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Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
Devotional: August 28th

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THE FRIEND OF GOD

He was called the friend of God. - James 2:23

When and by whom was he so called? There are two passages in the Old Testament in which an analogous designation is applied to the patriarch, but probably the name was one in current use amongst the people, and expressed in a summary fashion the impression that had been made by the history of Abraham’s life. A sweet fate to have that as the brief record of a character, and to be known throughout the ages by such an epitaph! As many of us are aware, this name, "the Friend," has displaced the proper name, Abraham, on the lips of all Mohammedan people to this day; and the city of Hebron, where his corpse lies, is commonly known simply as "the Friend." How beautiful and blessed a thought it is which underlies this and similar representations of Scripture - viz., that the bond which unites us to God is the very same as that which most sweetly and strongly ties men to one another; and that, after all, religion is nothing more nor else than the transference to Him of the emotions which make all the sweetness of human life and society.

But whilst this belief in God was the very nerve and centre of Abraham’s whole character, and was the reason why he was called the friend of God, we must also remember that, as James insists upon it here, it was no mere idle assent, no mere intellectual conviction that God could not tell lies, which was dignified by the name of belief, but that it was, as James insists upon in the context, a trust which proved itself to be valid, because it was continually operative in the life. " Faith without works is dead." "And Abraham, our father, was he not justified by works?"

And so the Epistle to the Hebrews, if you will remember, traces up to his faith all the chief points in his life. "By faith he went out from the land where he dwelt; by faith he dwelt in tabernacles," in the promised land, believing that it should be his and his seeds. "By faith" he offered up his son on the altar.

And then, in the future life, with new modes of manifestation and new capacities of apprehension, we shall draw nearer and nearer to the sun that we beheld here shining through the mists and the clouds; and it will be to us as it would be to an inhabitant of the furthest planet that wheels his course away out in what seems to us darkness and cold, if he were brought and set down in that one which circles round the sun in the narrowest orbit, and receives most of his fervid beams and dazzling light. If we, amidst the shows and gauds of time and the crowds of thronging men and the distractions of our daily occupations, steadfastly seek and see the Lord, and have beams coming from Him, as a light shining in a dark place. He will lift us yonder, and turn the whole benediction of the sunlight of His face upon us, and, saturated with the brightness, we shall walk in the light of His countenance and be amongst the people of the blessed.

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