Good Friday Meditation: BEHOLD THE LORD JESUS: “With what less than ravishment of spirit can I behold the Lord Jesus, who, from everlasting was clothed with glory and majesty, now wrapped in rags, cradled in a manger, exposed to hunger, thirst, weariness, danger, contempt, poverty, revilings, scourgings, persecution? Into what ecstasies may I be cast to see the Judge of all the world accused, judged and condemned? To see the Lord of life dying upon the tree of shame and curse? To see the eternal Son of God struggling with His Father’s wrath [in the Garden…on the cross]? …How Jesus’ love toward His own has carried Him! He has laid down His life for us! What raptures of spirit can be sufficient for the admiration of this infinite mercy! Be thou swallowed up, O my soul, in the depth of divine love; and hate to spend your thy thoughts any more upon the base objects of this wretched world. Look upon Him! He hangs on the cross naked, torn, and bloody, between heaven and earth, as if He were cast out of heaven, and also rejected by earth….The whole gospel is no other thing than a motive to draw man to God by the force of God’s love to man in Christ….Is not this a great love? Are not all mercies wrapped up in this blood of Christ? …Christ is all in all, and Christ above all, and will you not love Him? O that all our words were words of love, and all our labors, labors of love, and all our thoughts, thoughts of love, that we might speak of love, and muse of love, and love this Christ who first loved us, with all our heart, and soul, and might!†– Isaac Ambrose, ‘Looking Unto Jesus’.
Easter Meditation: “How was Christ exalted in his resurrection? A. Christ was exalted in his resurrection, in that, not having seen corruption in death, (of which it was not possible for him to be held,) and having the very same body in which he suffered, with the essential properties thereof, (but without mortality, and other common infirmities belonging to this life,) really united to his soul, he rose again from the dead the third day by his own power; whereby he declared himself to be the Son of God, to have satisfied divine justice, to have vanquished death, and him that had the power of it, and to be Lord of quick and dead: all which he did as a public person, the head of his church, for their justification, quickening in grace, support against enemies, and to assure them of their resurrection from the dead at the last day.†– Westminster Larger Catechism.
Easter Weekend Prayer: “Our Lord, teach us to see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ…If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is ‘of him’. If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects that he might learn to feel our pain. If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment; in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from the fountain, and from no other. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.†– From John Calvin, Institutes 2.16.19.
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In Christ’s love,
Pastor Biggs
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