For Lord’s Day, January 23, 2022

Dear Saints,

Last Lord’s Day during our Sabbath Class going through the DVD entitled, “Puritan: All of Life to the Glory of God,” we studied the Puritans on “zeal” as an important aspect of vital Christianity.

I wanted to share what I had recently read by Thomas Watson about Christian zeal in his Body of Divinity for our Westminster Confession class studies on chapter 8, “Of Christ the Mediator.”  In his section on Christ’s “humiliation”, he calls us to be conformed to the image of Christ by being similarly zealous for God:

“Let us be made like him in zeal.  ‘The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up.’ John ii 17.”

Here, John is quoting Psalm 69:9 and applying it to Jesus as He turned over the money changers’ tables in the Temple and made a whip and chased them out with it declaring that God’s house must not be a marketplace but a place of prayer. Watson continues:

“In this let us be like Christ, zealous for God’s truth and glory, which are the two orient pearls of the crown of heaven.  Zeal is as needful for a Christian as salt for sacrifice, or fire on the altar.  Zeal without prudence is rashness; prudence without zeal is cowardliness. Without zeal, our duties are not acceptable to God.  Zeal is like rosin to the bow-strings, without which the lute makes no music.”

May God grant us holy zeal with knowledge and love.  For, it is Christ, Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. (Titus 2:14).  And it is Christ Who yet still reminds us in Revelation 3:19: As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

Semper Reformanda,

Pastor Grant