A Bit of Wax and a Bit of Clay

"As it was in the Lord’s first coming, ‘He is set for the rise and the fall of many in Israel.’ The same heat softens some substances and bakes others into hardness. A bit of wax and a bit of clay put into the same fire--one becomes liquefied and the other solidified. The same light is joy to one eye and torture to another. The same pillar of cloud was light to the hosts of Israel, and darkness and dismay to the armies of Egypt. The same Gospel is ‘a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death,’ by the giving forth of the same influences killing the one and reviving the other; the same Christ is a Stone to build upon or a Stone of stumbling; and when He cometh at the last, Prince, King, Judge, to you and me, His coming shall be prepared as the morning; and ye ‘shall have a song as when one cometh with a pipe to the mountain of the Lord’; or else it shall be a day of darkness and not of light. He comes to me, to you; He comes to smite or He comes to glorify." --Alexander MacLaren 

The Gospel Described

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rom. 1:16).  The gospel tells men that they are ungodly. It tells them that God is just, infinitely and undeviatingly just. It brings these two truths plainly before the mind, and then calls upon it to admire and adore the wisdom and goodness which could reunite them, and make them harmonize together. It tells, in short, of Jesus Christ--of Him who came to preach good tidings to the meek, who was sent to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison door to them that are bound.


わたしは福音を恥としない。それは、ユダヤ人をはじめ、ギリシヤ人にも、すべて信じる者に、救を得させる神の力である (Rom. 1:16).