the Third Week after Easter
Click here to join the effort!
Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
NO CROSS, NO CROWN
Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life. - Revelation 2:10
The way to endure the cross is to look unto the crown, and the Christ. On the Cross He proclaimed, " It is finished." But the ending of the work on the Cross was but the beginning of a form of His work for us, which shall never cease until the trumpet of victory shall sound. " It is done! " when the world has yielded to His love. He works for us, with us, and in us, as Lord of Providence and King of Grace, sustaining and upholding us in all our weakness, and tending the smoky flame of our dim faith till it bursts into clear radiance. The Captain has gone up from the field, and His soldiers are still in it. But He has not left them to struggle alone. He sits on high, looking down on us still fighting in the arena with wild beasts; but He does not only behold, but also helps our conflict, as Stephen, looking up, saw Him " standing," not sitting, at the right hand of God, as if He had sprung to His feet to succor and receive the martyr-spirit. Nor is He exalted only to work for and in us, or to shed on our hearts the plenteous rain of His heavenly influences. He has entered within the veil as our Great High Priest, to make intercession for us, so making us confident that His great sacrifice is ever present to the Divine mind, as determining its acts towards those who trust in Christ. Nor is our share in His exaltation limited by these great privileges, for He has gone to prepare a place for us; and dimly as we may know what that means, we know, at all events, that but for Christ’s presence there Heaven would be no place for us. Nor is this all; for, if we have given our hearts to Him, and are joined to the Lord by faith, we are, in a very profound sense, one spirit with Him.
So real is the union between us and Jesus that it cannot be that the Head shall be glorified and the members have no share in the glory. The Captain of Salvation is laurelled and crowned, and all His soldiers, the weakest and the sinfulest amongst them, if only they are knit to Him by humble faith, share in His victory, receive from His Throne showers of grace and blessing, which He pours down upon them, are inspired by His continual presence who "teaches their hands to war and their fingers to fight," and will be brought at last by Him coming for them again, that " Where He is there His servants may be also."
And so each of us, if only we take Christ for our Lord and Commander, may say in the calmness of a confident hope what David’s soldier said to him in the heroism of his self-devotion, "As my Lord the King liveth, in what place soever my Lord the King shall be, whether in life or death, there also shall Thy servant be."
'Music For The Soul' daily readings for a year from the writings of the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D., selected and arranged by the Rev. Geo. Coates, published by A.C. Armstrong and Son, 51 East Tenth Street, (1897). The original text is in the Public Domain and this electronic version is free for anyone without cost or obligation. This a year long daily devotional was written by the Rev. Alexander Maclaren over 100 years ago. This Scottish pastor had a heart to follow Jesus and a love for souls.
