Bones Stronger For Having Been Broken
Believers are stronger and more secure under Christ's finished work than before the fall.
"Our reconciliation with God is like the soldering of a vessel, which is henceforth strongest in the crack; or as a leg broken, if well set, it is the stronger: so are we upon firmer terms than we were in innocency; there was before the fall a possibility of being at odds with God, which is now taken away." This is a gracious fact. Under the covenant of works it would have been always possible for obedience to fail, and then the reward would have been forfeited; but now, under the new covenant, our Lord Jesus has settled and fixed all that was contingent in it by perfecting his part of the agreement, and therefore all the rest stands sure, and all believers must receive covenanted mercies. Adam might have fallen, and we in him, even had he stood for a thousand years. The second Adam has ended his probation both for himself and all his seed, and now nothing can intervene to deprive his people of the earned and purchased inheritance. Innocence seemed sure, but perfection is surer. It is something not to have broken the law; it is far more to have fulfilled it and honoured it, so as to be able to say as our Lord has said, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." Fitly and justly did Watts say: "He raised me from the deeps of sin, The gates of gaping hell, And fix'd my standing more secure Than 'twas before I fell."
My soul, be thou doubly diligent to magnify thy Saviour's name. If the bones which God has broken shall rejoice, much more the bones which he has set. If he rejoices more over the lost sheep which he has found than over that which never went astray, count thyself the happiest and most indebted of beings to be thus prized by thy gracious God.