Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: June 17th

"To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life." - Romans 2:7.

The path of faith and that of well-doing are not diverse from each other; they are one. A man that is in the path of well-doing, and for whose deeds there is ever and anon dropping from the lips of God the expression, " Well done!" is already saved in an important sense. He has regained the footing from whence the world by transgression fell. He has certainly a large installment of salvation. But, it is faith that brought him into this heavenward path, and that enables him to continue therein. It is faith that led him to renounce all dependence upon his own miserable works, and to avail himself of the works of Christ to obtain acceptance with God, and the freedom of that sacred path. It is faith that enables him to see the incomparable superiority over everything that the world can offer, of those grand prizes held up before him by the Lord of all; to see glory, honor, and immortality where they really are, where they exclusively are for man, in the new Jerusalem.

There are many who are seeking for glory, honor, and immortality in very different paths from that of which we are speaking. By the path of well-doing, we mean, in one word, the path of God’s will; and all doing that is not strictly modeled on this, we reject: though it might seem to be such doing as would regenerate a continent, reclaim a Sahara, or banish the deadliest plagues.

Nothing in all the success that has waited upon Satan in his management of the world’s affairs, is so saddening to contemplate, as the false direction he has been enabled to give to the enthusiasm of men. Enthusiasm is a beautiful and sacred thing, implanted in us that we might launch forth on sublime enterprises of mercy to man and of glory to God. Enthusiasm would make of a holy man a seraph. Men hardly know what to do with this divine faculty. They thirst for glory, honor, immortality, but limit their conceptions of these things to what the world, the fallen, ruined, doomed world can give. As though a criminal on his way to the place of execution, should concern himself to obtain honor and glory from his fellow criminals. A world that rose up in utmost ferocity against the only faultless, the only truly glorious being that ever trod its soil, is not a world competent to decide where glory should be sought, what deeds are truly honorable, what immortality is worthy of man’s utmost endeavor. It having rejected the elect of heaven, the only man found heroic in the eyes of God, we can turn away from its heroes, and think lightly of its honorable ones.

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