Completed! - Finished!

   The LORD will accomplish what concerns me. Psalm 138:8

   Do you notice what is really said here?
   When the hymnist talks about the work of the Lord, he talks about a doing for me!
   Therefore is Jesus bearing a quite particular name in each true believers heart, namely: My Substitute! He who has taken my place! He who has placed Himself in the gap for me! He who has completed the necessary doing for me! Etc.
   This is the only way the believers thinks about Jesus! That is also why Christ is formed in them. - They achieves more and more part in His mind, as long as they are living here.
   But if they are seeing Christ as a model, an ideal to following, something the Scripture encourages us to do, they will pretty soon be struck by the judgment of the Law: You are absolutely not like Him, but a damned and lost sinner!
   If you then have not the Substitute clearly before your inner eye, it will be impossible to go on as a Christian.
   But then, what is exactly this, that you shall have clearly before your inner eye? - Is it a Christ you paint out for yourself? No, it is what Paul preaches: «For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.» (1 Cor. 15:3-4).
   He fulfilled His doing for you! Therefore, is no following of Him, service that is given you, or anything like that, a service of bondage - your salvation is depending on. Your salvation is already completed, fulfilled. - That is why you can be in any service at all!

E.K.

Holy Bible New American Standard Version
Translator: E.K.