A Peculiar Beauty

“For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

~ 1 Corinthians 2:2 (NKJV)

“There is a peculiar beauty in the Apostle’s expression, not only to preach Christ, but Christ crucified. There were a thousand excellencies in Christ Paul had learnt, and on which he had often dwelt, with holy rapture. But the cross included all. There Paul fixed his eye, his heart, his whole soul. And, what he felt so truly blessed, to himself, he longed to communicate to all the Lord’s people. Christ crucified, was peculiarly suited, to poor sinful men. It was worthy of all acceptation! Reader! how little do those men know of the plague of their own heart, who preach aught beside!”

~ Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary

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The Soul Without Christ

And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger…”

~ John 6:36a (NKJV)

I detain the Reader to observe with me the beauty and aptness of the similitude. As the common bread is the staff of the body, so Christ, the heavenly bread, is the life of the soul. And, as the body cannot subsist without daily food, so neither can the soul without her spiritual support in Christ. Yea, the soul hath more need for Christ, in his person, fullness, and grace, than the body hath for the bread that perisheth. For, put the case to the worst, that by reason of a famine of bread, the body languisheth and dieth, it is but a death a little premature, and which would otherwise have died in due time. But the soul without Christ, the bread of life, must famish forever, and though existing, lives only to eternal misery.

~ Robert Hawker, The Poor Man’s Commentary on John 6:22-39