WHAT IT COSTS TO BE A CHRISTIAN, BY J.C. RYLE, 1816-1900, FROM HIS BOOK, HOLINESS:
DEVOTIONAL POINTS [bracketed statements, emboldening and underscoring are mine]:
- What is one willing to give up to be saved?
- What is the amount of sacrifice one must make to serve Christ?
- It costs little to be a nominal Christian: to attend worship twice on Sundays; to be tolerably moral during the week – thousands around you are doing that already
- The nominal Christian does not have to learn self-denial; self-sacrifice…if that were the way then we could rewrite the verses in Matthew 7, saying, wide is the gate and broad, the way to heaven
- However, the Bible states that there are enemies to be overcome; battles to fight; sacrifices to make; an Egypt to be forsaken; a wilderness to endure; a cross to carry; a race to run…
- Conversion is the beginning of a mighty conflict; that is, if you are converted, you will not be able to sit in your rocking chair and skate to heaven
- COSTS: Firstly: your self-righteousness; pride; sense of personal goodness; merit, must go; you must be content to go to heaven as a poor sinner saved by God’s free grace
- You must acknowledge that you have left undone things that ought to have been done; done what ought not to have been done
- You must give up all trust in your own morality, respectability, prayer, Bible reading, church attendance, sacrament receiving…and trust in nothing but Christ [we get to know Him via prayer and Bible reading, e.g., but these means do not save us, He does]
- Secondly: your sins have to be turned from, forsaken: every practice, habit, addiction that is wrong in God’s sight; you must be at war with these, and starve them by diminishing your involvement with them and your affections for them – mortifying them, crucifying them, killing them…
- Daniel 4:27 Therefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable to you: break off your sins by practicing righteousness, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity.”
- Isaiah 1: 16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil,
- Job 20: 12 “Though evil is sweet in his mouth, though he hides it under his tongue, 13 though he is loath to let it go and holds it in his mouth,
- That is, Christ will receive us but we must forsake our sins
- Thirdly: It will cost your love of ease: to fight a battle; to run a race; to watch and pray…are all activities requiring diligent striving
- One must continually heed his behavior: in every company; place; time;
- One must carefully spend his time [talent and treasure]; carefully monitor his tongue, temper, thoughts, imagination, motives, conduct in every relationship [in a recent post about walking in the Spirit, those things are ‘sowing’ and are done in the mind, the place all our external actions begin]
- No means of grace may be safely neglected. Means of grace: prayer, Bible reading, hearing of preaching; Lord’s Supper, Christian fellowship around the word; Baptism
- Proverbs 13:4 [ESV2011] The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.
- Fourthly: It will cost one the favor of the world; to please God will result in being thought ill of by the world
- One must not think it strange to be mocked, ridiculed, slandered, persecuted, hated
- One must not think it strange to have his opinions and religious practices despised and scorned
- One must submit to be thought of by many as a fool and a fanatic; to have his words perverted and his actions misrepresented…
- John 15:20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
- This is hard because we hate to be falsely accused; to experience injustice; to be held in low esteem by our peers; to be slandered; gossiped about; excluded
- These things must be experienced; they are the cup our Master firstly drank:
- Isaiah 53:3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
- To be a Christian will cost one the favor of the world
This devotional came from the YouTube site: Christian Sermons and Audiobooks, to go to their devotional page, which features devotionals from several fine preachers, click the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/c/stack45ny/search?query=devotionals