Proverbs 11:15: He who is surety for a stranger will suffer, but one who hates being surety is secure.
Insight
How fully He proved the truth of the words we are considering when He suffered on that cross of shame! How He had to “smart for it,” when God’s awful judgment against sin fell upon Him! But He wavered not. In love to God and to the strangers whose Surety He had become, “He endured the cross, despising the shame.”
His sorrows are now forever past. He has paid the debt, met every claim in perfect righteousness. The believing sinner is cleared of every charge, and God is fully glorified. “He bore on the tree the sentence for me;
And now both the Surety and sinner are free.”
None other could have met the claims of God’s holiness against the sinner and have come out triumphant at last. He alone could atone for sin. Because He has settled every claim God has raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in highest glory. There He sits—the glorified. One, administering grace and blessing to all who see in Him the stranger’s Surety, and trust Him for themselves. 1
Application
Meditate on how the Holy One received you, a sin-filled stranger, as a forgiven friend.
Motivation
Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” John 4:13–14
Reject not the love of God, and receive not the love of the world. – TWEET IT
Prayer
Father, thank You for giving Your Son to save me, a foreigner and sinner. I love You.
1. Ironside, H. A. (1908). Notes on the Book of Proverbs. Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Bros.
