Our family stopped by Weis yesterday to pick up cereal for dinner. As the girls went through the options, I picked up each box to check the sugar content. Perhaps you do the same thing when you pick up a book; do you read the table of contents? We want to know what is in the thing. Most important to us is the answer to the question: what is in salvation?
The tenth commandment forbids discontentment and forbids inordinate affections to all that isn’t ours. Why does God forbid this? Because He has already prepared all the content satisfying and sufficient to us in Jesus Christ’s person and work. We read in The Baptist Catechism, Q. 90: “What does God require of us that we may escape His wrath and curse, due to us for sin?” The answer includes not only faith in Jesus Christ and repentance unto life, but from out of our faith, “diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption.”
When we receive the blessed, gracious gift of faith, we then have a world of heavenly vigor to enjoy. We receive the means to live content and peaceable, to live sufficiently, mercifully, and satisfyingly in union with our Savior and Lord. He is a Good Lord who will not abandon us or neglect us—so can we be content with His gifts?
Before we sense our own discontentment, it is our duty to examine where we have neglected the “benefits of redemption” which are already ours in Jesus. We are called to check the contents, not of a cereal box, but of the promises of God and how we are communicating them in our own life. Let’s rejoice that the table of contents is full to overflowing in the saving grace of Christ Jesus!
Pastor Chris
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