In Him
Whatever Christ did, if you belong to those who are in Him, He did for you. So that Christ circumcised or Christ crucified, Christ dead or Christ living, Christ buried or Christ risen, you are a partaker of all that He did and all that He is, for you are reckoned as one with Him. See then, the joy and comfort of the incarnation of Christ. Does Jesus, as man, take manhood up to heaven? He has taken me up there. Father Adam fell, and I fell for I was in him. The Lord Jesus Christ rises, and I rise if I am in Him.
CHARLES SPURGEON
We have…Redemption
We have…Peace
We have…Hope
You get advice from a merchant with whom you have traded beyond the sea: He says, “I have procured the goods you have ordered and will send them by the next vessel. It will probably arrive at such-and-such a time.” Another trader calls in and asks you whether you wish to buy the same goods, and you reply, “No, I have them.” Have you spoken the truth? Certainly, for though you do not have them in your warehouse, they are invoiced to you. You know they are on the way, and you are so accustomed to trust your foreign correspondent that you regard the goods as yours. The deed is done that makes them yours.
So it is with heaven, with perfection, with immortality: The deed is done, which makes these the heritage of saints. I have advices from One whom I cannot doubt, even my Lord, that he has gone to heaven to prepare a place for me, and that he will come again and receive me to himself.
We have…Love
The only ground of God’s love is his love. The ground of God’s love is only and wholly in himself. There is neither portion nor proportion in us to draw his love. There is no love nor loveliness in us that should cause a beam of his love to shine upon us.
THOMAS BROOKS
We have…Assurance
God sometimes marvellously raises the souls of his saints with some close and near approaches unto them—gives them a sense of his eternal love, a taste of the embraces of his Son and the inhabitation of the Spirit, without the least intervening disturbance; then this is their assurance. But this life is not a season to be always taking wages in. Our work is not yet done; we are not always to abide in this mount; we must down again into the battle—fight again, cry again, complain again. Shall the soul be thought now to have lost its assurance? Not at all. It had before assurance with joy, triumph, and exultation; it has it now, or may have, with wrestling, cries, tears, and supplications. And a man’s assurance may be as good, as true, when he lies on the earth with a sense of sin, as when he is carried up to the third heaven with a sense of love and foretaste of glory.
JOHN OWEN
We have…Comfort
We have…Forgiveness
Let all the world know that the Lord Jesus will not cast away His believing people because of short-comings and infirmities. The husband does not put away his wife because he finds failings in her. The mother does not forsake her infant because it is weak, feeble, and ignorant. And the Lord Christ does not cast off poor sinners who have committed their souls into His hands because He sees in them blemishes and imperfections. Oh! No! It is His glory to pass over the faults of His people, and heal their backslidings,—to make much of their weak graces, and to pardon their many faults.
J. C. RYLE
We have…An Advocate
The very sure and lively Christian faith is not only to believe all things of God that are contained in holy Scripture, but also is an earnest trust and confidence in God, that he does regard us, and has care of us, as the father of the child whom he loves, and that he will be merciful unto us for his only son’s sake, and that we have our Saviour Christ, our perpetual advocate and priest, in whose only merits, oblation, and suffering we trust that our offences are continually washed and purged, whenever we, repenting truly, return to him with our whole heart, steadfastly determining with ourselves, through his grace, to obey and serve him in keeping his commandments, and never to turn back again to sin. Such is the true faith that the Scripture does so much commend.
THOMAS CRANMER
We have…Protection
We have…Grace
It is in the nature of this grace to grow and increase unto the end. As rivers, the nearer they come unto the ocean where they tend, the more they increase their waters, and speed their streams; so will grace flow more freely and fully in its near approaches to the ocean of glory.
JOHN OWEN
We have…Mercy
God’s mercy is so great that you may sooner drain the sea of its water, or deprive the sun of his light, or make space too narrow, than diminish the great mercy of God.
CHARLES SPURGEON
We have…Joy
To be in Christ is the source of the Christian’s life; to be like Christ is the sum of his excellence; to be with Christ is the fulness of his joy.
CHARLES HODGE
Never does a soul know what solid joy and substantial pleasure is till, once being weary of itself, it renounces all propriety, gives itself up to the author of its being, and feels itself become a hallowed and devoted thing; and can say from an inward sense and feeling, My beloved is mine (I account all his interest mine own) and I am his: I am content to be anything for him, and care not for myself, but that I may serve him.
HENRY SCOUGAL
We have…Confidence
We have…Unity
If Christians are ever to be united, they must be united in Christ, their living head and the source of their spiritual life.
PHILIP SCHAFF