My dear readers,

(Excerpts from RPG "Morning & Evening" Jan – Mar 1997, Mar 27 / Mar 19 / Mar 23 / Mar 9).

1. Let us ... turn again to the Lord

The loving wife longs for the absent husband’s return, for "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Separation from one’s spouse is a sorrow exceeded only by death. We who deeply love the Saviour must see the smile on His face or our days would be mournful and cheerless.

Loving children who honour their father with filial affection are greatly grieved if he should cast a reproaching glance, or point an accusing finger. So it is with every true child of the Father. Should He reprove by a Scripture text, or apply even if lightly the rod of affliction, we would go at once to the Father’s feet crying, "Show me my fault, O Father."

Is it so with you? Are you content to follow the Lord afar off? Can you bear to have your Beloved walking contrary to you, because you are walking contrary to His law? Have your sins stood between you and your God, and you are not alarmed? O be warned: it is a perilous thing to live happily without the smile of the Saviour’s face! It is a great evil that you feel little love for your dying Saviour, little joy in His presence and little fellowship with Him.

Awake! O Christian! Grieve over your hardness of heart. Think again how you first found salvation, how the Saviour received you with tender loving arms. Go at once to the cross. There your spirit will be quickened and revived. No matter how ungrateful and unfilial we may have become, let us return to the Lord in our rags and defiled state. At the foot of the cross, the loving Saviour’s cleansing flow – that fountain filled with blood – will wash us once again, and we will be restored to simple faith and tenderness of heart. But we must turn again to the Lord.

Without Him life is worthless and tasteless.

2. Only Christ died for us

Blessed be His name, the only name under heaven given among men whereby we can be saved (Acts 4:12). In Him was no sin: neither original nor actual sin had defiled Him. Therefore, death had no claim on Him. No man could have taken His life from Him justly, and none could have slain Him by force. "I lay it down of myself" (John 10:18) said our Good Shepherd. "Greater love hath no man than this …" (John 15:13).

Herein is the love of God revealed, the mystery of the atonement: God sent His Son to be "the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). Man sins and his Maker suffers. Justice was made a mockery by us, but found its satisfaction in Christ. Nothing that we could have done could have availed for the removal of sin: not rivers of tears, mountains of offerings, lifetimes of service – nothing but the blood of Jesus.

At Calvary, He was cut off for us, and the cause of wrath was removed at once, for sin was put away for ever. Herein is God’s wisdom: by substitution – God dying for man – full atonement was made, once and for all. No more is there any need for penance, self-mortification, pilgrimages, or any other man-made ways of gaining merit with God. The Lamb of God has paid our debt in full. On the cross, He cried, "It is finished" (John 19:30)!

Dear reader, do you see the Saviour bleeding for you, in your stead? Look to Him, God’s own Son, your representative, bearing away your sins, every one of them. Look only to Him, not to any other person, not to any priest or pastor, not to Mary or any beautiful image. Only Jesus! No one else died for you, only He, our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.

"Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: For I am God, and there is none else" (Isa 45:22).

3. The love of Christ

The love of Christ in its sweetest, its fullness, its greatness, its faithfulness, surpasses all human comprehension. What language can describe His matchless and unparalleled love towards the children of men? For the love of a lost humanity, the Second Person of the holy Godhead, forsook heaven’s glory for lowly earth and the depths of shame.

We cannot understand or even imagine His previous glory and majesty, when He was enthroned in the highest heaven with God the Father. By Him were the heavens made, and all the hosts thereof. His almighty hands upheld the spheres in countless billions of galaxies. The praises of cherubim and seraphim perpetually surrounding Him, with chorus of hallelujahs flowing to His throne. Our Lord Jesus reigned thus before His incarnation.

Just to become a man was already an inexpressible sacrifice. But to be "a man of sorrows" far exceeded the former. Christ came to suffer, to bleed and die, to hang on the cross of shame and cry in bitter anguish, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Ps 22:1). Such was the depth, the height, the length, the breadth of His divine, infinite, condescending love.

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that He should give us His Son! And what manner of love that the Son should become as one of us to take our place, bear our burden, and die our death! Such love flows only from the Lord of love, the Lover of our souls, Jesus the Christ.

His love conquered my heart, made me His captive for life.

God bless all readers.

Yours faithfully in the Saviour’s Service,

Dr SH Tow, Sr Pastor