Hence is that glorious description of Him, 1 Timothy 6:16:

“Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see.”

His light is such as no creature can approach unto.

He is not seen, not because He cannot be seen, but because we cannot bear the sight of Him.

The light of God, in whom is no darkness, forbids all access to Him by any creature whatever.

We who cannot behold the sun in its glory are too weak to bear the beams of infinite brightness.”

–John Owen, “The Mortification of Sin,” The Works of John Owen, Volume 6: On Temptation and Sin (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1684/2000), 6: 66.

“He uncomplicates us” by Sinclair Ferguson

The New Testament places massive emphasis on the importance of love. We learn that from the Lord Jesus in John 15:

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you… This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:9, 12).

Paul devotes a whole chapter to love in 1 Corinthians 13, explaining why love is the greatest.

And the Apostle John tells us, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7).

But what is love? Ultimately, it’s not an emotion so much as forgetting about ourselves and living for others, being like Jesus in our devotion and care.

And yes, love is also all the things Paul says it is in 1 Corinthians 13.

It’s being patient and kind, not envying or boasting, not being arrogant or rude.

It’s being taken up with devotion to others, and that is why it doesn’t insist on its own way.

It’s not irritable or resentful.

It doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

None of these things is actually complicated, is it?

But the problem is, we are desperately complicated by our sin. But when the Holy Spirit begins to work in us, He uncomplicates us.

He begins to fill us with love for others and forgetfulness of self.

I can’t help but think about a comment made by Peter the Venerable, the abbot of the great monastery of Cluny in the medieval days, about his much more famous friend, Bernard of Clairvaux:

“Bernard, you do all the difficult and complicated things well. But you’re failing in the simple thing. You don’t love.”

When I first read these words, they were like an arrow in my heart– doing the difficult things, but not doing the simple thing well.

I wonder if that is true of you. Perhaps you almost pride yourself in doing the difficult things well.

But have you been uncomplicated by the Lord Jesus?

Are you doing the simple thing? Do you have love?”

–Sinclair B. Ferguson, Things Unseen: One Year of Reflections on the Christian Life (Sanford, FL: Ligonier, 2024), 64-65.

“This is the summit of all blessing” by Horatius Bonar

“The life of our surety was one of sorrow and unrest, for our penalty lay upon Him; but when this penalty was paid by His death, He ‘rested.’

The labour and the burden were gone; and as one who knew what entering into rest was (Heb. 4:10), He could say to us, ‘I will give you rest.’

He carried His life-long burden to the cross, and there laid it down, ‘resting from His labors.’

Or rather, it was there that the law severed the connection between Him and the burden; loosing it from His shoulders, that it might be buried in His grave.

From that same cross springs the sinner’s rest, the sinner’s disburdening, the sinner’s absolution and justification.

Not for a moment are we to lose sight of the blessings flowing from resurrection, or to overlook and undervalue the new position into which we are brought by it.

The ‘power of His resurrection’ (Phil. 3:10) must be fully recognized and acted on for its own results.

We are crucified with Christ. With Him we died, were buried, and rose again.

‘Risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead’ (Col. 2:10). ‘He hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus’ (Eph. 2:5, 6).

Such are the terms in which the apostle describes the benefits of Christ’s resurrection, and in which he reveals to us our oneness with Him who died and rose.

But nowhere does he separate our justification from the cross; nowhere does he speak of Christ meeting our legal responsibilities by His resurrection; nowhere does he ascribe to His resurrection that preciousness in whose excellency we stand complete.

Acceptance, and completeness in our standing before God, are attributed to the cross and blood and death of the Divine Substitute.

Poor as my faith in this Substitute may be, it places me at once in the position of one to whom ‘God imputeth righteousness without works.’

God is willing to receive me on the footing of His perfection; and if I am willing to be thus received, in the perfection of another with whom God is well pleased, the whole transaction is completed.

I AM JUSTIFIED BY HIS BLOOD. ‘As He is, so am I (even) in this world,’—even now, with all my imperfections and evils.

To be entitled to use another’s name, when my own name is worthless; to be allowed to wear another’s raiment, because my own is torn and filthy; to appear before God in another’s person,—the person of the Beloved Son,— this is the summit of all blessing.

The sin-bearer and I have exchanged names, robes, and persons! I am now represented by Him, my own personality having disappeared; He now appears in the presence of God for me (Heb. 9:24).

All that makes Him precious and dear to the Father has been transferred to me. His excellency and glory are seen as if they were mine; and I receive the love, and the fellowship, and the glory, as if I had earned them all.

So entirely one am I with the sin-bearer, that God treats me not merely as if I had not done the evil that I have done; but as if I had done all the good which I have not done, but which my substitute has done.

In one sense I am still the poor sinner, once under wrath; in another I am altogether righteous, and shall be so for ever, because of the Perfect One, in whose perfection I appear before God.

Nor is this a false pretense or a hollow fiction, which carries no results or blessings with it.

It is an exchange which has been provided by the Judge, and sanctioned by law; an exchange of which any sinner upon earth may avail himself and be blest.”

–Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall a Man be Just with God? (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1874/1993), 42-45.

“A mutable god is of the dunghill” by John Owen

“To measure the Almighty by the standard of a man, and to frame in the mind a mutable idol, instead of the eternal, unchangeable God, is a thing that the fleshly reasonings of dark understandings are prone to.

A mutable god is of the dunghill.”

–John Owen, “Of the Death of Christ,” The Works of John Owen, Volume 10: The Death of Christ (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1684/2000), 10: 451-452.

“Faith is always the beggar’s outstretched hand” by Horatius Bonar

“The work of Christ for us is the object of faith; the Spirit’s work in us is that which produces this faith: it is out of the former, not out of the latter, that our peace and justification come.

The serpent-bitten Israelite was to look at the uplifted serpent of brass in order to be healed. But his looking was not the brazen serpent.

It was not his act of looking that healed him, but the object to which he looked. So faith is not our righteousness: it merely knits us to the righteous One, and makes us partakers of His righteousness.

Faith’s preciousness is not its own, but the preciousness of Him to whom it links us.

Faith is not our physician; it only brings us to the Physician. It is not even our medicine; it only administers the medicine, divinely prepared by Him who ‘healeth all our diseases.’

In all our believing, let us remember God’s words to Israel: ‘I am Jehovah, that healeth thee’ (Ex. 15:26). Our faith is but our touching Jesus; and what is even this, in reality, but His touching us?

Faith is not our saviour. It was not faith that was born at Bethlehem and died on Golgotha for us.

It was not faith that loved us, and gave itself for us; that bore our sins in its own body on the tree; that died and rose again for our sins.

Faith is one thing, the Saviour is another. Faith is one thing, and the cross is another. Let us not confound them, nor ascribe to a poor, imperfect act of man, that which belongs exclusively to the Son of the living God.

Faith is not perfection. Yet only by perfection can we be saved; either our own or another’s. That which is imperfect cannot justify, and an imperfect faith could not in any sense be a righteousness.

If it is to justify, it must be perfect. It must be like ‘the Lamb, without blemish and without spot.’ An imperfect faith may connect us with the perfection of another; but it cannot of itself do aught for us, either in protecting us from wrath or securing the divine acquittal.

All faith here is imperfect; and our security is this, that it matters not how poor or weak our faith may be: if it touches the perfect One, all is well.

The touch draws out the virtue that is in Him, and we are saved. The slightest imperfection in our faith, if faith were our righteousness, would be fatal to every hope.

But the imperfection of our faith, however great, if faith be but the approximation or contact between us and the fulness of the substitute, is no hindrance to our participation of His righteousness.

God has asked and provided a perfect righteousness; He nowhere asks nor expects a perfect faith.

An earthenware pitcher can convey water to the traveller’s thirsty lips as well as one of gold; nay, a broken vessel, even if there be but ‘a sherd to take water from the pit’ (Isa. 30:14), will suffice.

So a feeble, very feeble faith, will connect us with the righteousness of the Son of God; the faith, perhaps, that can only cry, ‘Lord, I believe; help mine unbelief.’

Faith is not satisfaction to God. In no sense and in no aspect can faith be said to satisfy God, or to satisfy the law. Yet if it is to be our righteousness, it must satisfy.

Being imperfect, it cannot satisfy; being human, it cannot satisfy, even though it were perfect.

That which satisfies; must be capable of bearing our guilt; and that which bears our guilt must be not only perfect, but divine.

It is a sin-bearer that we need, and our faith cannot be a sin-bearer. Faith can expiate no guilt; can accomplish no propitiation; can pay no penalty; can wash away no stain; can provide no righteousness.

It brings us to the cross, where there is expiation, and propitiation, and payment, and cleansing, and righteousness; but in itself it has no merit and no virtue.

Faith is not Christ, nor the cross of Christ. Faith is not the blood, nor the sacrifice; it is not the altar, nor the laver, nor the mercy-seat, nor the incense.

It does not work, but accepts a work done ages ago; it does not wash, but leads us to the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness.

It does not create; it merely links us to that new thing which was created when the ‘everlasting righteousness’ was brought in (Dan. 9:24).

And as faith goes on, so it continues; always the beggar’s outstretched hand, never the rich man’s gold; always the cable, never the anchor; the knocker, not the door, or the palace, or the table; the handmaid, not the mistress; the lattice which lets in the light, not the sun.

Without worthiness in itself, it knits us to the infinite worthiness of Him in whom the Father delights; and so knitting us, presents us perfect in the perfection of another.

Though it is not the foundation laid in Zion, it brings us to that foundation, and keeps us there, ‘grounded and settled’ (Col. 1:23), that we may not be moved away from the hope of the gospel.

Though it is not ‘the gospel,’ the ‘glad tidings,’ it receives these good news as God’s eternal verities, and bids the soul rejoice in them.

Though it is not the burnt-offering, it stands still and gazes on the ascending flame, which assures us that the wrath which should have consumed the sinner has fallen upon the substitute.”

–Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall a Man be Just with God? (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1874/1993), 110-113.

“Look at the cross and grave of the Son of God” by Horatius Bonar

“He who would know holiness must understand sin.

And he who would see sin as God sees it, and think of it as God does, must look at the cross and grave of the Son of God, must know the meaning of Gethsemane and Golgotha.”

–Horatius Bonar, God’s Way of Holiness (Chicago: Moody Press, 1940), 19.

“Faith does not come to Calvary to do anything” by Horatius Bonar

“Faith does not come to Calvary to do anything.

It comes to see the glorious spectacle of all things done, and to accept this completion without a misgiving as to its efficacy.

It listens to the ‘It is finished!’ of the sin-bearer, and says, ‘Amen.’

Where faith begins, there labour ends,—labour, I mean, for life and pardon.

Faith is rest, not toil.

It is the giving up all the former weary efforts to do or feel something good, in order to induce God to love and pardon; and the calm reception of the truth so long rejected, that God is not waiting for any such inducements, but loves and pardons of His own goodwill, and is showing that goodwill to any sinner who will come to Him on such a footing, casting away his own poor performances or goodnesses, and relying implicitly upon the free love of Him who so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.

Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part.

Faith saves, because it owns the complete salvation of another, and not because it contributes anything to that salvation.

There is no dividing or sharing the work between our own belief and Him in whom we believe. The whole work is His, not ours, from first to last.

Faith does not believe in itself, but in the Son of God. Like the beggar, it receives everything, but gives nothing.

It consents to be a debtor for ever to the free love of God.

Its resting-place is the foundation laid in Zion.

It rejoices in another, not in itself.

Its song is, ‘Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy He saved us.’

Christ crucified is to be the burden of our preaching, and the substance of our belief, from first to last.

At no time in the saint’s life does he cease to need the cross.”

–Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall a Man be Just with God? (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1874/1993), 116-117.