Romans 1:32

REFLECTIONS

Reader! let you and I both pause at the entrance on this blessed Epistle, and while we adore God the Holy Ghost for so precious a gift to his Church, let us beg of Him to give us an understanding and believing heart, in the right apprehension of all its sacred contents. And here, in the very opening, let us look up and behold the Lord Jesus Christ in our nature, in all the glories of his person, and offices, and character. He was, he is declared to be, the Son of God, with power. His divine nature fully proved by his quickening Spirit, and his human nature by his death and resurrection, and both confirming his suitability to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness of Him which filleth all in all!

And, oh! what preciousness is hereby discovered of the Gospel of Christ! How blessedly adapted for the delivery of our poor nature from the ruins of the fail! How graciously contrived for the everlasting happiness of the Church! Reader! behold the holy joy of Paul, in his readiness to preach it to all that were in Rome, yea, all the world, among the beloved of God, and called to be saints. I am not ashamed (said Paul), of the Gospel of Christ! Ashamed? Who is, who can be ashamed at that which is the highest glory of our nature? The Son of God in our nature proclaiming mercy, pardon, and peace, in the blood of his cross. But, Reader! see to it, that we shrink not from the same standard, and the same cause; when we can say, and appeal as he did, God Is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the Gospel of his Son! Lord! grant that thy people, in the awful view of what thy servant hath here shewn of a fallen state, may be led to contemplate the blessed deliverance wrought out for the Church by the Lord Jesus Christ, And, oh! for grace to enter into an heart-felt enjoyment of these unspeakable mercies, that while the righteousness of God therein is revealed from faith to faith, all truly justified believers may live by faith!