Job 18:21

REFLECTIONS

Our reflections on this chapter will be rendered profitable, if so be the HOLY GHOST graciously make them so for us, in leading our minds to consider how very consistent it is, with the love the LORD hath to the persons of his people, as in the instance of Job, to chasten them for their departures and infirmities. Reader! only pause and consider how great, how dear, how inexpressibly costly our redemption was to GOD, And therefore how suitable it is, that there should not be the smallest abuse of his covenant mercy, by his dear Son. Though Job was no hypocrite, yet Job confessed himself to be a sinner, sprung from the common stock of whom it is with truth said, there is none righteous, no not one. And there is in the best of men, even the most faithful servants of the LORD JESUS, so much of that commonness of corruption, belonging to a fallen nature, that if GOD'S grace did not restrain it, the worst of sins would be the sad and deadly consequence breaking out in all. How blessed is it then to see in GOD'S chastisement of our sin, though accepting the person of his people in JESUS, he manifests the holiness of his nature, and secures his own glory. And here, blessed JESUS, cause both Writer and Reader to pause, and contemplate the unparalleled instance of this regard JEHOVAH had to his holiness, and to his glory, when for sin in us he put thee to grief. Never, surely, was there such a proof ever given. And never can there be any more the like to it; as when he made thee to be sin for us, though thou knewest no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of GOD in thee. Hail! thou holy, blessed, spotless LAMB of GOD. Oh! what unknown, what unnumbered, what never to be fully accounted for, or fully recompensed riches, blessings, glories, are contained in the one offering of thyself once for all, by which thou hast forever perfected them that are sanctified. Oh! write this precious thought upon my inmost soul, and let death itself never, never be able to blunt the remembrance of it; JESUS and his glorious redemption hath more to plead for his church before GOD and his FATHER, than all the church's sins can plead against them. Neither can eternity itself recompense the infinite merit of the righteousness and blood-shedding sacrifice of a GOD incarnate.