Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: May 20th

"CALLED TO BE SAINTS"

Beloved of God; called to be saints. - Romans 1:7

In the Epistle to the Romans 16:2, we read about a very small matter, that it is to be done " worthily of the saints." It is only about the receiving of a good woman that was traveling from Corinth to Rome, and extending hospitality to her in such a manner as became professing Christians; but the very minuteness of the details to which the great principle is applied points a lesson. The biggest principle is not too big to be brought down to the narrowest details, and that is the beauty of principles as distinguished from regulations. Regulations try to be minute, and however minute you make them, some case always starts up that is not exactly provided for in them. And so the regulations come to nothing. A principle does not try to be minute, but it casts its net wide, and it gathers various cases into its meshes. Like the fabled tent in the old legend, that could contract so as to have room for but one man, or extend wide enough to hold an army; so this great principle of Christian conduct can be brought down to giving "Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the Church at Cenchrea," good food and a comfortable lodging, and any other little kindnesses, when she comes to Rome. And the same principle may be widened out to embrace and direct us in the largest tasks and most difficult circumstances.

" Worthily of saints " - the name is an omen, and carries in it rules of conduct. The root idea of "saint" is "one separated to God," and the secondary idea which flows from that is " one who is pure " All Christians are "saints." They are consecrated and set apart for God’s service, and in the degree in which they are conscious of and live out that consecration, they are pure. So their name, or rather the great fact which their name implies, should be ever before them, a stimulus and a law. We are bound to remember that we are consecrated, separated as God’s possession, and that therefore purity is indispensable. The continual consciousness of this relation and its resulting obligations would make us recoil from impurity as instinctively as the sensitive plant shuts up its little green fingers when anything touches it; or as the wearer of a white robe will draw it up high above the mud on a filthy pavement. Walk " worthily of saints" is another way of saying, Be true to your own best selves. Work up to the highest ideal of your character. That is far more wholesome than to be always looking at our faults and failures, which depress and tempt us to think that the actual is the measure of the possible, and the past or present of the future. There is no fear of self-conceit or of a mistaken estimate of ourselves. The more clearly we keep our best and deepest self before our consciousness, the more shall we learn a rigid judgment of the miserable contradictions to it in our daily outward life, and even in our thoughts and desires. It is a wholesome exhortation, when it follows these others of which we have been speaking (and not else), which bids Christians remember that they are saints and live up to their name.