Alas! alas! indeed I "have not attained!" I love the truth, and I love to declare it, and sometimes my earnestness in the pulpit may make the hearers think I am 'somebody'.
But could you compare Mr. Newton in the pulpit, with Mr. Newton in his retirement and in himself, you would startle and exclaim, "Nothing was ever so unlike itself!"
Well, I believe it must be so in some measure while, like the prisoners of Mezentius, I am chained to a dead body. But I hope the time will come, when I shall no longer drag the loathsome corpse of a depraved nature about with me. Ah! what a loathsome sight; what a cadaverous smell haunts me in every place!
I believe, if the Lord was pleased to increase my little exercise of grace tenfold, I would be ten times more out of conceit with myself than I am at present.
This is a poor subject, let us change it, and drop a thought about Jesus! In Him we have wisdom, righteousness, peace, power, and salvation. Grace abounds in Him, more than sin can abound in me and His compassion is fully adequate to my case. With Him there is plenteous redemption, therefore I will trust and not be afraid.
The more vile I, the more glorious and wonderful will He be in saving me to the uttermost! I wish to be humbled under a sense of sin, to strive in His strength against it; and then to be willing to be nothing, that He may be all in all.
[John Newton]
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Philippians 3:12 ... Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
Colossians 3:11 ... Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.
Romans 6:4 ... Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.❤
