Ezekiel 16:6

Here is the grand cause and the only cause of man's recovery. Jesus passing by, as the divine Samaritan, and beholding our nature in our blood. His grace, and not man's merit, is the sole source of all that follows in mercy. For though the Lord takes occasion from our misery to magnify the riches of his grace, yet his love and mercy are both before our misery. Sweet thought! And there is another uncommonly great beauty in this verse, I mean in the Lord's repeating, and thereby the more confirming, His love to His people: When thou wast in thy blood I said live; yea, when thou wast in thy blood (not when thou hadst crept out of it) I said live. Reader! may we not, without violence to the passage, conceive that thus the Lord Jesus speaks to His redeemed now as living, though in their blood all the days of their unregeneracy? Precious thought! Was it not to this sovereign decree that you and I were preserved all the while from going down to the pit, whilst living as without God and without Christ in the world?