MORNING:
2 Kings 24 (family); Joel 3 (secret)
EVENING:
Hebrews 6 (family); Psalm 143 (secret)
A CHRISTIAN CATECHISM:
Q28. How are we made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ?
A28. We are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ, by the effectual application of it to us by His Holy Spirit. John 1:12; Titus 3:5, 6
Q29. How does the Spirit apply to us the redemption purchased by Christ?
A29. The Spirit applies to us the redemption purchased by Christ, by working faith in us, and by it uniting us to Christ in our effectual calling. Ephesians 2:8; 3:17
Q30. What is effectual calling?
A30. Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit in which He persuades and enables us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel, by convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills. Ezekiel 36:26; John 6:44-45; Acts 2:37; 26:18; 2 Timothy 1:9; Ephesians 1:17-18
CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST DEVOTION:
“By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who (among them) considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of My people to whom the stroke (was due)?” (Isaiah 53:8, ASV).
When once we are saved, the sanctification that God’s Spirit works in us and through us has various expressions of grace that edifies our character and conforms us to the image of His beloved Son, from faith to greater faith and from glory to increasing glory.
Salvation, on the other hand, must come by the supernatural working of God by the effectual call. When Jesus hung upon Calvary’s Tree, He was cut off from the land of the living, as a tree is cut down in the forest. And though His being “cut off” was the vicarious, substitutionary atonement for the transgressing people that deserved to be stricken, the gospel truth of Christ and Him crucified is the “dividing of the baby” in the story Solomon’s judgment, so to speak (1 Kings 3:16-28).
When two sinful women, who lived together both gave birth, one rolled over and smothered her child in the middle of the night. The mother of the dead child switched babies that night. In the morning, when the unsuspecting mother found a dead child, she also recognized that it wasn’t hers; the two women went before the king. The wise king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.” The true mother of the living child yearned with compassion for the child and requested that the child not be slain, and was willing that the other woman would keep the child. The deceitful woman was eager to shed the blood of the child that was not hers.
The words “cut off” from our Scripture passage and “divide” from 1 Kings 3 are the same Hebrew word, gazar, meaning to divide, execute, decree, cut off or cut down.
The decree of the gospel, concerning the execution of Jesus Christ, is the truth by which God’s Spirit applies to us the redemption purchased by Christ. And when that supernatural revelation comes, it either works faith in the soul and unites the sinner to Christ in that effectual call, like the woman who desired to save her child alive; or it works hatred, death, and bloodlust in the soul who rejects the gospel and whose heart is hardened, like the sinful woman who thought she could deceive the other woman, the king, and the God of heaven.
It is only by the decree of God, the proclamation of the “dividing of the child,” the “cutting off of the Christ,” the reality of the purchased redemption, that the effectual call is made and responded to. Do the gospel we believe and the gospel we preach convince fallen men of their sin and misery? enlighten their minds in the knowledge of Christ? renew their wills?
“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?… So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Isaiah 53:1; Romans 10:17).
Vain are the hopes the sons of men
upon their works have built;
Their hearts by nature are unclean,
their actions full of guilt.
Silent let Jew and Gentile stand,
without one vaunting word,
And, humbled low, confess their guilt
before heav’n’s righteous Lord.
No hope can on the law be built
of justifying grace;
The law, that shows the sinner’s guilt,
condemns him to his face.
Jesus! how glorious is Thy grace!
when in Thy name we trust,
Our faith receives a righteousness
that makes the sinner just.
Romans 3:19-22
Scripture Paraphrase & Hymns
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