Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Quoting Martyn Lloyd-Jones #10

One of the devotionals I am using this year is Walking with God Day by Day by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I thought I would share some of my favorite passages month by month. (JanuaryFebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugust, September).

From October 19
Why did the Son of God ever come into this world? When we think about the Lord Jesus Christ and especially about His death on that cross on Calvary’s hill, what is its purpose? Is it just something about which we sentimentalize? What does it represent to us? What is the explanation of it all? That is the question that John answers here, and let me put the answer in a negative form. Our Lord did not only come to give us a revelation of God, though that is a part of the purpose. He said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9), and we also read, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). But that is not all, though He indeed revealed the Father and has come to do that. In the same way, He has not only come to teach us about God. There is incomparable teaching there, such as the world had never known before and has not known since, but He did not come only to do that. There is also, of course, the example of His life, a matchless one, but He has not come only to give us an example of how we should live in this world. He is not just a teacher or a moral exemplar; He has not come merely to give us some kind of picture as to the nature and being of God. All that is there, but that is not the real reason, says John. He has really come, he says, because of our sins, because of the predicament and the position of men and women, because of this whole question of law. He has not come only to instruct us and to give us encouragement in our endeavor and a great example. No; there is a fundamental problem at the back of it all, and that is our relationship to God in the light of God’s holy law.

© Becky Laney of Operation Actually Read Bible

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