None Like Christ
For this month’s book review, we are stepping back into the early 1800s to dust off a little book written by Octavius Winslow. Winslow was born in England and ministered as a contemporary of Charles Spurgeon and J.C. Ryle. He is noted for his high view of God, yet desire to flesh out the power of Christ’s supremacy in the believer’s daily life.
None Like Christ is only 92 pages and yet, each page overflows with the riches of Christ for the believer’s meditation and encouragement. Winslow endeavors to highlight the incomparable worth of Christ to draw the believer’s gaze increasingly toward Him in love, worship, and adoration.
Seven considerations are spread out before us to capture our thoughts: Christ’s glory, beauty, love, saving work, teaching, friendship, and service. Let’s taste a small sample of the banquet that Winslow spreads before our eyes by considering Christ’s glory, beauty, and love.
Glory. Winslow says, “The deep gloom of earth was never illumined with such a light as when the Son of God descended from heaven; and the brightness of heaven never shone forth with such a luster as when he returned back from earth…” And again, “…One beam darting into your heart will pale the glory of the world, the glory of the creature, and the glory of self. And when this divine sun has risen resplendent on your soul … you may … exult that, as a pardoned sinner, a justified believer, an adopted child, all this glory of Christ’s is yours – a robe of righteousness and your diadem of beauty – constituting you a king and priest unto God.”
Beauty. Winslow says, “Himself the source and author of all beauty, his own beauty eclipses all.” And again, “But Christ’s beauty is shared with all those who have union with him. Washed in his blood, robed with his righteousness, and adorned with his graces, each believer is lovely, through his loveliness put upon him. And there is more of wonder, because there is more of God, there is more of beauty, because there is more of Christ, in that poor sinner who clings in penitence, faith, and love to the cross, looking up to God as a pardoned child, and pulsating with a life derived from the indwelling spirit, than in all this vast creation, enameled and sparkling with endless forms of loveliness.”
Love. Winslow says, “The love of Christ is a CONDESCENDING love. No other love ever stooped like Christ’s love. Go to Bethlehem and behold its lowliness, and as you return, pause awhile at Gethsemane, and gaze upon its sorrow, then pursue your way to Calvary, and learn, in the ignominy, in the curse, in the gloom, in the desertion, in the tortures, in the crimson tide of that cross – how low Christ’s love stooped. And still it stoops! It bends to all your circumstances. You can be conscious of the becloudings of no guilt it will not cancel, of the pressure of no sin it will not lighten, of the chafing’s of no cross it will not heal, of the depths of no sorrow it will not reach, of the dreary loneliness of no path it will not illumine and cheer. Oh! Is there a home on earth where the love of Christ most loves to dwell, where you will oftener find, yes, always meet it? It is the heart-broken, contrite, and humbled for sin!”
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