By Horatius Bonar
We might as well extract water from the desert sands as peace from our own act of faith.
The knowledge of that finished work is immediate peace.
The gospel is not a list of duties to be performed, or feelings to be produced, or frames which we are to pray ourselves into, in order to make God think well of us, and in order to fit us for receiving pardon.
The conscience is satisfied. It feels that God’s grace is righteous grace, that his love is holy love. There it rests.
You must go to your knees, believing that God is willing, or that he is not willing, to bless you. In the latter case, you cannot expect any answer or blessing.
He is too loving to say anything needlessly severe; too true to say anything untrue; nor can he have any motive to misrepresent us; for he loves to tell of the good, not of the evil, that may be found in any of the works of his hands.
Do not keep back from Christ under the idea that you must come to him in a disinterested frame, and from an unselfish motive. If you were right in this thing, who could be saved? You are to come as you are; with all your bad motives, whatever these may be.
For Christ is not a helper, but a Saviour.
The sinner’s peace with God is not to come from his own character. No grounds of peace or elements of reconciliation can be extracted from himself, either directly or indirectly.
If Christ be not the Substitute, he is nothing to the sinner.
Each of these words of grace is like a star sparkling in the round, blue sky above us; or like a well of water pouring out its freshness amid desert rocks and sands.
This is man’s day, when man’s judgments prevail; but God’s day is coming, when the case shall be strictly tried upon its real merits.
In all unbelief there are these two things, - a good opinion of one’s self, and a bad opinion of God. So long as these two things exist, it is impossible for an inquirer to find rest.
Your acquisition of feeling would not qualify you for it, nor bring it nearer, nor buy its blessings, nor make you more welcome, nor persuade God to do anything for you that he is not at this moment most willing to do.
Faith does not spring out of feeling, but feeling out of faith.
That which makes it safe for you to draw near to God, and right for God to receive you, must be something altogether away from and independent of yourself; for, yourself and everything pertaining to yourself God has already condemned; and no condemned thing can give you any warrant for going to him, or hoping for acceptance.
Believing is not a work, but a ceasing from work.
Election has helped many a soul to heaven; but never yet hindered one.
Your strength, as well as your righteousness, is in another; yet, while you admit the former, you deny the latter.
Unbelief, then, is the belief of a lie and the rejection of the truth.
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