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Daily Devotionals
Mornings and Evenings with Jesus
Devotional: March 23rd

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Morning Devotional

Who hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. - 2 Timothy 1:10.

“CONJECTURE and opinion,” says Paley, “are not knowledge; and in religion nothing more is known than is proved.” Thus, while the heathen philosophers had these surmisings concerning a future state, and brought forward some strong probabilities in its favour, and some fine and worthy sentiments escaped them, they neither understood nor taught “life and immortality” as a doctrine; they never employed it as a principle and motive. But had not life and immortality been a matter known to and believed in by the Jews? We unhesitatingly reply in the affirmative. Jacob, when dying, said, “I have waited for thy salvation.” David says, “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory.” “Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” How explicit was Job’s profession!- “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.”

How, then, it may be asked, could life and immortality be brought to light through the gospel? We answer, the gospel may be taken generally for divine revelation at large. It was thus Paul used the word. “The gospel,” he says, “was preached to the Jews, but the word preached did not profit them.” The word gospel may also signify the evangelical dispensation, including the personal ministry of our Lord and the inspired communications of the apostles. In the former sense, to the Jews, life and immortality was brought to light really; in the latter sense, we understand that the gospel brought life and immortality to light preeminently; and in this sense it is required to be taken in this place.

The dawn was visible before; now the day appeared. To the Jews the Sun of righteousness was below the horizon; on us he has risen with healing under his wings. Hence our Saviour said to his disciples, “Many prophets and righteous men have desired to see the things that ye see, and have not seen them, and to hear the things which ye hear, and have not heard them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.” Therefore, while it is to the Scriptures only we repair for a knowledge of life and immortality, we must look peculiarly and principally to the New Testament for clearer decisions and fuller representations concerning it, where we are furnished with illustrations and pledges thereof in a risen and glorified Saviour?

How transcendentally glorious, with what unrivalled excellence, does Christianity appear, compared with ancient and modern heathenism! How unsatisfying, how cold, how mean, how gross, how absurd, how disgusting, are the intimations of Deism, the Elysian fields of Pagan poetry, the rewards of Hinduism, the paradise of Mohammedanism, when placed by the side of the “life and immortality brought to light through the gospel”!

Evening Devotional

Unto me.....is this grace given. - Ephesians 3:8.

AUGUSTINE calls the Apostle Paul the “herald of grace.” He well deserves the name. He is always magnifying and extolling it. He never loses sight of it for a moment. He connects it with everything. He connects it with his conversion: “When it pleased God, who called me by his grace to reveal his Son in me, who called me by his grace.” He connects it with his conversation in the world: “Not by fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God we have our conversation in the world.” He connects it with his trials and sufferings: “He said unto me,” says Paul, “my grace is sufficient for thee.” Pie connects it with his unparalleled exertions: “I laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” He connects it with his functions: “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.” As if he had said, This honour has been conferred on me; I have been invested with this office, not for any excellence in me; I did nothing to deserve it; yea, burned with nothing but hatred against it, and compelled men to blaspheme.

O, what grace, grace the most free and sovereign, not only to have pardoned me, but also to have employed me, and made me the messenger of his heart’s compassion, to go forth and announce to the perishing human race that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” What grace is there here; so that both as a Christian and an Apostle he was constrained gratefully to exclaim, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Earthly princes when they want ministers, or masters when they want servants, will be sure to take those who seem the most meritorious, and who already possess the qualities and excellencies they require in them. In calling his servants, God frequently takes the most unsuitable and the most inadequate, and qualifies them for the work he assigns to them, in order to show that the excellency of the power is of himself, and not of man.

Man needs instruments, God does not. It is true he employs them, but never from weakness, always from wisdom, in grace and kindness. Men depend upon their instruments; God’s instruments depend upon him for every purpose and in every work.

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