August 17

"How shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"

—Romans 8:32.

IT is triumphant dialectic, and irrefutable logic. If God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for me, I should have the victorious certainty that He will freely give me all things beside.

For this is the supreme token of His love, and He will not withhold from me any meaner token. Having bestowed on me His very kingliest and divinest boon, His unspeakable gift, it will be strange indeed if He should deny me blessings which are smaller and less costly. That cannot be.

And this love-gift plunged Him into deepest anguish, and He will not keep from me proofs of His mindfulness and grace which will bring Him no pain at all. God can never suffer again as He suffered when Jesus died in the cheerlessness and shame of the cross. It is easy, it is joyous, for Him to enrich me with all other wealth save this alone.

And this bestowment of His mercy was the beginning of my redemption, and He will not deprive me of anything needed to make that redemption perfect and complete. For, though man often commences what he does not finish, perhaps through lack of power, perhaps through loss of will, God never does. He is sure to consummate His good work.

There is more to be said. This gift of Christ includes every other gift. They are all wrapped up in it, as the flower is in the bud, as the fruit is in the blossom, as the wealth of August is in the promise of May. When He is mine, they are mine—unquestionably and inalienably mine.