The text is addressed, not to the ungodly, nor to strangers, but to those who "have received Christ Jesus the Lord." They have commenced well; let them go on as they have begun.

• Received him into their knowledge.


• Received him into their understanding.


• Received him into their affections.


• Received him into their trust.


• Received him as their life at their new birth. When they received him, he gave them power to become the sons of God.

• As Christ, anointed and commissioned of God.


• As Jesus, the Savior, to redeem and sanctify them.


• As the Lord, to reign and rule over them with undivided sway.

• It is not said, as ye have fought for Jesus and won him, or studied the truth and discovered Christ Jesus, but, as ye have "received" him. This strips us of everything like boasting, for all we do is receive.

4. The blessed certainty of the experience of those to whom Paul wrote, "As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord." They had really received Jesus; they had found the blessing to be real: no doubt remained as to their possession of it.

Inquirers are not infrequently counseled to give their hearts to Christ or to consecrate themselves to the Lord. We would not be overcritical with what is well meant; but really this is not the gospel. The good news of grace is that God hath given to us eternal life and redemption through his Son, and that in order to be saved, the sinner has nought to do but to accept it.

But having received the gift of God and having become partakers of his converting grace, then and therefore the divine obligation for service begins to press upon us. The Lord becomes an asker as soon as we have become recipients. "As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him." Let consecration crown conversion, let self-devotion to Christ answer to his self-devotion for you. — Dr. A. J. Gordon

If you would know how faith is to be exercised in thus abiding in Jesus, to be rooted more deeply and firmly in him, you have only to look back to the time when first you received him. You remember well what obstacles at that time there appeared to be in the way of your believing. There was first your vileness and guilt: it appeared impossible that the promise of pardon and love could be for such a sinner. Then there was the sense of weakness and death: you felt not the power for the surrender and the trust to which you were called. And then there was the future: you dared not undertake to be a disciple of Jesus while you felt so sure that you could not remain standing, but would speedily again be unfaithful and fall. These difficulties were as mountains in your way. And how were they removed? Simply, by the word of God. That word, as it were, compelled you to believe that, notwithstanding guilt in the past, and weakness in the present, and unfaithfulness in the future, the promise was sure that Jesus would accept and save you. On that word, you ventured to come and were not deceived: you found that Jesus did indeed accept and save you.

Apply this, your experience in coming to Jesus, to the abiding in him. By faith you became partakers of the initial grace; by that same faith you can enjoy the continuous grace of abiding in him. — Andrew Murray

Since they had received the doctrine of Christ, they could not again part with it without convicting themselves either of imprudence in having mistaken a false doctrine for a true one or of instability, in quitting and altering a doctrine which they knew to be good and sufficient when they received it. If your belief be good, why do you change it? If it be otherwise, why did you entertain it? Though it be a heinous sin not to receive the Lord Jesus when he presents himself to us in his gospel, yet it is much more evil to cast him out after having received him; as it is a greater outrage to thrust a man from your house when you have admitted him, than to shut your doors against him at the first. — Jean Daille

• Jesus is a man. In the broadest sense, he is neither Jew nor Gentile. We see in him no restrictive nationality. Our own peculiar nationality sinks before union with him.


• Jesus is now our nationality, our charter, and our fatherland.


• Jesus is our hero, legislator, ancestor, leader.


• Jesus gives us laws, customs, history, genealogy, prestige, privilege, reliance, power, heritage, conquest.


• Jesus furnishes us with a new patriotism, loyalty, and clanship, which we may safely indulge to the utmost.

• The separating rite is abolished, and the peculiar privilege of a nation born after the flesh is gone with it.


• Those who were reckoned far off are brought near.


• Both Jew and Gentile are united in one body by the cross.

• These distinctions are transient.


• These distinctions are superficial.


• These distinctions are of small value.


• These distinctions are nonexistent in the spiritual realm.

1. Christ is all our culture. In him we emulate and excel the "Greek."
2. Christ is all our revelation. We glory in him even as the "Jew" gloried in receiving the oracles of God.
3. Christ is all our ritual. We have no "circumcision," neither have we seven sacraments nor a heap of carnal ordinances; he is far more than these. All Scriptural ordinances are of him.
4. Christ is all our simplicity. We place no confidence in the bare Puritanism which may be called "uncircumcision."
5. Christ is all our natural traditions. He is more to us than the freshest ideas which cross the mind of the "Barbarian."
6. Christ is all our unconquerableness and liberty. The "Scythian" had not such boundless independence as we find in him.
7. Christ is all as our Master, if we be "bond." Happy servitude of which he is the Head!
8. Christ is our Magna Charta, yea, our liberty itself if we be "free."

What a rich inheritance have all those who are truly interested in Jesus Christ! Christus meus et omnia. They possess him that is all in all, and in possessing him, they possess all. "I have all things, my brother," saith Jacob to Esau (Gen. 33:11, margin). He that hath him that is all in all cannot want anything. "All things are yours," saith the apostle, "whether things present or things to come, and ye are Christ's" (1 Cor. 3:22-23). A true believer, let him be never so poor outwardly, is in truth the richest man in all the world; he hath all in all, and what can be added to all? — Ralph Robinson

All, then, let him be in all our desires and wishes. Who is that wise merchant that hath heart large enough to conceive and believe as to this? Let him go sell all his nothings, that he may compass this pearl, barter his bugles for this diamond. Verily, all the haberdash stuff the whole pack of the world hath, is not worthy to be valued with this jewel.

I cannot but reverence the memory of that reverend divine (Mr. Welsh) who, being in a deep muse after some discourse that had passed of Christ, and tears trickling abundantly from his eyes before he was aware, being urged for the cause thereof, he honestly confessed that he wept because he could not draw his dull heart to prize Christ aright. I fear this is a rare mind in Christians, for many think a very little to be quite enough for Jesus, and even too much for him! — Samuel Ward

"At length, one evening, while engaged in a prayer-meeting, the great deliverance came. I received the full witness of the Spirit that the blood of Jesus had cleansed me from all sin. I felt I was nothing, and Christ was all in all. Him I now cheerfully received in all his offices: my Prophet, to teach me; my Priest, to atone for me; my King, to reign over me. Oh, what boundless, boundless happiness there is in Christ, and all for such a poor sinner as I am! This happy change took place in my soul March 13th, 1772." — William Carvosso

Dannecker, the German sculptor, spent eight years in producing a face of Christ; and at last wrought out one in which the emotions of love and sorrow were so perfectly blended that beholders wept as they looked upon it. Subsequently, being solicited to employ his great talent on a statue of Venus, he replied, "After gazing so long into the face of Christ, think you that I can now turn my attention to a heathen goddess?" Here is the true secret of weanedness from worldly idols, "the expulsive power of a new affection."

1. This followed upon sore travail (see verse 9). Only as we sow in tears do we reap in joy.
2. This was backed by holy living. Dwell upon each point in verses 10 and 11. Unholy ministers will have scant cause for joy.
3. It prevented all self-laudation. They thanked God, and this is the opposite of glorifying self.
4. It was of a social character." We thank God": Paul, Silas, and Timothy. We hold a fraternal meeting of joy when God blesses us among our beloved people.
5. It was of an abiding character: "without ceasing." We can never cease praising the Lord for his goodness in saving souls.
6. It cheered them for further service. They wished, according to verse 17, to visit the friends again, and further benefit them.

1. They received the word of God. They heard it calmly, attended to it candidly, considered it carefully.
2. They received the word of God with a hearty welcome. They accepted it by faith with personal confidence and joy.
3. They did not receive the word of man. It is well to keep the doors locked in that direction. We cannot receive everything. Let us reject merely human teaching and leave the more room in our minds for the Lord's word.
4. They did not receive the gospel as the word of men. Their faith was not based on the clever, eloquent, logical, dogmatical, or affectionate way in which it was preached.
5. They received it as God's revealed word and therefore received it—

• With reverence of its divine character.


• With assurance of its infallibility.


• With obedience to its authority.


• With experience of its sacred power.

• The same Lord works in all believers. In the main, the same experience occurs in all the saints, even though they may never have seen each other.


• This similarity of all regenerated men furnishes a valuable set of experimental evidences of the divine origin of conversion.

There was a minister of the gospel once, a true preacher, a faithful, loving man, whose ministry was supposed to be exceedingly unsuccessful. After twenty years' labor, he was known to have brought only one soul to Christ. So said his congregation. Poor worker in the trench! His toil was not seen by men, but the eye of God rested upon it. To him, one day, came a deputation from his people, representing to him, respectfully enough, that, inasmuch as God had not seen fit to bless his labors among them, it were better for him to remove to another sphere. They said that he had only been instrumental in the conversion of one sinner. He might do more elsewhere. "What do you say?" said he. "Have I really brought one sinner to Christ?" "Yes," was the reply, "one, but only one." "Thank God," cried he, "for that! Thank God! I have brought one soul to Christ. Now for twenty years' more labor among you, God sparing me, perhaps I may be the honored instrument of bringing two." — Calthrop

Loskiel's "Account of the Moravian Missions Among the North American Indians" has taught me two things. I have found in it a striking illustration of the uniformity with which the grace of God operates on men. Crantz, in his"Account of the Missions in Greenland" has shown the grace of God working on a man-fish — on a stupid, sottish, senseless creature, scarcely a remove from the fish on which he lived. Loskiel shows the same grace working on a man-devil — a fierce, bloody, revengeful warrior, dancing his infernal war-dance with the mind of a fury. Divine grace brings these men to the same point. It quickens, stimulates, and elevates the Greenlander; it raises him to a sort of new life; it seems almost to bestow on him new senses; it opens his eye and bends his ear, and rouses his heart; and what it adds, it sanctifies. The same grace tames the high spirit of the Indian — it reduces him to the meekness, docility, and simplicity of a child. The evidence arising to Christianity from these facts is perhaps seldom sufficient by itself to convince the gainsayer; but, to a man who already believes, it greatly strengthens the reason of his belief. I have seen, also, in these books, that the fish-boat, and the oil, and the tomahawk, and the cap of feathers excepted, a Christian minister has to deal with just the same sort of creatures as the Greenlander and the Indian among civilized nations. — Richard Cecil

The edition of those living epistles is the same the world over; the binding only may differ.