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Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
Devotional: March 19th

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A GOOD REASON FOR CONFIDENCE

And now, my little children, abide in Him; that, if He shall be manifested, we may have boldness, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. - 1 John 2:28

The happy assurance of the love of God resting upon me, and making me His child through Jesus Christ, does not dissipate that darkness that lies on that beyond.

" We are the sons of God, and," just because we are, " it does not yet appear what we shall be." Or, as the words are rendered in the Revised Version, " it is not yet made manifest what we shall be." The meaning of that expression, " It doth not appear," or, " It has not been manifested," may be put into very plain words, I think, thus: John would simply say to us, "There has never been set forth before men’s eyes in this earthly life of ours an example or an instance of what the sons of God are to be in another state of being." And so, because men have never had the instance before them, they do not know much about that state.

In some sense there has been a manifestation through the life of Jesus Christ. Christ has died; Christ is risen again. Christ has gone about amongst men upon earth after resurrection. Christ has been raised to the right hand of God, and sits there in the glory of the Father. So far it has been manifested what we shall be. But the risen Christ is not the glorified Christ; and although He has set forth before man’s senses irrefragably the fact of another life, and to some extent some glimpses and gleams of knowledge with regard to certain portions of it, I suppose that the "glorious body " of Jesus Christ was not assumed by Him till the cloud received Him out of their sight, nor indeed could He, even while He moved among the material realities of this world, and did eat and drink before them. So that, while we thankfully recognize that Christ’s resurrection and ascension have brought life and immortality to light, we must remember that it is the fact, and not the manner of the fact, which they make plain, and that, even after His example, it has not been manifested what is the body of this glory which He now wears, and therefore it has not yet been manifested what we shall be when we are fashioned after its likeness. There has been no manifestation, then, to sense or to human experience, of that future, and therefore there is next to no knowledge about it.

" When He shall be manifested." To what period does that refer? It seems most natural to take the manifestation here as being the same as that spoken of only a verse or two before. "And now, little children, abide in Him; that when He shall be manifested, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming." That "coming," then, is the " manifestation " of Christ; and it is at the period of His coming in His glory that His servants shall be like Him, and see Him as He is."

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