Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
January 28
Morning
"Perfect
in Christ Jesus."—Colossians 1:28.
Do you not feel
in your own soul that perfection is not in you? Does not every day teach you
that? Every tear which trickles from your eye, weeps
"imperfection"; every harsh word which proceeds from your lip,
mutters "imperfection." You have too frequently had a view of your
own heart to dream for a moment of any perfection in yourself. But
amidst this sad consciousness of imperfection, here is comfort for
you—you are "perfect in Christ Jesus." In God's sight,
you are "complete in Him;" even now you are "accepted in
the Beloved." But there is a second perfection, yet to be realized, which
is sure to all the seed. Is it not delightful to look forward to the time when
every stain of sin shall be removed from the believer, and he shall be
presented faultless before the throne, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such
thing? The Church of Christ then will be so pure, that not even the eye of
Omniscience will see a spot or blemish in her; so holy and so glorious, that
Hart did not go beyond the truth when he said—
"With my
Saviour's garments on,
Holy as the
Holy One."
Then shall we know, and
taste, and feel the happiness of this vast but short sentence, "Complete
in Christ." Not till then shall we fully comprehend the heights and depths
of the salvation of Jesus. Doth not thy heart leap for joy at the thought of
it? Black as thou art, thou shalt be white one day; filthy as thou art, thou
shalt be clean. Oh, it is a marvellous salvation
this! Christ takes a worm and transforms it into an angel; Christ takes a black
and deformed thing and makes it clean and matchless in His glory, peerless in
His beauty, and fit to be the companion of seraphs. O my soul, stand and admire
this blessed truth of perfection in Christ.
Evening
"And the
shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they
had heard and seen, as it was told unto them."—Luke 2:20.
What was the subject of
their praise? They praised God for what they had heard—for the
good tidings of great joy that a Saviour was born
unto them. Let us copy them; let us also raise a song of thanksgiving that we
have heard of Jesus and His salvation. They also praised God for what they
had seen. There is the sweetest music—what we have experienced, what
we have felt within, what we have made our own—"the things which we
have made touching the King." It is not enough to hear about Jesus:
mere hearing may tune the harp, but the fingers of living faith must create the
music. If you have seen Jesus with the God-giving sight of faith, suffer no
cobwebs to linger among the harpstrings, but loud to
the praise of sovereign grace, awake your psaltery and harp. One point for
which they praised God was the agreement between what they had heard and
what they had seen. Observe the last sentence—"As it was told
unto them." Have you not found the gospel to be in yourselves just what
the Bible said it would be? Jesus said He would give you rest—have you
not enjoyed the sweetest peace in Him? He said you should have joy, and
comfort, and life through believing in Him—have you not received all
these? Are not His ways ways of pleasantness, and His
paths paths of peace? Surely you can say with the
queen of Sheba, "The half has not been told me." I have found Christ more sweet than His servants ever said He was. I looked upon
His likeness as they painted it, but it was a mere daub compared with Himself; for the King in His beauty outshines all imaginable
loveliness. Surely what we have "seen" keeps pace with, nay,
far exceeds, what we have "heard." Let us, then, glorify and
praise God for a Saviour so precious, and so
satisfying.