1 Peter 1:6-9 Wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations:… Yonder is a porcelain vase just fashioned; it is now in the decorator's hands, who paints on it various pretty and delicate figures — here and there he paints a passage of Scripture. Presently he passes it into the hands of another who glazes it, who in his turn passes it on to a third. But what is the third doing? Why, he is putting the vase into a hot oven. "Sir," we exclaim, "you will spoil your ware, and your labour will be in vain." Smiling at our alarm, he placidly replies, "Gentlemen, I will take care that the vase suffers no injury. I put it into the oven to enhance its value, for I mean thus to burn in what has been painted on it, which would otherwise wash off. There — it is finished now," he adds, "and you may wash that vase for twelve months without making any impression on the colours. They are burnt in, sirs, burnt in." Similarly God burns in verses of the Bible into our experience. Having infused His grace into us in regeneration, and made wholesome impressions on the mind through the ministry of the Word, He consigns us to the furnace of affliction that they may be burnt into the very core of our being, so burnt that nothing will ever again erase them. (J. C. Jones, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: |
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