It is grace, free, sovereign grace, which has made you to differ!
Should any here, supposing themselves to be the children of God, imagine that there is some reason “in them” why they should have been chosen, let them know, that as yet they are in the dark, concerning the first principles of grace, and have not yet learned the gospel.
If ever they had known the gospel, they would, on the other hand, confess that they were less than the least- the offscouring of all things- unworthy, ill-deserving, undeserving, and hell-deserving, and ascribe it all to distinguishing grace, which has made them to differ; and to discriminating love, which has chosen them out from the rest of the world.
Great Christian, you would have been a great sinner if God had not made you to differ!
O! you who are valiant for truth, you would have been as valiant for the devil if grace had not laid hold of you!
You are now sanctified, you are quickened, you are justified; but what would you have been today if it had not been for the interposition of the divine hand?
There is not a crime you might not have committed; there is not a folly into which you might not have run. Even murder itself you might have committed if grace had not kept you.
You shall be like the angels; but you would have been like the devil if you had not been changed by grace!
Therefore, never be proud- all the garments you have are from above; rags were your only heritage.
You are now wrapped up in the golden righteousness of the Savior, and accepted in the garments of the beloved! But you would have been buried under the black mountain of sin, and clothed with the filthy rags of unrighteousness, if he had not changed you!
O! strange mystery, that you, who have nothing of your own, but have still to draw upon grace, should be proud- a poor dependent pensioner upon the bounty of your Savior, and yet proud; one who has a life which can only live by fresh streams of life from Jesus, and yet proud!
Go, hang your pride upon the gallows, as high as Haman! Hang it there to rot, and you stand beneath, and execrate it to all eternity; for sure of all things most to be cursed and despised is the pride of a Christian.
He, of all men, has ten thousand times more reason than any other to be humble, and walk lowly with his God, and kindly and humbly toward his fellow-creatures.
