Acting Our Faith On The Almighty Power of God...Continued

             Second Tie.  The dear love he beareth to his saints engageth his power.  He that hath God's heart cannot want his arm.  Love in the creature commands all the other affections, sets all the powers of the whole man on work; thus in God, love sets all his other attributes on work.  When once God pitched his thoughts of doing good to lost man, then wisdom fell on projecting the way, almighty power that undertook to raise the fabric according to wisdom's model.  All are ready to effect what God saith he likes.  Now the believing soul is an object of God's choicest love, even the same with which he loves his Son, John 17:26.

1. God loves the believer as the birth of his everlasting counsel.  When a soul believes, then God's eternal purpose and counsel concerning him, whom he chose in Christ before the foundation of the world, and with whom his thoughts went so long big, brings forth.  And how must God needs love that creature whom he carried so long in the womb of his eternal purpose?  This goodly fabric of heaven and earth had not been built, but as a stage whereon he would in time act what he decreed in heaven of old, concerning the saving of thee, and a few more his elect.  And therefore according to the same rate of delight, with which God pleased and entertained him­self in the thoughts of this before the world was, must he needs rejoice over the soul now believing, with love and complacency inconceivable; and God having brought his counsel thus far towards its issue, surely will raise all the power he hath, rather than be disappointed of his glory within a few steps of home; I mean, his whole design in the believer's salvation. The Lord who hath chosen his saints Zech. 3, as Christ prays for Joshua their representative, will rebuke Satan and all their enemies.
2. God loves the saints as the purchase of his Son's blood.  They cost him dear, and that which is so hardly got shall not be easily lost.  He that was willing to expend his Son's blood to gain them, will not deny his power to keep them.
3. God loves the saints for their likeness to himself, so that if he loves himself, he cannot but love himself appearing in them; and as he loves him­self in them, so he defends himself in defending them.  What is it in a saint that enrageth hell but the image of God, without which the war would soon be at an end?  It is the hatred that the panther hath to man that makes him fly at his picture.  ‘For thy sake we are slain all the day long:’ and if the quarrel be God's, surely the saint will not go forth to war at his own cost.

             Third Tie.  The covenant engageth God's al­mighty power, ‘I am the Almighty God; walk before me,’ Gen.17:1.  There is a league offensive and defensive between God and his saints; he gives it under his hand that he will put forth the whole power of his godhead for them, ‘The Lord of hosts is the God of Israel, even a God to Israel,’ I Chron. 17:24.  God doth not parcel himself out by retail, but gives his saints leave to challenge whatever a God hath, as theirs; and let him, whoever he is, sit in God's throne and take away his crown, that can fasten any untruth on the Holy One; as his name is, so is his nature, a God keeping covenant for ever.  The promises stand as the mountains about Jerusalem, never to be removed; the weak as well as the strong Christian is within this line of communication.  Were saints to fight it out in open field by the strength of their own grace, then the strong were more likely to stand, and the weak to fall in battle; but both castled in the covenant, are alike safe.