W K Tweedie
1 Corinthians 12:3. No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.
No mother’s affection, no father’s authority, no pastor’s teaching can make me a believer in Jesus. He has no beauty that I should desire Him, and His treatment from the Jews is His treatment from mankind while they have only nature to teach them.
But what shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits? The Spirit comes and He takes of the things of Christ and shows them to the soul. He unveils His beauty by unsealing my eyes. He shows the Redeemer to be altogether lovely, and now, like a child of Zion, I bow to my Lord and am joyful in my King. No more lip-homage and heart-rebellion. No more naming of His
9Westminster Confession 7:6.
10The Communicant’s Companion, in Works, vol 1, p 285.
1Taken, with slight editing, from Tweedie’s volume, Glad Tidings.
name only to dishonour it. No more walking in the footsteps of Judas, when he betrayed the Saviour with a kiss.
I am one spirit with the Lord. The Son now makes me free. Beholding His glory, the soul seeks to be transformed into His image. He becomes the very soul of the soul, its life and being and blessedness – its heaven while on the earth, and the heaven of its heaven on high. O my soul, has the Spirit taught you to say that Jesus is your Lord? Is He enthroned in the heart? Or is your service still mechanical, formal and heartless?
An error here is fatal. To be right here is to be alive for evermore. And if the soul is indeed self-loathing, it will seek to live in the Spirit and to walk in the Spirit, to cultivate the fruits of the Spirit and so to prepare for following the Lamb wherever He leads. The great promise of the Spirit is fulfilled to the New Testament Church, as the great promise of the Saviour was fulfilled to the Old in the fulness of time. How strange then they are who continue to grovel when they might soar – sowing to the flesh when they might sow to the Spirit! “Unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united!” No, live by faith on the Son of God. Let nothing tempt you to pause till you are personally and indissolubly united to the Lord and made one spirit, one with Him – otherwise we are none of His.