Every plant must have both soil and root. Without both of these there can be no life, no growth, no fruit. The root is ‘peace with God’; the soil in which that root strikes itself, and out of which it draws the vital sap, is the free love of God in Christ. ‘Rooted in love’ is the apostle’s description of a holy man. The secret of a believer’s holy walk is his continual recurrence to the blood of the Surety, and his daily intercourse with a crucified and risen Lord. All divine life, and all the precious fruits of it, pardon, peace, and holiness, spring from the cross. All fancied sanctification which does not arise wholly from the blood of the cross is nothing better than Pharisaism. If we would be holy, we must get to the cross, and dwell there; else, notwithstanding all our labour, diligence, fasting, praying and good works, we shall be yet void of real
Horatius Bonar
A new creature in Christ
“If I am a new creature in Christ, then I stand before God, not in myself—but in Christ. He sees no longer me—but only him in whom I am—him who represents me, Christ Jesus, my substitute and surety. In believing, I have become so identified with the Son of his love, that the favor with which he regards him passes over to me, and rests, like the sunshine of the new heavens, upon me. In Christ, and through Christ, I have acquired a new standing before the Father. I am ‘accepted in the beloved.’ My old standing, that is, that of distance, and disfavor, and condemnation, is wholly removed, and I am brought into one of nearness, and acceptance, and pardon—I am made to occupy a new footing, just as if my old one had never been. Old guilt, heavy as the mountain, vanishes; old dread, gloomy as midnight, passes off; old fear, dark as hell, gives place to the joyful
Not Faith, But Christ
“Faith is not our saviour. It was not faith that was born at Bethlehem and died on Golgotha for us. It was not faith that loved us, and gave itself for us; that bore our sins in its own body on the tree; that died and rose again for our sins. Faith is one thing, the Saviour is another. Faith is one thing, and the cross is another. Let us not confound them, nor ascribe to a poor, imperfect act of man, that which belongs exclusively to the Son of the Living God. Our security is this, that it matters not how poor or weak our faith maybe: if it touches the perfect One, all is well. God has asked and provided a perfect righteousness; He nowhere asks nor expects a perfect faith. So a feeble, very feeble faith, will connect us with the righteousness of the Son of God; the faith, perhaps, that can only cry, ‘Lord, I believe;
No mere mechanical agent
“The Holy Spirit is no mere mechanical agent in the great work of a sinner’s deliverance. ‘I delight to do Your will’ is as true of the Spirit as the Son. He loves the sinner; therefore He lays hold of him. He pities his misery; therefore He stretches out the hand of help. He has no pleasure in his death; therefore He puts forth His saving power. He is longsuffering and patient; therefore He strives with him day by day; and though ‘vexed,’ ‘resisted,’ ‘grieved,’ and ‘quenched,’ He refuses to retire from, or give up, any sinner on this side of eternity. The extent to which we resist Him, and the amount of His forbearing love, we cannot know. This only we may say, that our stubbornness is something infinitely fearful and malignant, while His patient grace passes all understanding.” —Horatius Bonar, “The Holy Spirit” (HT: Of First Importance)
The persistent love of the Spirit
“The Holy Spirit is no mere mechanical agent in the great work of a sinner’s deliverance, and of the Church’s up building, obediently doing the work appointed to Him. ‘I delight to do Your will’ is as true of the Spirit as the Son. He loves the sinner; therefore He lays hold of him. He pities his misery; therefore He stretches out the hand of help. He has no pleasure in his death; therefore He puts forth His saving power. He is longsuffering and patient; therefore He strives with him day by day; and though ‘vexed,’ ‘resisted,’ ‘grieved,’ and ‘quenched,’ He refuses to retire from, or give up, any sinner on this side of eternity. The extent to which we resist Him, and the amount of His forbearing love, we cannot know. This only we may say, that our stubbornness is something infinitely fearful and malignant, while His patient grace passes all understanding.” —Horatius Bonar, “The Holy Spirit” (HT: Of First
The Glorious Spectacle
“Man, in his natural spirit of self-justifying legalism, has tried to get away from the cross of Christ and its perfection, or to erect another cross instead, or to setup a screen of ornaments between himself and it, or to alter its true meaning into something more congenial to his tastes, or to transfer the virtue of it to some act or performance or feeling of its own. Thus the simplicity of the cross is nullified, and its saving power is denied. For the cross saves completely, or not at all. Our faith does not divide the work of salvation between itself and the cross. It is the acknowledgment that the cross alone saves, and that it saves alone. Faith adds nothing to the cross, nor to its healing virtue. It owns the fulness, and sufficiency, and suitableness of the work done there, and bids the toiling spirit cease from its labours and enter into rest. Faith does not come
Christ, His Spirit, the word and holiness
In this extract from God’s Way of Holiness, Horatius Bonar describes the partnership between The Holy Spirit and Christ through scripture in bringing believers to greater holiness: He then that would be holy must be like Christ, and he that would be like Christ must be ” filled with the Spirit” ; he that would have in him the mind of Christ must have the same “anointing” as He had, the Same indwelling and inworking Spirit, the Spirit of “adoption,” of life, faith, truth, liberty, strength, and holy joy. it is through this mighty Quickener that we are quickened; it is through “sanctification of the Spirit” that we are sanctified (2 Thess 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2). It is as our Guest that He does His work, not working without dwelling, nor dwelling without working (2 Tim 1:14), not exerting a mere influence, like that of music on the ruffled soul, but coming into us and abiding with us; so that
The kind of men God used
From Ray Ortlund: Horatius Bonar, writing the preface to John Gillies’ Accounts of Revival, proposes that men useful to the Holy Spirit for revival have been marked in these nine ways: 1. They were in earnest about the great work on which they had entered: “They lived and labored and preached like men on whose lips the immortality of thousands hung.” 2. They were bent on success: “As warriors, they set their hearts on victory and fought with the believing anticipation of triumph, under the guidance of such a Captain as their head.” 3. They were men of faith: “They knew that in due season they should reap, if they fainted not.” 4. They were men of labor: “Their lives are the annals of incessant, unwearied toil of body and soul; time, strength, substance, health, all they were and possessed they freely offered to the Lord, keeping back nothing, grudging nothing.” 5. They were men of patience: “Day after day
The sufficiency of Christ crucifed and risen
More from Mattew Morizio at Gospel Muse: Horatius Bonar once wrote: “Man, in his natural spirit of self-justifying legalism, has tried to get away from the cross of Christ and its perfection, or to erect another cross instead, or to setup a screen of ornaments between himself and it, or to alter its true meaning into something more congenial to his tastes, or to transfer the virtue of it to some act or performance or feeling of its own. Thus the simplicity of the cross is nullified, and its saving power is denied. For the cross saves completely, or not at all. …Christ crucified is to be the burden of our preaching, and the substance of our belief, from first to last. At no time in the saint’s life does he cease to need the cross….” And again: “The truth is, that all that Christ did and suffered, from the manger to the tomb, forms one glorious whole, no part
The Perfect Substitute
I love this post by Thabiti Anyabwile: From Horatius Bonar’s, The Everlasting Righteousness, pp. 10-12. The various sacrifices are all connected with the altar. Even that which was “burnt without the camp” was connected with the altar. It was no doubt carried forth without the camp and burnt with fire (Lev. 6:30, 16:27); but “the blood was brought into the tabernacle of the congregation, to reconcile withal in the holy place.” “The blood of the bullock was brought in, to make atonement in the holy place.” Their connection with the altar is sufficient of itself to show the truth of substitution contained in them, for the altar was the place of transference. But in each of them we find something which expresses this more directly and fully. In the burnt offering we see the perfection of the substitute presented in the place of our imperfection, in not loving God with all our heart. In the meat offering we have the
Christ is FOR us before He is IN us
Horatius Bonar once wrote: “Christ in us, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27), is a well-known and blessed truth; but Christ IN US, our justification, is a ruinous error, leading man away from a crucified Christ – a Christ crucified FOR US. Christ for us is one truth; Christ in us is quite another. The mingling of these two together, or the transposition of them, is the nullifying of the one finished work of the Substitute. Let it be granted that Christ in us is the source of holiness and fruitfulness (John 15:4); but let it never be overlooked that first of all there be Christ FOR US, as our propitiation, our justification, our righteousness. The risen Christ in us, our justification, is a modern theory which subverts the cross. Washing, pardoning, reconciling, justifying, all come from the one work of the cross, not from resurrection. The dying Christ completed the work for us from which all the above benefits
True Spiritual Discernment
Biblical truth is timeless in its application. This is sound advice for our times from Horatius Bonar. Taken from ‘Follow the Lamb’. “…be discriminating. Do not call error truth for the sake of charity. Do not praise earnest men merely because they are earnest. To be earnest in truth is one thing; to be earnest in error is another. The first is blessed, not so much because of the earnestness, but because of the truth; the second is hateful to God, and ought to be shunned by you. Remember how the Lord Jesus from heaven spoke concerning error: ‘which thing I hate’ (Rev 2:6-15; 1 Tim 6:4,5). True spiritual discernment is much lost sight of as a real Christian grace; discernment between the evil and the good, the false and the true. ‘Beloved, believe not every spirit; but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world’ (1 John 4:1). This
Already Not Yet 