the Fourth Week after Easter
Daily Devotionals
Mornings and Evenings with Jesus
Whom, having not seen, ye love. 1 Peter 1:8.
THERE have been seasons when Christians have been tempted to envy those who lived when our Saviour was upon earth, and who had the privilege of knowing Christ after the flesh.” Ah! ye highly-favoured ones, we have been ready to exclaim, you could hear the voice of him who spake “as never man spake;” you could gaze on the visage of him who was “fairer than the children of men;” you could bring your troubles and lay them down at the feet of him who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Here are, however, two or three things which should tend to reduce this envious feeling. First, We should remember that many of those who saw him derived no benefit from the sight. “Ye have seen me,” says he, “and believed not;” “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.”
Secondly, We should remember, if we are Christians, that we shall see him ourselves soon,-see him really, see him personally, see the very One who loved us and “gave himself for us;” “see him as he is,” and “be forever with the Lord.” Thirdly, We should observe, that, though he is no longer now visible, he is accessible, and we can have intercourse with him, and much freer and easier and speedier intercourse than they. They often had to repair to a great distance in approaching him, and much time was consumed in the application: when Martha and Mary called in one of the ploughmen to send to our Saviour this message,- “Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick!”-he was fifty miles off, in Galilee.
“But we have no such lengths to go.”
We have no such waitings to endure. Does our burdened heart urge us to exclaim, “Lord! lam oppressed; undertake for me”? The groan, the sigh, can reach him “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” and ere we call upon him he will answer, and while we speak he will hear. Yes; though he be “passed into the heavens,” we can hold communion with him; though he be unseen, we can love him, we can enjoy him. And hence the language of the apostle:-“Whom having not seen ye love, in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”
I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven. - Revelation 4:1.
HEAVEN had been closed by sin, and of this we have a very striking emblem furnished us very early, for we are told by Moses that God drove out the man, “and he placed at the end of the garden cherubims and a flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.” Telling us thereby clearly enough that the attainment of heaven upon terms of the first constitution was rendered impossible, and if ever we can re-approach it, it must be by another way.
Concerning this way the Scripture affords us abundant and satisfactory information. It assumes that it has been accomplished by the interposition of him who is the Mediator between God and man, who, when he had “overcome the sharpness of death, opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers;” and Paul says, “Being made perfect through sufferings, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.” Having become our substitute and the surety for sinners, He was himself excluded from heaven, nor could he enter it until he had “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself,” for which he had become answerable; till he had “borne our grief and carried our sorrow;” till he had “magnified the law, and made it honourable.” But haying accomplished this work, he could make a meritorious claim for our entrance into heaven.
He having “entered with his own blood once into the holy place,” and “having obtained eternal redemption for us,” he also made a passage for our entrance too, for be did not enter himself as a private individual, but as our head-our representative-our forerunner, announcing our coming, and securing accommodation for us when we came -our trustee of the covenant of grace, taking possession of heaven in our name and in our nature too; in other words, “his blood cleanseth us from all sin.” His righteousness justifies us before God, and gives us a peace that passeth all understanding. His grace renews our hearts, and his Spirit “seals us unto the day of redemption.” Neither is there salvation in any other. He himself says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
Some think of opening a door into heaven for themselves by their innocence. But where is their innocence? for there is “no man that liveth and sinneth not;” and “cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them.” Some think of gaining admission to heaven by their own doings; these they call “good works.” Alas! some of them are not good works in themselves, and others which are morally good, are yet evil in their motives, and motive is essential to moral action. Those that are good may be good for the building, but not for the foundation; be good for fitness, but not for procurement. And if these are placed in the room of Christ, we wrong our own souls, and rob him of his highest glory.
If we had not been, as to all hope in ourselves, irrecoverably lost, he would not have come into the world at such an expense to save us. If we had not been in bondage, he would not have given his life a ransom for us. If we could have obtained eternal life by our worthiness and doings, he would not have come in order that we “might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly.” We cannot imagine that he bled and died needlessly. He undertaking to save us, could not save us by a volition of his will, nor by an exertion of his power. No: when he made us he had only to speak, but when he would save us he had also to suffer. He made us at the expense of his breath; He saved us at the expense of his blood. Let us remember, therefore, our obligation to him-that to him we owe the bread we eat, the water we drink-above all, we owe our eternal all. He has enriched us by his poverty, we live by his death.
“He sunk beneath our heavy woes,
To raise us to his throne;
There’s ne’er a gift his hand bestows
But cost his heart a groan.”
