I am His by purchase and I am His by conquest; I am His by donation and I am His by election; I am His by covenant and I am His by marriage; I am wholly His; I am peculiarly His; I am universally His; I am eternally His.
Once I was a slave but now I am a son; once I was dead but now I am alive; once I was darkness but now I am light in the Lord; once I was a child of wrath, an heir of hell, but now I am an heir of heaven; once I was Satan's bond-servant but now I am God's freeman; once I was under the spirit of bondage but now I am under the Spirit of adoption that seals up to me the remission of my sins, the justification of my person and the salvation of my soul.
Thomas Brooks (1608-1680)
His "positional" understandings of himself in Christ are as accurate and poignant today as when Rev. Brooks penned those words three and a half centuries ago.
ReplyDeleteWhat a Satan-inspired tragedy that many such gifted preachers fell victim to the "Act of Uniformity" when they would not conform to the established rites and ordination of the Church of England.