ADDRESSES ON ROMANS
saying. "We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement." The words "and not only so" connect this verse with all that has gone before, from verses 1-10. Not only do we have justification, peace, access, grace, hope, glory, love; not only are we able to rejoice in tribulation, since suffering prepares us for the glory to come; "but we also joy in God." No longer are we afraid of Him. Our thoughts of Him are so changed that we rejoice in Him. When I was a child, I was afraid of God. If someone had told me of a desert island, miles away. where God was not, I would have hastened there. But since He has made known His love to me, what a different feeling I have! Forgetting about His great salvation, forgetting what God has done for us, forgetting about the "things which God hath prepared for them that love him," we now find satisfac- tion in what God is. We delight to "joy in God." You remember how the disciples rejoiced when they had healed the sick, and how they said, "Lord, even the demons are subject unto us through thy name." Then He answered and said unto them, "In this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." That was cause for joy indeed! But you will note that "in that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit"-in His own Holy Spirit! (See Luke 10: 17, 20, 21.) This is the high- est joy of all-"joy in God"-not in His gifts, but in His matchless Person. I remember how, long before I was married, I loved to visit in a certain home in St. Louis. Every Christmas I went there, no matter how far away I was. One certain Christmas I arrived by train, and took a cab out to the house. It was about seven-thirty in the evening when I got there. The chil- dren were hanging up their stockings, and they had hung one up for me, filled with fruit and nuts and candies. The youngest child had played until he was tired. Look- ing over at his mother, who sat darning, he dropped his toys. [Page 85
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