the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
John 18:36—Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world.
Well might Pilate ask if Jesus was a king. Thou poor, weary, rejected Nazarene, art Thou a king? A strange contrast, surely, to the Herod that built those halls of judgment! Thy people, at least, fail to recognize thy royalty! But Jesus did not abate his claims. "Thou sayest that I am," He answered, "a king." And as the ages have passed they have substantiated his claim.
The origin of his kingdom.—"My kingdom is not of this world." The Lord did not mean, as his words have been too often interpreted, that his kingdom had nothing to do with this world; but that it did not originate here. The "of" means out of. Jesus is King, not by earthly descent, or human right, but by the purpose and counsel of the Father, who said, "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee: yet will I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion."
The method of its promulgation.—It is not spread by armed force. His servants do not fight. They are priests clad in the white robes of immaculate purity, and bearing aloft their banner with the in. scription, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Like their Master, they bear witness to the truth; and as they do so those who are of the truth are attracted to the Lord, as steel filings to the magnet.
There is true royalty in bearing witness to the Truth.—Humbly we may appropriate our Master’s words: to this end were we born, and of this cause are we left in the world, that in every act and word we might bear witness to the Truth. As we do so, we manifest a royalty which is not of human gift or descent, but which has been communicated by the reception of the Christ—nature, through the regenerating grace of the Holy Ghost.
