Lectionary Calendar
Thursday, March 28th, 2024
Maundy Thursday
There are 3 days til Easter!
Attention!
Take your personal ministry to the Next Level by helping StudyLight build churches and supporting pastors in Uganda.
Click here to join the effort!

Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
Devotional: February 13th

Resource Toolbox

OUR SONSHIP NO EMPTY TITLE

Let us not love in word, neither with the tongue, but in deed and truth. Hereby shall we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our heart before Him. - 1 John 3:18-19

"AND such we are." This is a kind of "aside," in which John adds the Amen for himself and for his poor brothers and sisters, toiling and moiling, obscure among the crowds of Ephesus, to the great truth. He asserts his and their glad consciousness of the reality of the fact of their sonship, which they know to be no empty title. He asserts, too, the present position of that sonship, realizing it as a fact today, amid all commonplace vulgarities and carking cares and petty aims of life’s little day. "Such we are" - the "Here am I, Father," of the child, answering the Father’s call, "My Son." He turns doctrine into experience. He is not content with merely having the thought in his creed, but his heart clasps it, and his whole nature says Amen! to the great truth. I ask you, do you do that? Do not be content with hearing the truth, or even with assenting to it, and believing it in your understandings. The truth is nothing to you, unless you have made it your very own by faith. Do not be satisfied with the orthodox confession; unless it has touched your heart, and made your whole soul thrill with thankful gladness and quiet triumph, it is nothing to you.

The mere belief of thirty-nine, or thirty-nine thousand, Articles of Christianity is nothing! But when a man has a true heart-faith in Him whom all articles are meant to make us know and love, then dogma becomes life, and the doctrine feeds the soul. Does it do so with you, my brother? Can you say, " And such are we "? Take another lesson. The Apostle was not afraid to say, "I know that I am a child of God." There are many very good people whose tremulous, timorous lips have never ventured to say " I know." They will say, "Well, I hope," or sometimes, as if that was not uncertain enough, they will put in an adverb or two, and say, " I humbly hope that I am." It is a far robuster kind of Christianity, a far truer one, aye! and a humbler one, too, that throws all considerations of my own character and merits, and all the rest of that rubbish, clean behind me; and when God says " My son! " says " My Father "; and when God calls us His sons and daughters, leaps up and gladly answers, "And we are! " Do not be afraid of being too confident, if your confidence is built on God, and not on yourself; but be afraid of being too diffident, and be afraid of having a great deal of self-righteousness masquerading under the guise of such a profound consciousness of your own unworthiness that you dare not call yourself a child of God. It is not a question of worthiness or unworthiness; it is a question, in the first place and mainly, of the truth of Christ’s promise and the sufficiency of Christ’s Cross; and in a very subordinate degree of anything belonging to you.

Subscribe …
Get the latest devotional delivered straight to your inbox every week by signing up for the "Music For the Soul" subscription list. Simply provide your email address below, click on "Subscribe!", and you'll receive a confirmation email from us. Follow the instructions in the email to confirm your subscription to this list.
adsfree-icon
Ads FreeProfile