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Our Saviour’s Highest Honor, December 20
And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands?
Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house
of my friends.
Zechariah 13:6
.
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the
first earth were passed away.”
Revelation 21:1
. The fire that consumes the
wicked purifies the earth. Every trace of the curse is swept away....
One reminder alone remains: Our Redeemer will ever bear the marks
of His crucifixion. Upon His wounded head, upon His side, His hands and
feet, are the only traces of the cruel work that sin has wrought. Says the
prophet, beholding Christ in His glory: “He had bright beams coming out
of his side: and there was the hiding of his power.”
Habakkuk 3:4
, margin.
That pierced side whence flowed the crimson stream that reconciled man to
God—there is the Saviour’s glory, there “the hiding of his power.” ... And
the tokens of His humiliation are His highest honor; through the eternal
ages the wounds of Calvary will show forth His praise and declare His
power.
The cross of Christ will be the science and the song of the redeemed
through all eternity. In Christ glorified they will behold Christ crucified.
Never will it be forgotten that He whose power created and upheld the
unnumbered worlds through the vast realms of space, the Beloved of God,
the Majesty of heaven, He whom cherub and shining seraph delighted
to adore—humbled Himself to uplift fallen man; that He bore the guilt
and shame of sin, and the hiding of His Father’s face, till the woes of a
lost world broke His heart and crushed out His life on Calvary’s cross.
That the Maker of all worlds, the Arbiter of all destinies, should lay aside
His glory and humiliate Himself from love to man will ever excite the
wonder and adoration of the universe. As the nations of the saved look
upon their Redeemer and behold the eternal glory of the Father shining in
His countenance; as they behold His throne, which is from everlasting to
everlasting, and know that His kingdom is to have no end, they break forth
in rapturous song: “Worthy, worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath
redeemed us to God by His own most precious blood!”
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