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Thus we see that the Lord’s supper is intended to be to us a full store house—an overflowing fountain of spiritual blessing. It is designed to furnish us with an abundant supply for our manifold wants…
It gives new ardour to our hopes. It looks back to the first, and forward to the second coming of the Lord. It points to future glory. It carries us forward to the inheritance—the kingdom, the crown, the restitution of all things, the rest that remianeth for the people of God, the bridal day, the marriage supper of the Lamb.
We sit here as at our eastern window to watch the first rays of coming day; to see star after star fading from the heavens as the dawn approaches, and the sun prepares to rise, “the sun of a morning without clouds,” bringing in the splendour of the everlasting day. We seem to hear the voice which sounded over the lonely rocks of Patmos in the ears of John, “He that testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly.” And with him we eagerly echo back the joyful words, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
Horatius Bonar, Christ is All, p. 177, 180
Every time I take the Lord’s Supper it is a tangible reminder that I have a greater supper awaiting me. It is a physical promise that through this world of pain and trials there is a coming feast at which I will sit down at. Though the food is simply now, it will be glorious then!
Not to long ago my church, Immanuel, changed our practice or having the Lord’s Supper. We went from having it once a month to having it every Sunday. And it has been a wonderful change. Now, every week, I get a tangible reminder that the greatest feast of all is in my future. Every Sunday I am reminded that I will sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
The blood of Christ can do greater things than our questioning hearts conceive. Its virtue extends farther than either unbelief or self-righteousness will credit. It has the property of covering, not merely our sins before coming, however great these may be, but the defects of our act of coming. Our High Priest bears “the iniquity or our holy things.” (Ex 28:38)
~Horatius Bonar,From the preface to “Hours of Christian Devotion”, quoted in Christ is All: The Piety of Horatius Bonar, 213
Even when we do not grasp it, the blood of Christ extends further than we can conceive. From one side, covering the rank of our absolute rebellion when were were blind and dead; all the way to our greatest acts of obedience as believers. The blood of Christ covers all.
If you ever question whether the blood of Christ extends to your situation, don’t question any longer.
The Spirit’s infinite holiness gives Him such a view of the misery of an unholy soul, as makes Him yearn with compassionate love over such; His infinite holiness makes Him long to see them delivered from their sin, and made holy as He is holy. Holy love yearns over the unholy. Holy love longs to save the lost. Holy love strives to deliver the unholy from the awful misery of a sinful state, and to replace them in the blessedness of a divine purity, and the perfect image of God.
~Horatius Bonar, The Love of the Spirit, quoted in Christ Is All: The Piety of Horatius Bonar, 176.
The doctrine, the profession, the good report of others, the bustle of work, will not fill the soul. God Himself must be there, with His covering righteousness, His cleansing blood, His quickening Spirit. Without this, religion is but a shell: holy services are dull and irksome…Sacraments, prayer-meetings, religious services, labour of charity, will not make up for the living God…
~Horatius Bonar, “By Faith” in Christ Is All: The Piety of Horatius Bonar, 149-150
In our good deeds; whether it be church ministry, worship service, or theological study, where is God? Is He the center, the reason for it all coming about? Are we going, working, serving, learning because we know that is where He is, and we want more of Him?
Or are such actions merely part of an identity which is not really dependent on His existence? Are we just moral religious people who want to learn and do good deeds?
One option will give us emptiness.
The other, a never ending fountain of living water to give satisfaction.
Let men, with the newly sharpened axes of rationalism, do their utmost to hew down that cross; it will stand in spite of them.
Let them apply their ecclesiastical paint-brush, and duab it all over with the most approved of mediaeval pigments to cover its nakedness, its glory will shine through all. Let them scoff at the legal transference of the sinner’s guilt to a divine substitute, and of that Surety’s righteousness to the sinner, as a Lutheran delusion, or a Puritan fiction, that mutual transference, that wondrous exchange, will be found to be wrapped up with Christianity itself. Let those who, like Cain of old, shrink from the touch of sacrificial blood, and mock the “religion of the shambles (an old term meaning meat market or slaughterhouse),” purge their consciences with the idea of God’s universal Fatherhood, and try to wash their robes and make them white in something else than the blood of the Lamb;
to us, as to the saints of other days, there is but one purging of the conscience, one security for pardon, one way of access, one bond of reconciliation, one healing of our wounds, the death of Him on whom the chastisement of our peace was laid, and one everlasting song, “unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.”
~Horatius Bonar, Christ is All: the Piety of Horatius Bonar, quoting From “The Errors of the Age,” The Christian Treasury (1870). Page 80
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 remarkable thing about this good news is, that it is wholly respecting Jesus – not a word about ourselves. It is of His goodness, not ours, that the gospel speaks. It is of His love to us, that it brings us the news; and it is the riches of His grace that it spreads out before us. A description of Jesus, and the things concerning Him -His Person, His life, His death, His resurrection – this is the gospel; and whosoever believeth this gospel, is a soul saved.
Horatius Bonar, Christ is All, p. 119
Renewing Thoughts 