Christ Crucified

 Use and improve this representation of God in Christ. It is our greatest privilege to have it; and our greatest care and diligence should be used in the improvement of it; and our greatest profit comes to us by that improvement. This I would insist upon in these particulars :— 1. Improve this representation of God in Christ for fixing and determining your spirits, in all your thoughts of God. There must be thoughts of God. His people are called thinkers on his name, Mai. iii. 16. On the contrary, of the wicked it is said, Psalm x. 4. God is not in all his thoughts. There are two thoughts about God in Christ, that I am afraid some deceive themselves by. 1. Some think that they do know God in Christ, when they know that Christ is God. This is indeed absolutely needful to salvation. But it is not all. A notional assent unto this truth, that shine so brightly in every page of the New Testament, may be in an ungodly man. The devil knows, and believes it, Mark v. 7.; and he only puts a wicked if upon it, in his tempting of Christ, Matt h. iv. 3. 2. Some think they know God in Christ, when they know that Christ only can reveal God unto men, Matt h. xi. 27. and John i. 18. This is indeed a proper work for Christ only; but that pertains to his prophetic office. But we must go further; not only to believe that Jesus Christ is true God, and the only true and effectual teacher of the knowledge of God; but that all the right knowledge we have, or can have of God, is of God as he is in Jesus Christ. What Paul resolved on in his office, (and it may be that he meant more than his way in his office of apostleship), you must take up in all your religion: 1 Cor. ii. 2. / determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Robert Traill

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