Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: March 27th

" Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." - 1 John 4:11.

Two sublime arguments here present themselves. The first is this: God hath so loved me; therefore, beloved, I must love you. The second is: God hath so loved you; therefore, beloved, I must love you.

By virtue of the first argument, every expression of the love of God toward me that I have ever received, lays aside its smile, and assuming a beautiful air of authority, commands me to love you. All the promises that ever flocked in laughing troops or came singly and gently to my soul, though they seemed to have but one aim, namely to convey to me ottar of heaven’s roses, vials of divine love, all now acknowledge that they have another commission even to bind me and not let me go unless I love whom they shall name. Far be it from me to make any difficulty. Did I so, this would be the same as sending contemptuously back to God those radiant messengers. To refuse to love is to reproach God with loving. It is to make all the promises of God shrink back as I open his word, and say to me, " Who is this?" It is to make Christ frown me from his cross. It is to make all the glorified ones say, " He will never walk with us beside the river of the water of life." But I must walk there; I must love you, beloved of Christ! and I must be diligent in accomplishing my apprenticeship in this matter.

Through the virtue of the second argument, I find myself sovereignly attracted to you by all the precious tokens of his love that God hath ever bestowed upon you. There is a voice of thunder, so authoritative, but of course not intimidating, a voice of gentle thunder in a single hair of your head, for it has a long story to tell to my attentive ear, (with proof-texts from the gospel) about the interest of God in you.

Leaving unwritten a long, long chapter, come we to the manifestations of God’s amazing love to you in connection with the regeneration of your nature. His preparatory goodness in all the arrangements by which you were kept from being carried away in the whirlwind of sin, and were brought under various benign influences; his convincing you of sin; his revelation of himself to you in Christ; his minute attention to your education in holiness; his consolations in your time of trouble; his chidings in your day of error. Let me consider these and love you. He made you to shed tears and then carried them to heaven for his prize; nor is there an account wanting on high of your smiles; while your prayers are presented odoriferous from golden vials before his throne.

All these matchless indications of love speak to me and say, " Where is your love for the beloved of God?"

If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

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