| Back | Contents | Next |
{Since the Heavenly Trade Is the Best Trade…
Exhortation to Those Who Began the Heavenly Trade But Have Backslidden
Advice: Be Deeply Affected by Your Evil Condition
Consider That You Are a Big Loser}
Those who go bankrupt in Christianity are the greatest losers of all because they not only lose their own goods, but those of others also. Their talents, graces, privileges, and experience are the Lord’s goods that they have wasted in riotous living. They lose what they once had, what they seemed to have, what it seemed that they would get, and what they had hoped to have (Luke 16:1; Matthew 25:29; 2 John 8; Galatians 3:4).1276 All their enjoyments, tastes, comforts, edification, and practical experience are lost. All their profession, faith, love, and conscience are shipwrecked. All their duties, labors, and suffering come to nothing—unless they repent. People of the world estimate their losses to be great from the quantity, variety, or abundance of the things they lost, but these things are only temporal. But the treasures that professors of Christianity pursue and will have if they are sincere and faithful to death are eternal. Backsliders, if unrepentant, are deprived of all their eternal blessings. Oh, who can count the sum and value of the worth of those glorious things that are lost to those who fall back and go down in Christianity until they lose everything?
1276“He also said to His disciples: ‘There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods’” (Luke 16:1 NKJV). “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matthew 25:29 ESV). “Look to yourselves, that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward” (2 John 8 NKJV). “Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?” (Galatians 3:4 ESV).
| Back | Contents | Next |