Sovereign Grace Church

…If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest [be baptized]. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God

[ACTS 8:36-37]

[Beloved,] When the heart is cast indeed into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth, when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us, when not only the sense of the words is in our heads, but the sense of the things abides in our hearts, when we have communion with God in the doctrines we contend for, then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men; and without this, all our contending is, as to ourselves, of no value. What am I the better, if I can dispute that Christ is God, but have no sense or sweetness in my heart from hence that He is the God in covenant with my soul? What will it avail me to evince by testimonies and arguments that He hath made satisfaction for sin, if the wrath of God abides upon me (JOHN 3:36), and I have no experience of my being made the righteousness of God in Him (2 CORINTHIANS 5:21); if I find not, in my standing before God, the excellence of having my sins imputed to Him, and His righteousness imputed to me? Will it be an advantage to me in the issue, to profess and dispute that God works the conversion of a sinner by the irresistible grace of His Spirit, if I was never acquainted experimentally with the deadness and utter impotence to good, that opposition to the law of God which is in my own soul by nature, and with the efficacy of the exceeding greatness of the power of God in quickening, enlightening, and bringing forth the fruits of obedience in me? It is the power of the truth in the heart alone that will make us cleave unto it indeed. Let us not think that we are anything the better for our conviction of the truth of the great doctrines of the gospel for which we contend, unless we find the power of those truths abiding in our hearts, and have a continual experience of their necessity and excellence in our standing before God, and our communion with Him.