Of
First
Importance
Living each day in the good of the gospel
The restoration of the banished
“He spares not His Son, but sends Him in quest of the exiles. He comes into the land of banishment, lies in an exile’s cradle, becomes a banished man for them, lives a banished life, endures an exile’s shame, dies an exile’s death, is buried in an exile’s tomb. He takes our place of banishment that we may take His place of honor and glory in the home of His Father and our Father. Such is the exchange between the exile and the exile’s divine substitute. Though rich, for our sakes He becomes poor. Though at home, He comes into banishment, that we may not be expelled forever.”
—Horatius Bonar,
The place of exhausted penalty and magnified law
“The cross is the place of exhausted penalty and magnified law. That which covers the sinner entirely and shields him from wrath was finished there. That covering, that propitiatory covering, whose power and virtue are unchangeable throughout all ages, and underneath which we are secure from wrath, was wrought out there. The propitiation of the cross is the substance of the glad tidings which we bring.”
—Horatius Bonar, “The Cross of the Lord Jesus”
No mere mechanical agent
“The Holy Spirit is no mere mechanical agent in the great work of a sinner’s deliverance. ‘I delight to do Your will’ is as true of the Spirit as the Son.
He loves the sinner; therefore He lays hold of him. He pities his misery; therefore He stretches out the hand of help. He has no pleasure in his death; therefore He puts forth His saving power. He is longsuffering and patient; therefore He strives with him day by day; and though ‘vexed,’ ‘resisted,’ ‘grieved,’ and ‘quenched,’ He refuses to retire from, or give up, any sinner on this side of eternity.
The extent to which we resist Him, and the amount of His forbearing love, we cannot know. This only we may say, that our stubbornness is something infinitely fearful and malignant, while His patient grace passes all understanding.”
—Horatius Bonar, “The Holy Spirit”
The persistent love of the Spirit
“The Holy Spirit is no mere mechanical agent in the great work of a sinner’s deliverance, and of the Church’s up building, obediently doing the work appointed to Him. ‘I delight to do Your will’ is as true of the Spirit as the Son.
He loves the sinner; therefore He lays hold of him. He pities his misery; therefore He stretches out the hand of help. He has no pleasure in his death; therefore He puts forth His saving power. He is longsuffering and patient; therefore He strives with him day by day; and though ‘vexed,’ ‘resisted,’ ‘grieved,’ and ‘quenched,’ He refuses to retire from, or give up, any sinner on this side of eternity.
The extent to which we resist Him, and the amount of His forbearing love, we cannot know. This only we may say, that our stubbornness is something infinitely fearful and malignant, while His patient grace passes all understanding.”
—Horatius Bonar,
God says that the believing man is justified
“Faith, in all its degrees, still reads the inscription, ‘The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin;’ and if at times the eye is so dim that it cannot read these words, through blinding tears or bewildering mist, faith rests itself on the certain knowledge of the fact that the inscription is still there, or at least that the blood itself (of which these words remind us) remains, in all its power and suitableness, upon the altar unchanged and uneffaced.
God says that the believing man is justified: who are we, then, that we should say, ‘We believe, but we do not know whether we are justified?’ What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”
– Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall a Man be Just with God? (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1874/1993), 23-4.
Grace Infinite and Everlasting
“We often feel as if grace had done its utmost when it has carried us safely through the desert, and set us down at the gate of the kingdom. We feel as if, when grace has landed us there, it has done all for us that we are to expect.
But God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. He does exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think. It is just when we reach the threshold of the prepared heavenly city, that grace meets us in new and more abundant measures, presenting us with the recompense of the reward.
The love that shall meet us then to bid us welcome to the many mansions, shall be love beyond what we were here able to comprehend; for then shall we fully realize, as if for the first time, the meaning of these words, ‘The love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord;’ and then shall we have that prayer of Christ fulfilled in us, ‘That the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’
It was grace which on earth said to us, ‘Come unto Me, and I will give you rest;’ and it will be grace, in all its exceeding riches, that will hereafter say to us, ‘Come, you who are blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”
—Horatius Bonar,
“One Glorious Whole”
“All that Christ did and suffered, from the manger to the tomb, forms one glorious whole, no part of which shall ever become needless or obsolete; no part of which one can ever leave without forsaking the whole.
I am always at the manger, and yet I know that mere incarnation cannot save; always at Gethsemane, and yet I believe that its agony was not the finished work; always at the cross, with my face toward it, and my eye on the crucified One, and yet I am persuaded that the sacrifice there was completed once for all; always looking into the grave, though I rejoice that it is empty, and that ‘He is not here, but is risen’; always resting (with the angel) on the stone that was rolled away, and handling the grave-clothes, and realizing a risen Christ, nay, an ascended and interceding Lord, yet on no pretext whatever leaving any part of my Lord’s life or death behind me, but unceasingly keeping up my connection with Him, as born, living, dying, buried, and rising again, and drawing out from each part some new blessing every day and hour.”
—Horatius Bonar, “Not Faith, But Christ”
Living each day in the good of the gospel
The restoration of the banished
“He spares not His Son, but sends Him in quest of the exiles. He comes into the land of banishment, lies in an exile’s cradle, becomes a banished man for them, lives a banished life, endures an exile’s shame, dies an exile’s death, is buried in an exile’s tomb. He takes our place of banishment that we may take His place of honor and glory in the home of His Father and our Father. Such is the exchange between the exile and the exile’s divine substitute. Though rich, for our sakes He becomes poor. Though at home, He comes into banishment, that we may not be expelled forever.”
—Horatius Bonar,
The place of exhausted penalty and magnified law
“The cross is the place of exhausted penalty and magnified law. That which covers the sinner entirely and shields him from wrath was finished there. That covering, that propitiatory covering, whose power and virtue are unchangeable throughout all ages, and underneath which we are secure from wrath, was wrought out there. The propitiation of the cross is the substance of the glad tidings which we bring.”
—Horatius Bonar, “The Cross of the Lord Jesus”
No mere mechanical agent
“The Holy Spirit is no mere mechanical agent in the great work of a sinner’s deliverance. ‘I delight to do Your will’ is as true of the Spirit as the Son.
He loves the sinner; therefore He lays hold of him. He pities his misery; therefore He stretches out the hand of help. He has no pleasure in his death; therefore He puts forth His saving power. He is longsuffering and patient; therefore He strives with him day by day; and though ‘vexed,’ ‘resisted,’ ‘grieved,’ and ‘quenched,’ He refuses to retire from, or give up, any sinner on this side of eternity.
The extent to which we resist Him, and the amount of His forbearing love, we cannot know. This only we may say, that our stubbornness is something infinitely fearful and malignant, while His patient grace passes all understanding.”
—Horatius Bonar, “The Holy Spirit”
The persistent love of the Spirit
“The Holy Spirit is no mere mechanical agent in the great work of a sinner’s deliverance, and of the Church’s up building, obediently doing the work appointed to Him. ‘I delight to do Your will’ is as true of the Spirit as the Son.
He loves the sinner; therefore He lays hold of him. He pities his misery; therefore He stretches out the hand of help. He has no pleasure in his death; therefore He puts forth His saving power. He is longsuffering and patient; therefore He strives with him day by day; and though ‘vexed,’ ‘resisted,’ ‘grieved,’ and ‘quenched,’ He refuses to retire from, or give up, any sinner on this side of eternity.
The extent to which we resist Him, and the amount of His forbearing love, we cannot know. This only we may say, that our stubbornness is something infinitely fearful and malignant, while His patient grace passes all understanding.”
—Horatius Bonar,
God says that the believing man is justified
“Faith, in all its degrees, still reads the inscription, ‘The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin;’ and if at times the eye is so dim that it cannot read these words, through blinding tears or bewildering mist, faith rests itself on the certain knowledge of the fact that the inscription is still there, or at least that the blood itself (of which these words remind us) remains, in all its power and suitableness, upon the altar unchanged and uneffaced.
God says that the believing man is justified: who are we, then, that we should say, ‘We believe, but we do not know whether we are justified?’ What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”
– Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall a Man be Just with God? (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1874/1993), 23-4.
Grace Infinite and Everlasting
“We often feel as if grace had done its utmost when it has carried us safely through the desert, and set us down at the gate of the kingdom. We feel as if, when grace has landed us there, it has done all for us that we are to expect.
But God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. He does exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think. It is just when we reach the threshold of the prepared heavenly city, that grace meets us in new and more abundant measures, presenting us with the recompense of the reward.
The love that shall meet us then to bid us welcome to the many mansions, shall be love beyond what we were here able to comprehend; for then shall we fully realize, as if for the first time, the meaning of these words, ‘The love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord;’ and then shall we have that prayer of Christ fulfilled in us, ‘That the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’
It was grace which on earth said to us, ‘Come unto Me, and I will give you rest;’ and it will be grace, in all its exceeding riches, that will hereafter say to us, ‘Come, you who are blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”
—Horatius Bonar,
“One Glorious Whole”
“All that Christ did and suffered, from the manger to the tomb, forms one glorious whole, no part of which shall ever become needless or obsolete; no part of which one can ever leave without forsaking the whole.
I am always at the manger, and yet I know that mere incarnation cannot save; always at Gethsemane, and yet I believe that its agony was not the finished work; always at the cross, with my face toward it, and my eye on the crucified One, and yet I am persuaded that the sacrifice there was completed once for all; always looking into the grave, though I rejoice that it is empty, and that ‘He is not here, but is risen’; always resting (with the angel) on the stone that was rolled away, and handling the grave-clothes, and realizing a risen Christ, nay, an ascended and interceding Lord, yet on no pretext whatever leaving any part of my Lord’s life or death behind me, but unceasingly keeping up my connection with Him, as born, living, dying, buried, and rising again, and drawing out from each part some new blessing every day and hour.”
—Horatius Bonar, “Not Faith, But Christ”
http://firstimportance।org/?s
Horatius Bonar,
“The love of the Spirit”
“Perhaps much of our slow progress in the walk of faith is to be traced to our overlooking the love of the Spirit.
We do not deal with Him, for strength and advancement, as one who really loves us, and longs to bless us, and delights to help our infirmities (Rom 8:26). We regard Him as cold, or distant, or austere; we do not trust Him for His grace, nor realize how much He is in earnest in His dealings with us.
More childlike confidence in Him and in His love would help us on mightily. Let us not grieve Him, nor vex Him, nor quench Him by our untrustfulness, by disbelieving or doubting the riches of His grace, the abundance of His loving-kindness.”
—Horatius Bonar, “The Holy Spirit”
Yearning for our inheritance
“We know that all that is possible or conceivable of what is good and fair and blessed shall one day be real and visible. Out of all evil there comes the good; out of sin comes holiness; out of darkness, light; out of death, life eternal; out of weakness, strength; out of the fading, the blooming; out of rottenness and ruin, loveliness and majesty; out of the curse come the blessing, the incorruptible, the immortal, the glorious, the undefiled!
Our present portion, however, is but the pledge, not the inheritance. The inheritance is reserved for the appearing of the Lord. Here we see but through a glass darkly. It does not yet appear what we shall be. We are now but as wayfaring men, wandering in the lonely night, who see dimly upon the distant mountain peak the reflection of a sun that never rises here, but which shall never set in the ‘new heavens’ hereafter.”
—Horatius Bonar, “Home”
The Sanctifying Influence of Christ’s Love
“Terror accomplishes no real obedience
Suspense brings forth no fruit unto holiness.
No gloomy uncertainty as to God’s favour
can subdue one lust,
or correct our crookedness of will.
But the free pardon of the cross uproots sin,
and withers all its branches.
Only the certainty of love,
forgiving love,
can do this.”
- Horatius Bonar, quoted by Milton Vincent in A Gospel Primer for Christians (2008), 89.
Self or Christ?
“Self has no claims upon us, for it has done nothing for us. It has been a wall of iron between us and Christ. Is that a reason that we should serve it? It has been a mountain of ice between us and the world to come. Is that a ground of claim over us?
No, brethren, self has done nothing to make us either live to it or die to it. It never can do anything; shall we then bow to it; shall we serve it; shall we do it homage?
We ask on the other hand—What has the Lord not done? What indissoluble, innumerable bonds are there between us and him, as the living, the dying, and the rising one.
The whole of our life is to be his, as his life was for us. Surely he has earned this, if he has earned anything at all. The least that we can give him is our life; the undivided service of our being, in every part; in our doing, in our speaking, in our planning, and in all our daily round of business, so that every part of our life shall be a witness-bearing for him.”
—Horatius Bonar, “Self or Christ; Which Is It?”
“It is the pierced hand that holds the golden sceptre”
“It is only through blood-shedding that conscience is purged; it is only at the cross that the sinner can meet with God; it is the cross that knits heaven and earth together; it is the cross that bears up the collapsing universe; it is the pierced hand that holds the golden sceptre; it is at Calvary that we find the open gate of Paradise regained, and the gospel is good news to the sinner, of liberty to enter in.”
- Horatius Bonar, quoted in Christ is All: The Piety of Horatius Bonar, eds. Micahel A.G. Haykin & Darrin R. Brooker (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Reformation Heritage Books, 2007), 79-80.
Our power in drawing others to Christ
“Our power in drawing men to Christ springs chiefly from the fullness of our personal joy in Him, and the nearness of our personal communion with Him. The countenance that reflects most of Christ, and shines most with His love and grace, is most fitted to attract the gaze of a careless, giddy world, and win restless souls from fascinations of creature love and creature-beauty. A ministry of power must be the fruit of a holy, peaceful, loving intimacy with the Lord.”
- Horatius Bonar, Words to Winners of Souls (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1995), 13.
Not Faith, But Christ
“Faith is not our saviour. It was not faith that was born at Bethlehem and died on Golgotha for us. It was not faith that loved us, and gave itself for us; that bore our sins in its own body on the tree; that died and rose again for our sins. Faith is one thing, the Saviour is another. Faith is one thing, and the cross is another. Let us not confound them, nor ascribe to a poor, imperfect act of man, that which belongs exclusively to the Son of the Living God.
Our security is this, that it matters not how poor or weak our faith maybe: if it touches the perfect One, all is well. God has asked and provided a perfect righteousness; He nowhere asks nor expects a perfect faith. So a feeble, very feeble faith, will connect us with the righteousness of the Son of God; the faith, perhaps, that can only cry, ‘Lord, I believe; help mine unbelief.’ “
- Horatius Bonar, “Not Faith, But Christ”
We must get to the cross, and dwell there”
“Every plant must have both soil and root. Without both of these there can be no life, no growth, no fruit. The root is ‘peace with God’; the soil in which that root strikes itself, and out of which it draws the vital sap, is the free love of God in Christ. ‘Rooted in love’ is the apostle’s description of a holy man.
The secret of a believer’s holy walk is his continual recurrence to the blood of the Surety, and his daily intercourse with a crucified and risen Lord. All divine life, and all the precious fruits of it, pardon, peace, and holiness, spring from the cross. All fancied sanctification which does not arise wholly from the blood of the cross is nothing better than Pharisaism. If we would be holy, we must get to the cross, and dwell there; else, notwithstanding all our labour, diligence, fasting, praying and good works, we shall be yet void of real sanctification, destitute of those humble, gracious tempers which accompany a clear view of the cross.”
- Horatius Bonar, God’s Way of Holiness
“Terror accomplishes no real obedience”
“Terror accomplishes no real obedience. Suspense brings forth no fruit unto holiness. No gloomy uncertainty as to God’s favor can subdue one lust, or correct our crookedness of will. But the free pardon of the cross uproots sin, and withers all its branches. Only the certainty of love, forgiving love, can do this.”
- Horatius Bonar, God’s Way of Holiness
We live on Him
“His person is the great vessel of fullness, in which is contained all that is needed by the neediest of souls. It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell. In Him is the perfection of all perfection, the glory of all glory. On this glorious person we live. We draw our spiritual life out of Him. We live by faith upon Him. In receiving the Father’s testimony to His person, we draw in the life which is in Him for us. We use Him. We partake of His fullness. The virtue that is in Him flows out to us. Out of His fullness we receive, and grace for grace, — like wave upon wave.”
- Horatius Bonar, Light and Truth in The Life and Works of Horatius Bonar on CD-Rom (LUX publications: 2004), pp. 744-745.
Life and Healing
“His finished work, His accepted sacrifice, His precious blood, His completed expiation on ‘the accursed tree.’ On this work we live daily. It is a quickening work; a work the knowledge of which is life to the dead soul. To disbelieve that work, or to lose sight of it, is death; to believe it, and to keep our eye upon it, is life and healing. The sight of it, or the thinking about it (call it by what name we please), draws in life; we live in and by looking. This work contains the divine fullness provided for the sinner.”
- Horatius Bonar, Light and Truth in The Life and Works of Horatius Bonar on CD-Rom (LUX publications: 2004), pp. 744-745.
A new creature in Christ
“If I am a new creature in Christ, then I stand before God, not in myself—but in Christ. He sees no longer me—but only him in whom I am—him who represents me, Christ Jesus, my substitute and surety. In believing, I have become so identified with the Son of his love, that the favor with which he regards him passes over to me, and rests, like the sunshine of the new heavens, upon me.
In Christ, and through Christ, I have acquired a new standing before the Father. I am ‘accepted in the beloved.’
My old standing, that is, that of distance, and disfavor, and condemnation, is wholly removed, and I am brought into one of nearness, and acceptance, and pardon—I am made to occupy a new footing, just as if my old one had never been. Old guilt, heavy as the mountain, vanishes; old dread, gloomy as midnight, passes off; old fear, dark as hell, gives place to the joyful confidence arising from forgiveness and reconciliation, and the complete blotting out of sin.
All things are made new. I have changed my standing before God; and that simply in consequence of that oneness between me and Christ, which has been established, through my believing the record given concerning him. I come to him on a new footing, for I am “in Christ,” and in me there has been a new creation.”
- Horatius Bonar, “Christ and the New Creation”
“Faith is rest, not toil.”
“Man, in his natural spirit of self-justifying legalism, has tried to get away from the cross of Christ and its perfection, or to erect another cross instead, or to set up a screen of ornaments between himself and it, or to alter its true meaning into something more congenial to his tastes, or to transfer the virtue of it to some act or performance or feeling of its own. Thus the simplicity of the cross is nullified, and its saving power is denied.
For the cross saves completely, or not at all. Our faith does not divide the work of salvation between itself and the cross. It is the acknowledgment that the cross alone saves, and that it saves alone. Faith adds nothing to the cross, nor to its healing virtue. It owns the fulness, and sufficiency, and suitableness of the work done there, and bids the toiling spirit cease from its labours and enter into rest.
Faith does not come to Calvary to do anything. It comes to see the glorious spectacle of all things done, and to accept this completion without a misgiving as to its efficacy. It listens to the ‘It is finished!’ of the Sin-bearer, and says, ‘Amen.’ Where faith begins, there labour ends, — labour, I mean, ‘for’ life and pardon.
Faith is rest, not toil. It is the giving up all the former weary efforts to do or feel something good, in order to induce God to love and pardon; and the calm reception of the truth so long rejected, that God is not waiting for any such inducements, but loves and pardons of His own goodwill, and is showing that goodwill to any sinner who will come to Him on such a footing, casting away his own performances or goodnesses, and relying implicitly upon the free love of Him who so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.”
- Horatius Bonar, “Not Faith, But Christ”
The Axle of the Universe
The cross is never old. The wood, and nails, and inscription have indeed perished long ago; but the cross in which Paul gloried stands for ever.
That cross is the axle of the universe, and cannot snap asunder. That cross is the foundation on which the universe rests, and cannot give way. The cross of Golgotha is, in this sense, everlasting; and each one who glories in it becomes partaker of its immortality.
In itself blood is the symbol of death; in connection with the cross of Christ, it is the emblem and the pledge of life.
It is by blood that all that is feeble, and corruptible, and unclean is purged out of creaturehood. It is by blood that this race of ours is preserved against the possibility of a second fall, and this earth against the contingency of a second curse. Take away that blood, and the security of the universe is gone.
- Horatius Bonar, The Rent Veil
Romans 6:3
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
“It is into Christ’s death that we are baptised (Rom. 6:3), and hence the cross, which was the instrument of that death, is that in which we glory. The cross is to us the payment of the sinner’s penalty, the extinction of the debt, and the tearing up of the hand-writing which was against us.
And as the cross is the payment, so the resurrection is God’s receipt in full, for the whole sum, signed with His own hand. Our faith is not the completion of the payment, but the simple recognition on our part of the payment made by the Son of God.
By this recognition, we become as one with Him who died and rose, that we are thereafter reckoned to be the parties who have paid the penalty, and treated as if it were we ourselves who had died.
Thus are we ‘justified from sin’, and then made partakers of the righteousness of Him, who was not only delivered for our offences, but who was raised again for our justification.”
- Horatius Bonar, God’s Way of Peace
Posts
Wow–that’s fantastic.
I love reading Bonar’s work. God gave him a gift with words. And he used it for God’s glory.
And that gives God the glory.