What does it mean for the Lord Jesus Christ to be ‘all-sufficient’? It means that we find that the Lord is not only completely able and capable of removing our sins, but that He also is everything we will ever need as a Christian. Great saints of old have been imprisoned, exiled and shunned by their peers and yet been utterly content because they have Christ. Many lovers of Christ have given up great pleasures of the world that they used to enjoy and found that the Lord Jesus, through the scriptures, has satisfied their every want and desire so that they have no longer any need for anything else. This can be put no better than it was in this article by C. H. Mackintosh.
The language, being from the 19th century, has been updated where possible to remove ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, etc. to make it easier to read. It may seem long, but persevere and it will bring great reassurance and joy as we consider the Lord’s Person and His present service to us as well as what He has done in the past.
The article appeared as a series of five short papers, but are all part of the same subject. Sub-headings given were not part of the original article but are given for ease of reference.
Scripture references may not always be given but any scripture quoted has been highlighted as follows: “Scripture”.
Editor
When once the soul has been brought to feel the reality of its condition before God, the depth of its ruin, guilt, and misery, its utter and hopeless bankruptcy, there can be no rest until the Holy Spirit reveals a full and an all-sufficient Christ to the heart. The only possible answer to our total ruin is God's perfect remedy.
This is a very simple, but a most important truth; and we may say, with all possible assurance, the more deeply and thoroughly the reader learns it for himself the better. The true secret of peace is to get to the very end of a guilty, ruined, helpless, worthless self, and there find an all-sufficient Christ as God's provision for our very deepest need. This truly is rest — a rest which can never be disturbed. There may be sorrow, pressure, conflict, exercise of soul, heaviness through manifold temptations, ups and downs, all sorts of trials and difficulties; but we feel persuaded that when a soul is really brought by God's Spirit to see the end of self, and to rest in a full Christ, it finds a peace which can never be interrupted.
The unsettled state of so many of God's dear people is the result of not having received into their hearts a full Christ, as God's own very provision for them. No doubt this sad and painful result may be brought about by various contributing causes, such as a legal mind, a morbid conscience, a self-occupied heart, bad teaching, a secret hankering after this present world, some little reserve in the heart, as to the claims of God, of Christ, and of eternity. But, whatever may be the producing cause, we believe it will be found, in almost every case, that the lack of settled peace, so common amongst the Lord's people, is the result of not seeing, not believing, what God has made His Christ to be to them, and for them, and that for ever:
Now what we propose, in this paper, is to show the anxious reader, from the precious pages of the word of God, that there is treasured up for him in Christ all he can possibly need, whether it be to meet the claims of his conscience, the cravings of his heart, or the exigencies of his path. We shall seek, by the grace of God to prove that the work of Christ is the only true resting place for the conscience: His Person, the only true object for the heart: His word, the only true guide for the path.