G. V. Wigram and J. N. Darby.
Paul never forgot the place where mercy had found him so that he could always say - “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief.”
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When two parties find themselves in presence of each other, the one who has any superiority ought to take the lead and be waited upon. But instead of waiting upon God to find out what He has done, we go before Him, and so find that we come into direct collision with what He has done. When our hearts were first awakened before we knew Christ, we thought something had to be done, and set to work and laboured 3, 4, or 7 years, and then we found that all our labour had taken for granted that Christ had not died, had not suffered upon the cross and that we were competent to do what only the Son of God could do to settled the question of sin in the presence of a Holy God - we had not taken our place as owning God alone, casting everything before Him to see what He would do.
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See the connection between the end of Eph. 1 and the beginning of Eph. 2. The only One upon earth of whom it could be said “this man hath done nothing amiss” rejected by Jew and Gentile, took the cup of wrath and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, we find the power that wrought in that Blessed One is the same that works in us (Eph. 1:19-20). Power wrought in Him - in Him, a Man whose exaltation is connected with that verse [?] in which the Spirit speaks of the “Father of glory.” All glory originated with Him. We see a man who never had a will, who knew what His Father's will was and then accomplished it at all costs and He is at God's right hand, a specimen of His [?this?] power that wrought in you and me that believe. The One who can gather all things round Himself in the new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, that is the character of the power that wrought in us.
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We never see rightly the blessing wherewith God has blessed us, until we see how the place and thought all spring up in His own bosom. He could not have drawn a motive from anything subordinate. God always keeps the place of God. Wealthy and rich, there is no limit to what He gives. He gave His own Son, and will send Him the second time to bring His people home. In creation we see Him displaying His goodness - and redemption is emphatically His own thought and His alone - placed [?traced] there before the world was.
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Eph. 2:5. There are certain things which man may think he can enter into, and certain things which the human mind could not form a notion about. Christ is up there, the only One who had a right to the Father's house - and then comes the unfolding of how the plan ran [?], what were God's thoughts, what His purpose as to the portion of the believer.
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Eph. 2:1-3. The Spirit does not here as in Romans trace out a great catalogue of evil in detail, but He looks at the pit in which we were all found, “dead in trespasses and sins.”
He is “rich in mercy.” There is a difference between 'mercy' and 'grace'. Grace is a free gift, but mercy is much more; it speaks of demerit and brings our souls to the bosom of God Himself who has mercy. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” No claim. A great many young Christians have not taken their stand upon the ground of mercy, and so when something or other breaks down to which they trusted, they are utterly at sea. We ought to be getting the soul and conscience to rest in God as the God of mercy and compassion to the soul. The God of mercy brought them out of the pit and put them in vital union with the Son of His love, and they had something to rest upon in the hour of trial.
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There, up there upon the throne of God, is that Man sitting of whom the world said, “We will have nothing to do with Him,” and we are raised up and made to sit together in heavenly places with [sic., in] Him. Ask the wisest people of the world what sense they put upon this verse and you will find they nothing about it; as men we have no power to enter into the things of God.
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God who wrote this Word said He would communicate eternal life to us - did communicate it to us and this eternal life must flow through us and out of us. This settles an immense deal with regard to experience: if God has said a thing, we must give everything else the lie.
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If I had been one of Paul's companions, I believe I should have seen one who looked like a man who looked at everything from a different point of view to what the world does. Paul filled up every detail as he passed along here with something of Christ. He looked upon things as just fit for that purpose, as things in which Christ could be magnified whether by life or by death.
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The early Christians presented in a beautiful way the Nazarite character. They walked as those whose hearts Christ had taken away with Him into heaven.
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Fragments: Phil. 1:22. (GVW? or JND?)
When you find a man who does not know what to choose, whether to live or die, such a one does not want much altered in his circumstances down here.
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It is a wholly different thing for God to be revealing and fulfilling the thoughts of His heart, and for Him to be manifesting the thoughts of ours; it is just the difference between Christ and Moses.
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Who could pretend to be the fellow of God's Son, except by the sovereign purpose of God?
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When God could not bear my sins, instead of putting me away, He put them away.
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The prodigal on His journey home was reasoning about what His father would be, instead of enjoying what His Father was.
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2 Cor. 3:13-18. Unrevealed glory and unaccomplished redemption go together. I get not only the grace which gives confidence , but the work which makes righteous. Does it not alarm you, that glory? Alarm me?! I delight in it, for every ray tells me that my sins are put away, for I see the glory in the face of Him who bore them.
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The word of God is a sword which has no handle: it is sharper than a two-edged sword all over and if people touch it they meddle with a sword that has no handle.
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Romans 7 is not Christian experience though it is the experience of many Christians.
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The new man has got a sense of good and evil, not according to natural conscience, but according to all that God is.
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Eph. 4:22. “The truth in Jesus” is the putting off and the putting on. It is not a question whether I have done it, it is not speaking of people - not of Christians, but of Christianity.
Food for the Flock 7 (1881), p. 34
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Conversion is an act of the Spirit of God in me. Salvation is the value of Christ's blood for me.
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The obedience of Christ is having no will at all; God's will the spring of all we do.
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Sanctification comes before justification in Scripture. We find progressive holiness constantly spoken of, but never in connection with meetness for heaven.
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In the Lord Jesus we learn not what a man should be amongst men, but what God was as man amongst men who were sinners.