the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
" The Lord loveth judgment and forsaketh not his saints." -- Psalms 37:28.
The faithfulness of the Lord to his people is secured not more by the fact that he delighteth in mercy than by the fact that he loveth judgment. The propitiation made for sin is so effectual that by it all the perfections of God become pledged to promote the everlasting interests of those who believe. It is God in the unlimited fulness of his nature, not a part of God, that is made favorable to the sinner by the blood of Jesus The believer should understand that he is not taking refuge in one perfection of God against another; but that it is God Himself, with all his attributes, that is reconciled to him. Before he was clothed with the righteousness of Christ, every divine attribute was against him; love as well as justice. And after he is brought nigh through the blood of the Lamb, the justice as well as love of God guarantees his safety and blessedness.
Consider and confess: dost thou not feel, speak and act, in thy intercourse with God, as though there were but a partial reconciliation, as though in Christ there had accrued to thee but a small measure of the divine benignity? Does it not seem to thee when thou wouldst appropriate largely of the grace of God, as though his justice interposed and said, "Enough?" Does not the holiness of God, in thy conception, take out from every promise its largest benison and give thee a husk? If so, then there is a grievous wrong continually done by thee to the Lamb that was slain, and to every perfection of God. Is God divided? Did Christ die to obtain for thee the crumbs that fall from his Father’s table, and is it necessary that another Christ should die to obtain for thee permission to sit down as a guest, as a child?
If there be in us a genuine faith in Christ, then is God wholly ours. Christ himself has not a more infinite love to expatiate in than the meanest believer hath. God is reconciled to us, or he is not. If reconciled, then every promise is ours in its utmost conceivable amplitude. We are as free to take of the water of life as Paul was, or as John was. One disciple is designated " the beloved" because he has a singular faith. We must believe the love that God hath towards us, and then we have the love.
There are many who wonder that they experience in such feeble measure the power of divine truth to animate and elevate and bless their souls. They marvel that they should daily be in communion with him at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore, with whom is the fountain of life, yet that they should be so unacquainted with the joy unspeakable that many saints have experienced. But how could it be otherwise? Unbelief nullifies God. Faith finds a living God. God gives himself as faith gives itself. Where there is but a little faith, the tide of divine love is constrained to narrow itself down accordingly. But God is there, even the same God whose smile enraptures the seraphim. Christ has brought you to him and to the infinite fulness of his nature. God is not in your future; he is in your present. Listen no longer to the lie of unbelief, but understand that there is even now for you, this day, this hour, the love wherewith the Father loved Christ. You have not a half Christ; you have not a portion of God.
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