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Daily Devotionals
Spiritual Treasury For The Children of God
Ye are not your own, ye are bought with a price.- 1 Corinthians 6:19-20.
O, how dear is every believer to God the Father, to Jesus the Saviour, and to the Spirit the comforter? Each divine person claims propriety in them. The Father by election: the Son by redemption: the Holy Spirit by inhabitation. How should this, O soul, call forth love, excite gratitude, inflame with affection, and quicken thee to glorify thy Lord! Consider daily, thou art not thine own, but a ransomed captive of Jesus. Reflect on the price Jesus paid for thy redemption. Thou art bought with blood: with blood divine: blood, spilt on the accursed tree, in direful agony and shameful death, was the price of thy purchase. So thy Saviour bought thee, at the hands of justice.
He paid the utmost farthing of thy debt to law. He redeemed thee from the power of Satan; and snatched thee as a brand from the jaws of death and hell. And canst thou ever think thy redeeming Lord will leave the purchase of his blood to be the prey of the devil? After he hath bought thee at such an inestimable price, will he not claim thee as his own, and bring thee safe to glory? O, beware of indulging unbelief! Listen not to the suggestions of Satan, nor to the voice of false teachers. Fly every thought which impeaches thy Lord’s love, wisdom or power. Consider, thou art thy Lord’s freeman. As a chaste virgin thou art espoused to Jesus; in faith hast plighted thy troth; hast voluntarily given thyself, hand and heart, to be thy Lord’s. What then is thy duty? what infinite obligations art thou under to forsake all other lovers, and to cleave to thy Lord alone, with full purpose of heart! Dost thou believe thy vile body shall shortly be sown in the silent grave? and that it shall certainly be raised a glorious body like unto thy Saviour’s? How much doth it concern thee to devote that body to his service and glory on earth, which shall reign with Jesus in heaven! Is thy body the temple of the Holy Ghost?
Canst thou reflect on its dignity, and debase and pollute it with filthy lusts? God forbid! Doth thy spirit enjoy sweet fellowship with the Father and his Son Jesus? Doth the Spirit itself bear witness with thy spirit, that thou art a child of God? Where is thy love to the truth as it is in Jesus? Where is thy zeal for his cause and interest? Remember whose thou art. Be concerned to live up to thy privilege and dignity. Be earnest in prayer for power to obey the obligations which infinite and eternal love hath laid thee under. "Glorify thy Lord in thy body and in thy spirit which are his."
What shall we pay th’ eternal Son,
That left the heav’n of his abode,
That left the heav’n of his abode,
To bring us wand’rers back to God!
Our everlasting love is due
To him that ransom’d sinners lost,
And pity’d rebels when he knew
The vast expense his love would cost.
Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against GOD? Romans 9:20.
The sovereignty of God, in dispensing his grace to whom he pleaseth, and which he oweth to none, ever has been a subject of contention. Unawakened people, with self-righteous hearts, and stubborn free-will pride, rise with indignation of spirit, daringly call in question the ways of God to man, and impiously reply against God, as though he had not an absolute right to do what he will with his own, and confer his favours when, and on whom he pleases. “Ye shall be as gods,” says the father of lies, (Genesis 3:5.) Our first parents believed him. They have tainted our whole race with this proud lie. Hence the poet most sarcastically says, to repliers against God,
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Rejudge his justice, be the god of God.
St. Paul meets such. He puts a question to them. He demands an answer from them. Who art thou? The Lord in the sovereignty of grace, and with the glory of his majesty, issues his royal proclamation from heaven. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy: and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” Now who? what art thou who darest to reply? What! Reply against God? What! thou, O man- worm of the earth-a creature of a day-born like a wild ass’s colt, without understanding-by nature a child of wrath, dead in trespasses and sins, blind to thy own existence-thou vain fool, thou child of pride, and son of folly, dost thou exalt thy ignorance, and display thy enmity by opening thy mouth against God, his truths and his ways? This is one of the severest reproofs of the Holy Spirit, in the whole Bible. Improve it. Remember there is “a woe to him who striveth with his Maker,” (Isaiah 45:9.) Know, you have nothing you can properly call your own, but sin. That is the parent of ignorance and pride. Wilt thou exalt these against the wisdom and grace of God? Shall our corrupt reason reply against God, call him to an account for his ways, and say unto him, what doest thou? Consider, have we not forfeited all right to God’s favour? Does any good thing dwell in our nature, to entitle us to his mercy? O fall down, and thank God for the merciful gift of his son Jesus. Adore the riches of his abundant mercy, that “at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace: and if by grace, then it is no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace,” etc. Romans 11:5-6.
While others wrangle and reply,
Against thy sov’reign ways, O Lord:
O bring my spirit down from high.
To feed by faith upon thy word!
Dear Spirit, teach my soul the truth,
As it’s in Christ my Lord reveal’d;
O thou my God, guide of my youth,
My heart from ev’ry error shield.
