Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: May 21st

THE ALL-COMPREHENSIVE LAW

Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. -- Matthew 5:20

A Christian’s inward and deepest self is better than his outward life. We have all convictions in our inmost hearts which we do not work out, and beliefs that do not influence us as we know they ought to do, and sometimes wish that they did. By our own fault our lives but imperfectly show their real inmost principle. Friction always wastes power before motion is produced.

So then we may well gather together all our duties in this final form of the all-comprehensive law, and say to ourselves, " Walk worthily of saints." Be true to your name, to your best selves, to your deepest selves. Be true to your separation for God’s service, and to the purity which comes from it. Be true to the life which God has implanted in you. That life may be very feeble, and covered by a great deal of rubbish, but it is Divine. Let it work, let it out! Do not disgrace your name!

These are the phrases of the law of Christian conduct. They reach far, they fit close, they penetrate deeper than the needle-points of minute regulations. If you will live in a manner corresponding to the character, and worthy of the love of God as revealed in Christ, and in conformity with the principles that are enthroned upon His Cross, and in obedience to the destiny held forth in your high calling, and in faithfulness to the name that He Himself has impressed upon you; then your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the painful and punctilious Pharisaical obedience to outward commands, and all things lovely and of good report will spring to life in your hearts and bear fruit in your lives.

All these exhortations go on the understanding that you are a Christian; that you have taken Christ for your Saviour, and are resting upon Him, and recognizing in Him the revelation of God, and in His Cross the foundation of your hope; that you have listened to, and yielded to, the Divine summons, and that you have a right to be called a saint. Is that presumption true about you, my friend? If it is not, Christianity thinks that it is of no use wasting time talking to you about conduct.

The first message which Christ sends to you is. Trust your sinful selves to Him as your only, all-sufficient Saviour. When you have accepted Him, and are leaning on Him with all your weight of sin and suffering, and loving Him with your ransomed heart, then, and not till then, will you be in a position to hear His law for your life, and to obey it; then, and not till then, will you appreciate the Divine simplicity and breadth of the great command to walk worthy of God. and the Divine tenderness and power of the motive which enforces it, and prints it on yielding and obedient hearts, even the dying love and Cross of His Son. Till then, listen to and accept that great answer of our Lord’s to those who came to Him for a rule of conduct, instead of for the gift of Life: " This is the work of God, that ye should believe on Him whom He hath sent."