Sanctification

A holy self-denying, cross-bearing life, is not the drudgery of a slave, but the filial, loving obedience of a child; it springs from love to the person, and gratitude for the work of Jesus; and is the blessed effect of the spirit of adoption in the heart.


---Octavius Winslow

ONLY A CHRISTIAN CAN MORTIFY SIN

“How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”—Romans 6:2.
Before I can live a Christian life, I must be a Christian. Am I such? I ought to know this. Do I know it, and in knowing it, know whose I am and whom I serve? Or is my title to the name still questionable, still a matter of anxious debate and search?

If I am to live as a son of God, I must be a son, and I must know it. Otherwise my life will be an artificial imitation, a piece of barren mechanism, performing certain excellent movements, but destitute of vital heat and force. Here many fail. They try to live like sons in order to make themselves sons, forgetting God’s simple plan for attaining sonship at once: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God” (John 1:12). The faith of many among us is, after all, but an attempt to believe; their repentance but an attempt to repent; and in so doing they only use words that they have learned from others…God’s description of a Christian man is clear and welldefined. It has about it so little of the vague and wide that one wonders how any mistake should have arisen on this point, and so many dubious, so many false claims put in.

A Christian is one who “has tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1Pe 2:3); who has been “begotten again unto a lively hope” (1Peter 1:3); who has been “quickened together with Christ” (Eph 2:5); made a partaker of Christ (Heb 3:14); a partaker of the divine nature (2Peter 1:4); who “has been delivered from this present evil world” (Gal 1:4).

Such is God’s description of one who has found his way to the cross and is warranted in taking to himself the Antiochian name of “Christian,” or the apostolic name of “saint.” Of good about himself, previous to his receiving the record of the free forgiveness, he cannot speak. He remembers nothing lovable that could have recommended him to God, nothing fit that could have qualified him for the divine favor, save that he needed life. All that he can say for himself is that he has “known and believed the love that God hath to us” (1John 4:16), and in believing has found that which makes him not merely a happy, but a holy man. He has discovered the fountainhead of a holy life.

Have I then found my way to the cross? If so, I am safe. I have the everlasting life. The first true touch of that cross has secured for me the eternal blessing. I am in the hands of Christ, and none shall pluck me out (John 10:28). The cross makes us whole: Not all at once indeed, but it does the work effectually. Before we reached it, we were not “whole,” but broken and scattered, nay, without a center toward which to gravitate. The cross forms that center, and in doing so it draws together the disordered fragments of our being. It “unites our heart” (Psa 86:11), producing a wholeness or unity which no object of less powerful attractiveness could accomplish. It is a wholeness or unity that, beginning with the individual, reproduces itself on a larger scale, but with the same center of gravitation, in the church of God. Of spiritual health, the cross is the source: From it there goes forth the “virtue” (dunamis, the power, Luk 6:19) that heals all maladies, be they slight or deadly. For “by his stripes we are healed” (Isa 53:5); and in Him we find “the tree of life” with its healing leaves (Rev 22:2). Golgotha has become Gilead, with its skillful Physician and its “bruised” balm (Jer 8:22; Isa 53:5). Old Latimer1 says well regarding the woman whom Christ cured: “She believed that Christ was such a healthful man that she should be sound as soon as she might touch Him.” The “whole head [was] sick, and the whole heart faint” (Isa 1:5); but now the sickness is gone, and the vigor comes again to the fainting heart. The look, or rather the Object looked at, has done its work (Isa 45:22); the serpent of brass has accomplished that which no earthly medicines could effect. Not to us can it now be said, “Thou hast no healing medicines” (Jer 30:13), for the word of the great Heal-er is, “Behold, I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth” (Jer 33:6). Thus, it is by the abundance of that peace and truth, revealed to us in the cross, that our cure is wrought.

The cure is not perfected in an hour. But, as the sight of the cross begins it, so does it complete it at last. The pulses of new health now beat in all our veins. Our whole being recognizes the potency of the divine medicine, and our diseases yield to it.

Yes, the cross heals: It possesses the double virtue of healing sin and quickening holiness. It makes all the fruits of the flesh to wither, while it cherishes and ripens the fruit of the Spirit, which is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal 5:22). By this, the hurt of the soul is not “healed slightly,” but truly and thoroughly. It acts like the fresh balm of southern air to one whose constitution the frost and damp of the far north had undermined. It gives new tone and energy to our faculties, a new bent and aim to all our purposes, and a new elevation to all our hopes and longings. It gives the deathblow to self; it mortifies our members that are upon the earth. It crucifies the flesh with its affections and lusts. Thus, looking continually to the cross, each day, as at the first, we are made sensible of the restoration of our soul’s health; evil loosens its hold, while good strengthens and ripens.

It is not merely that we “glory in the cross” (Gal 6:14), but we draw strength from it. It is the place of weakness, for there Christ “was crucified through weakness” (2Co 13:4); but it is, notwithstanding, the fountainhead of power to us. For as out of death came forth life, so out of weakness came forth strength. This is strength, not for one thing, but for everything. It is strength for activity or for endurance, for holiness as well as for work. He that would be holy or useful must keep near the cross. The cross is the secret of power and the pledge of victory. With it, we fight and overcome. No weapon can prosper against it, nor enemy prevail. With it, we meet the fightings without as well as the fears within. With it, we war the good warfare, we wrestle with principalities and powers, we “withstand” and we “stand” (Eph 6:11-13); we fight the good fight, we finish the course, we keep the faith (2Ti 4:7).

Standing by the cross, we become imitators of the crucified One. We seek to be like Him, men who please not themselves (Rom 15:3), who do the Father’s will, counting not our life dear to us, who love our neighbors as ourselves and the brethren as He loved us; who pray for our enemies; who revile not again when reviled; who threaten not when we suffer, but commit ourselves to Him that judgeth righteously; who live not to ourselves and who die not to ourselves; who are willing to be of “no reputation,” but to “suffer shame for His name,” to take the place and name of “servant,” nay, to count “the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt” (Heb 11:26). “Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin (has died to sin as in Rom 6:10); That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the
lusts of men, but to the will of God” (1Peter 4:1, 2).

Standing by the cross, we realize the meaning of such a text as this: “Knowing this, that our old man [was] crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom 6:6). The crucifixion of our old man, the destruction of the body of sin, and deliverance from the bondage of sin are strikingly linked to one another and linked, all of them, to the cross of Christ. Or we read the meaning of another: “I [have been] crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). Here the one Paul—not two Pauls or two person - speaks throughout as completely identified with Christ and His cross. It is not one part of Paul in this clause and another in that. It is the one whole Paul throughout, who is crucified, dies, lives!

Like Isaac, he has been “received from the dead in a figure”; and as Abraham would, after the strange Moriah transaction, look on Isaac as given back from the dead, so would Jehovah reckon and treat this Paul as a risen man! Isaac would be the same Isaac, and yet not the same; so Paul is the same Paul, and yet not the same! He has passed through something which alters his state legally and his character morally; he is new. Instead of the first Adam, who was of the earth, earthy (1Co 15:47), he has the last Adam, Who is the Lord from heaven, for his Guest: “Christ liveth in him”; “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (just as he says, “yet not I, but the grace of God in me”); and so he lives the rest of his life on earth, holding fast his connection with the crucified Son of God and His love. Or again, we gather light upon that text: “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Gal 5:24); and that: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal 6:14).

Standing by the cross, we realize the death of the Surety, and discover more truly the meaning of passages such as these: “Ye are dead [ye died], and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Ye died with Christ from “the rudiments of the world” (Col 2:20). His death (and yours with Him) dissolved your connection with these. “If one died for all, then [all died]: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again” (2Co 5:14b-15). “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living” (Rom 14:9).

Romans 6:7-12, “He that [has died] is freed [justified] from sin [i.e., He has paid the penalty]. Now if we be dead with Christ [or since we died with Christ], we believe that we shall also live with him: Knowing that Christ [having been] raised from the dead dieth no more [He has no second penalty to pay, no second death to undergo—Heb 9:27-28]; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once [His death finished His sin-bearing work once for all]: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body [even in your body—Rom 12:1], that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.”

There is something peculiarly solemn about these passages. They are very unlike, both in tone and words, the light speech which some indulge in when speaking of the Gospel and its forgiveness. Ah, this is the language of one who has in him the profound consciousness that severance from sin is one of the mightiest, as well as most blessed, things in the universe. He has learned how deliverance from condemnation may be found and all legal claims against him met. But, more than this, he has learned how the grasp of sin can be unclasped, how its serpent-folds can be unwound, how its impurities can be erased, how he can defy its wiles and defeat its strength, how he can be holy! This is, to him, of discoveries one of the greatest and most gladdening. Forgiveness itself is precious, chiefly as a step to holiness. How any one, after reading statements such as those of the Apostle, can speak of sin, pardon, or holiness without awe seems difficult to understand. Or how anyone can [think] that the forgiveness which the believing man finds at the cross of Christ is a release from the obligation to live a holy life is no less incomprehensible.

It is true that sin remains in the saint, and it is equally true that this sin does not bring condemnation back to him. But there is a way of stating this that would almost lead to the inference that watchfulness has thus been rendered less necessary; that holiness is not now so great an urgency; that sin is not so terrible as formerly. To tell a sinning saint that no amount of sin can alter the perfect standing before God, into which the blood of Christ brings us, may not be technically or theologically incorrect; but this mode of putting the truth is not that of the epistle to the Romans or Ephesians. It sounds almost like, “Continue in sin because grace abounds,” and it is not Scriptural language. The apostolic way of putting the point is that of 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins...If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1John 2:1).

Thus, then, that which cancels the curse provides the purity. The cross not only pardons, but it purifies. From it there gushes out the double fountain of peace and holiness. It heals, unites, strengthens, quickens, blesses…But we have our cross to bear, and our whole life is to be a bearing of it. It is not Christ’s cross that we are to carry: that is too heavy for us. Besides, it has been done once for all. But our cross remains; and much of a Christian life consists in a true, honest, decided bearing of it…The cross on which we are crucified with Christ, and the cross which we carry are different things, yet they both point in one direction and lead us along one way. They both protest against sin and summon to holiness. They both “condemn the world” and demand separation from it. They set us upon ground so high and so unearthly that the questions which some raise as to the expediency of conformity to the world’s ways are answered as soon as they are put; and the sophistries of the flesh, pleading in behalf of gaiety and revel-ry, never for a moment perplex us. The kingdom is in view, the way is plain, the cross is on our shoulders; and shall we turn aside after fash-ions, frivolities, pleasures, and unreal beauties, even were they all as harmless as men say they are?

Horatius Bonar (1808-1889)

The Christian's Warfare

"For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." - Romans 7:22-25.


A BELIEVER is to be known not only by his peace and joy, but by his warfare and distress. His peace is peculiar: it flows from Christ; it is heavenly, it is holy peace. His warfare is as peculiar: it is deep-seated, agonising, and ceases not till death. If the Lord will, many of us have the prospect of sitting down next Sabbath at the Lord's table.

The great question to be answered before sitting down there is, Have I fled to Christ or no?

" Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought,
Do I love the Lord or no?
Am I His, or am I not?"

To help you to settle this question, I have chosen the subject of the Christian's warfare, that you may know thereby whether you are a soldier of Christ - whether you are really fighting the good fight of faith.

I. A believer delights in the law of God. - "I delight in the law of God after the inward man" (ver. 22).

(1) Before a man comes to Christ, he hates the law of God - his whole soul rises up against it. "The carnal mind is enmity," etc. (8:7). First, unconverted men hate the law of God on account of its purity. "Thy word is very pure, therefore Thy servant loveth it." For the same reason worldly men hate it. The law is the breathing of God's pure and holy mind. It is infinitely opposed to all impurity and sin. Every line of the law is against sin. But natural men love sin, and therefore they hate the law because it opposes them in all they love. As bats hate the light, and fly against it, so unconverted men hate the pure light of God's law, and fly against it. Second, they hate it for its breadth. "Thy commandment is exceeding broad." It extends to all their outward actions, seen and unseen; it extends to every idle word that men shall speak; it extends to the looks of their eye; it dives into the deepest caves of their heart; it condemns the most secret springs of sin and lust that nestle there. Unconverted men quarrel with the law of God because of its strictness. If it extended only to my outward actions, then I could bear with it; but it condemns my most secret thoughts and desires, which I cannot prevent. Therefore ungodly men rise against the law. Third, They hate it for its unchangeableness. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but one jot or one tittle of the law shall in no wise pass away. If the law would change or let down its requirements, or die, then ungodly men would be well pleased. But it is unchangeable as God: it is written on the heart of God, with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning. It cannot change unless God change; it cannot die unless God die. Even in an eternal hell its demands and its curses will be the same. It is an unchangeable law, for He is an unchangeable God. Therefore, ungodly men have an unchangeable hatred to that holy law.

(2) When a man comes to Christ this is all changed. He can say: "I delight in the law of God after the inward man." He can say with David: "Oh, how I love Thy law! it is my meditation all the day." He can say with Jesus, in the fortieth Psalm: "I delight to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within my heart."

There are two reasons for this: -

First, The law is no longer an enemy. - If any of you who are trembling under a sense of your infinite sins, and the curses of the law which you have broken, flee to Christ, you will find rest. You will find that He has fully answered the demands of the law as a surety for sinners; that He has fully borne all its curses. You will be able to say, "Christ hath redeemed me from the curse of the law, being made a curse for me, as it is written, Cursed," etc. You have no more to fear, then, from that awfully holy law; you are not under the law, but under grace. You have no more to fear from the law than you will have after the judgment-day. Imagine a saved soul after the judgment-day. When that awful scene is past; when the dead, small and great, have stood before that great white throne; when the sentence of eternal woe has fallen upon all the unconverted, and they have sunk into the lake whose fires can never be quenched; would not that redeemed soul say, I have nothing to fear from that holy law; I have seen its vials poured out, but not a drop has fallen on me? So may you say now, O believer in Jesus! When you look upon the soul of Christ, scarred with God's thunderbolts; when you look upon His body, pierced for sin, you can say, He was made a curse for me; why should I fear that holy law?

Second, The spirit of God writes the law on the heart. - This is the promise: "After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people" (Jer. 31:33). Coming to Christ takes away your fear of the law; but it is the Holy Spirit coming into your heart that makes you love the law. The Holy Spirit is no more frightened away from that heart; He comes and softens it; He takes out the stony heart and puts in a heart of flesh; and there He writes the holy, holy, holy law of God. Then the law of God is sweet to that soul; he has an inward delight in it. "The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good." Now he unfeignedly desires every thought, word, and action to be according to that law. "Oh that my ways were directed to keep Thy statutes: great peace have they that love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them." The one hundred nineteenth Psalm becomes the breathing of that new heart. Now also he would fain see all the world submitting to that pure and holy law. "Rivers of waters run down mine eyes because they keep not Thy law." Oh that all the world but knew that holiness and happiness are one! Oh that all the world were one holy family, joyfully coming under the pure rules of the gospel! Try yourselves by this. Can you say, "I delight," etc.? Do you remember when you hated the law of God? Do you love it now? Do you long for the time when you shall live fully under it -holy as God is holy, pure as Christ is pure?

Oh, come, sinners, and give up your hearts to Christ, that He may write on them His holy law! You have long enough had the devil's law graven on your hearts: come you to Jesus, and He will both shelter you from the curses of the law, and He will give you the Spirit to write all that law in your heart; He will make you love it with your inmost soul. Plead the promise with Him. Surely you have tried the pleasures of sin long enough. Come, now, and try the pleasures of holiness out of a new heart.

If you die with your heart as it is, it will be stamped a wicked heart to all eternity. 'He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still" (Rev. 22:11). Oh, come and get the new heart before you die; for except you be born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God!

II. A true believer feels an opposing law in his members. - "I see another law," etc. (ver. 23). When a sinner comes first to Christ, he often thinks he will now bid an eternal farewell to sin: now I shall never sin any more. He feels already at the gate of heaven. A little breath of temptation soon discovers his heart, and he cries out, "I see another law."

(1) Observe what he calls it - "another law"; quite a different law from the law of God; a law clean contrary to it. He calls it a "law of sin" (ver. 25); a law that commands him to commit sin, that urges him on by rewards and threatenings - "a law of sin and death" (8:2); a law which not only leads to sin, but leads to death, eternal death: "the wages of sin is death." It is the same law which, in Galatians, is called "the flesh": "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit," etc. (Gal. 5:17). It is the same which, in Eph. 4:22, is called "the old man," which is wrought according to the deceitful lusts; the same law which in Col. 3 is called "your members" - "Mortify, therefore, your members, which are," etc.; the same which is called "a body of death" (Rom. 7:24). The truth then is, that in the heart of the believer there remains the whole members and body of an old man, or old nature: there remains the fountain of every sin that has ever polluted the world.

(2) Observe again what this law is doing - "warring." This law in the members is not resting quiet, but warring - always fighting. There never can be peace in the bosom of a believer. There is peace with God, but constant war with sin. This law in the members has got an army of lusts under him, and he wages constant war against the law of God. Sometimes, indeed, an army are lying in ambush, and they lie quiet till a favourable moment comes. So in the heart the lusts often lie quiet till the hour of temptation, and then they war against the soul. The heart is like a volcano: sometimes it slumbers and sends up nothing but a little smoke; but the fire is slumbering all the while below, and will soon break out again. There are two great combatants in the believer's soul. There is Satan on the one side, with the flesh and all its lusts at his command; then on the other side there is the Holy Spirit, with the new creature all at His command. And so "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these two are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would."

Is Satan ever successful? In the deep wisdom of God the law in the members does sometimes bring the soul into captivity. Noah was a perfect man, and Noah walked with God, and yet he was led captive. "Noah drank of the wine, and was drunken." Abraham was the "friend of God," and yet he told a lie, saying of Sarah his wife, "She is my sister." Job was a perfect man, one that feared God and hated evil, and yet he was provoked to curse the day wherein he was born. And so with Moses, and David, and Solomon, and Hezekiah, and Peter, and the apostles.

(1) Have you experienced this warfare? It is a clear mark of God's children. Most of you, I fear, have never felt it. Do not mistake me. All of you have felt warfare at times between your natural conscience and the law of God. But that is not the contest in the believer's bosom. It is warfare between the Spirit of God in the heart, and the old man with his deeds.

(2) If any of you are groaning under this warfare, learn to be humbled by it, but not discouraged.

First, Be humbled under it. - It is intended to make you lie in the dust, and feel that you are but a worm. Oh, what a vile wretch you must be, that even after you are forgiven, and have received the Holy Spirit, your heart should still be a fountain of every wickedness! How vile, that in your most solemn approaches to God, in the house of God, in awfully affected situations, such as kneeling beside the death-bed, you should still have in your bosom all the members of your old nature! Let this make you lie low.

Second, Let this teach you your need of Jesus. - You need the blood of Jesus as much as at the first. You never can stand before God in yourself. You must go again and again to be washed; even on your dying bed you must hide under Jehovah our Righteousness. You must also lean upon Jesus. He alone can overcome in you. Keep nearer and nearer every day.

Third, Be not discouraged. - Jesus is willing to be a Saviour to such as you. He is able to save you to the uttermost. Do you think your case is too bad for Christ to save? Every one whom Christ saves had just such a heart as you. Fight the good fight of faith; lay hold on eternal life. Take up the resolution of Edwards: "Never to give over, nor in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be." "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar," etc.

III. The feelings of a believer during this warfare.

(1) He feels wretched. - "O wretched man that I am!" (ver. 24). There is nobody in this world so happy as a believer. He has come to Jesus, and found rest. He has the pardon of all his sins in Christ. He has near approached to God as a child. He has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. He has the hope of glory. In the most awful times he can be calm, for he feels that God is with him. Still there are times when he cries, O wretched man! When he feels the plague of his own heart; when he feels the thorn in the flesh; when his wicked heart is discovered in all its fearful malignity; ah, then he lies down, crying, O wretched man that I am! One reason of this wretchedness is, that sin, discovered in the heart, takes away the sense of forgiveness. Guilt comes upon the conscience, and a dark cloud covers the soul. How can I ever go back to Christ? he cries. Alas! I have sinned away my Saviour. Another reason is, the loathsomeness of sin. It is felt like a viper in the heart. A natural man is often miserable from his sin, but he never feels its loathsomeness; but to the new creature it is vile indeed. Ah! bretheren, do you know anything of a believers wretchedness? If you do not, you will never know his joy. If you know not a believer's tears and groans, you will never know his song of victory.

(2) He seeks deliverance. - "Who shall deliver me?" In ancient times, some of the tyrants used to chain their prisoners to a dead body; so that, wherever the prisoner wandered, he had to drag a putrid carcase after him. It is believed that Paul here alludes to this inhuman practice. His old man he felt a noisome, putrid carcase, which he was continually dragging about with him. His piercing desire is to be freed from it. Who shall deliver us? You remember once, when God allowed a thorn in the flesh to torment His servant, - a messenger of Satan to buffet him, - Paul was driven to his knees. "I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me." Oh, this is the true mark of God's children! The world has an old nature; they are all old men together. But it does not drive them to their knees. How is it with you, dear souls? Does corruption felt within drive you to the throne of grace? Does it make you call on the name of the Lord? Does it make you like the importunate widow: "Avenge me of mine adversary"? Does it make you like the man coming at midnight for three loaves? Does it make you like the Canaanitish woman, crying after Jesus? Ah, remember, if lust can work in your heart, and you lie down contented with it, you are none of Christ's!

(3) He gives thanks for victory. - Truly we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us; for we can give thanks before the fight is done. Yes, even in the thickest of the battle we can look up to Jesus, and cry, Thanks to God. The moment a soul groaning under corruption rests the eye on Jesus, that moment his groans are changed into songs of praise. In Jesus you discover a fountain to wash away the guilt of all your sin. In Jesus you discover grace sufficient for you, - grace to hold you up to the end, - and a sure promise that sin shall soon be rooted out all together. "Fear not, I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by My name; thou art Mine." Ah, this turns our groans into songs of praise! How often a psalm begins with groans and ends with praises! This is the daily experience of all the Lord's people. Is it yours? Try yourselves by this. Oh, if you know not the believer's song of praise, you will never cast your crowns with them at the feet of Jesus! Dear believers, be content to glory in your infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon you. Glory, glory, glory to the Lamb!



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Author

Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813-1843), the pastor of St Peter's, Dundee, died in his thirtieth year, and in the seventh of his ministry. His epitaph describes him as a man who "walked with God," and who was "honoured by his Lord to draw many wanderers out of darkness into the path of life".