“What reason have we to praise God, who has given us so much cause to glory in Christ Jesus, that we that deserve so much shame should have so much cause to glory! We were in a forlorn condition: we were depressed to the lowest depths of misery and wretchedness.
We were filthy and abominable. We had made ourselves viler than the earth, and we deserved nothing but shame and everlasting contempt. We had nothing to glory in, but all the circumstances of our case were such as administered to us just cause of shame and confusion of face.
But God has been pleased to provide One for us to take away our guilt and disgrace, and to be the glory in the midst of us and to put great honor upon us, to be as a covering to hide our nakedness.
And not only so, but to adorn us and make us glorious and to be to us wisdom and to bring us from our shameful ignorance and darkness and to be our righteousness for the removal of our guilt and to procure acceptance with God for us and to be our sanctification and to change us from sinful and loathsome to holy and amiable and to be our redemption, to deliver us from all trouble and danger and make us happy and blessed forever and to bestow upon us gold tried in the fire and that although poor we might become rich, and that He might exalt us from the dunghill and set us among princes.
That God should take us, who were under bondage to sin and Satan, and give us such a glorious victory over our adversaries, and cause us thus to triumph over those that had us captives and were so much stronger than we and that God gives us so much greater privileges than others, that we should have such a king, is reason to praise God.”
–Jonathan Edwards, “Glorying in the Savior” in Sermons and Discourses: 1723-1729, Volume 14, Ed. Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 468. The sermon may be found online for free.
