We did not know its inner meaning, and we never felt its power. I mean even those of us who were brought up in Christian families, and knew the letter of the gospel well. Those of us, who are now in Christ, lived at one time in the gross darkness of ignorance. He himself is the greatest marvel of all and among the many marvels that surround him is the marvellous light in which he dwells.
Probably, he does not fully understand all that has happened in any single day of his life, and there are certain days in which God’s dealings with him quite stagger him and though faith seeth all things to be plain, yet, to mere human reason, things often appear to be in a snarl, and intertwisted, and he knows not what to make of them.Įverything about a true Christian is marvellous, as angels know, who often desire to look into the things which concern them, and as he knows who is our Leader and Commander, - who was a Man wondered at, and whose faithful followers are all wondered at still. He is a riddle to himself, - an enigma made up of a thousand enigmas. The longer he looks at himself, the more he wonders at God’s grace, and at what God’s grace has done, is doing, and will yet do for him. He is a true man, but he is more than a man, for God has lifted him up above the level of other men, given him a life which other men do not possess, revealed to him secrets which others do not know, and prepared for him a place into which the ungodly can never enter. He is a mass of marvels, for he is dead, and yet he is alive he is one who lives here, and yet his life has gone away up yonder he is one who is a citizen of earth, and yet his citizenship is in heaven. But a true Christian is a God-made man, a twice-born man and he is a partaker of the divine nature.
You can make professors of that sort by the score, and you can see them dissolve by the score, for what man made, man can unmake, and what is merely natural has its season, like the leaves on the trees and, by-and-by, it withers away because its time to fade has come.
Mere professors - men-made Christians - people who have made themselves Christians by their own free will apart from the Spirit of God, have nothing marvellous about them. He is a marvel to himself, and a marvel to all who are round about him. EVERYTHING about a true Christian is marvellous.
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