Tuesday, October 14, 2014

He Remembers That We Are Only Dust




















You spare your son when you know he is doing his best to serve you. He has made a a blunder, and if he had been a mere hired servant you might have been angry, but you say, “Ah, I know my boy was doing all he could, and he will do better soon, and therefore I cannot be severe. I see that he is imperfect, but I see equally well that he loves me, and acts like a loving son.” The word here used signifies pity or compassion, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” He will even at the last look upon us with a love which has pity mingled with it, for we shall need it in that day. He will “remember that we are dust,” and will accept us, though, cognizant of all the faults there were, and of all the infirmities that there had been: he will accept us still, because we are his own sons in Christ Jesus, and by grace desire to serve him.

We do not serve him to become sons, but because we are sons. It is a sweet name for a child of God: a son-servant, one who is a servant to his father, and therefore, because he is his son, serves not for wage, nor of compulsion, but out of love. Such service is mentioned as evidence of sonship, and not as a claim; and we shall be saved through grace, our holy service of sonship being the proof of that grace.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Great Difference," delivered May 19, 1878. Image by Moyan Brenn on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.

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