Sonship, Motives of – Charles Spurgeon

YOU could not hope to govern the nation by the same rules and methods with which as a father you order your family. In your family it may be there is not even a rod, certainly there is no policeman, no prison, no black cap, no transportation. Children are ruled by a father on a scheme essentially different from the rule of magistrates and kings. There are maxims of courts of legislature which would never be tolerated in the home of love. Just so within the family of God there are no penal inflictions, no words of threatening, such as must be employed by the great King when he deals with the mass of his rebellious subjects. You are not under the law, else were there judgment and curses for you; you are under grace, and now the motives by which you are to be moved are such as might not affect others, but which, since you are renewed in the spirit of your mind, must powerfully affect you.