AN EXTRACT FROM TOPLADY

Fallen man has not the least room for boasting. By his original weakness and depravity he is cut off from all natural right to it; and whatever accession of Divine grace he may receive of God, it still leaves him no room to glory. All is of God’s mere bounty; and the talents with which he may be endued, so far from giving him occasion to be lifted up, do but lay him under accumulated obligation to the unseen Hand whose gift they are. The apostle Paul, though so great an instrument in turning multitudes from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, dared not value himself on what the Lord did by him. “Not I,” is his declaration,” but the grace of God which was with me,” His labours in Christ’s vineyard were indefatigable. His preaching of the everlasting Gospel was crowned with unequalled success. Yet after all the suffering he had to stand, and all the work he had performed for the sake of Jesus his Lord, he proclaims that, as a saint, he was less than the least; but as a sinner, he was the chief. Hence see that a consciousness of his utter unworthiness swept away every hope of justification by his own righteousness. Sovereign grace revealed in Jesus Christ was the only hope of his soul. All his acquisitions and privileges he made no account of. In reckoning up his advantages he says, “If any man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the Church: touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.” His birth privileges were the greatest that could be enjoyed, even by any of that favoured people the Jews. His observance of the law of God was most exemplary, and his zeal for His glory, and for the proselyting of the converts to his religion, was so ardent as to put him on persecuting those who would not come within that circumference. But all these advantageous particulars which he then counted gain he afterwards rejoiced to esteem as loss and dross and dung for Christ, that he might be found in Him. Thrice wise and thrice happy Paul! Adored be that Divine grace which led thee, and is still leading many more of its sons and daughters, to despise all, yea, all for Christ, and to desire with thee to be found in Him, not having their own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, that gift of God which is received and enjoyed by faith, even the righteousness of God, which is unto all and upon all them that believe (Phil. 3,4; Romans 3, 22).

The demands of the holy law of God, and the infinite purity of God the Lawgiver, together with the helplessness and depravity of mankind, appeared to Paul with such clearness that he could acquiesce in no doctrine as solid and comfortable which did not set forth how these seemingly incompatible things could all be brought to agree; that the rights of an holy law might accord with the riches of abounding grace, and the inflexible justice of an holy God coincide with the rich exertions of His free and tender mercy. In obedience, sufferings, and death, resurrection, exaltation and intercession of Jesus see every seemingly jarring attribute most harmoniously accord! The sinner is accepted, pardoned, justified, sanctified and saved, and all to the glory and praise of freegrace, while also every other attribute of the glorious God is preserved inviolate. Here then we will glory. To boast in this matchless work of the Three-One God is our privilege and our highest gain. While we dwell below, it shall be our sublimest delight; and when we remove to our blood-bought throne, the work and grace of Jesus shall be the topics of eternal converse, our eternal admiration, and our eternal praise.

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