the Third Week after Easter
Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF GOD’S WORD
These are they which bear witness of Me; and ye will not come to Me, that ye may have life. - John 5:39-40
Scripture is not given to us merely to make us know something about God in Christ, nor only in order that we may have faith in the Christ thus revealed to us, but for a further end - great, glorious, but, blessed be His Name! not distant - namely, that we may "have life in His Name." "Life" is deep, mystical, inexplicable by any other words than itself. It includes pardon, holiness, well-being, immortality. Heaven; but it is more than they all.
This life comes into our dead hearts, and quickens them by union with God. That which is joined to God lives. Union with Christ in His Sonship will bring life into dead hearts. He is the true Prometheus that has come from Heaven with fire, the fire of the Divine Life in the reed of His humanity; and He imparts it to us all if we will. He lays Himself upon us, as the prophet laid himself on the little child in the upper chamber; and lip to lip, and beating heart to dead heart. He touches our death, and it is quickened into life. And the condition on which that great Name will bring to us life is simply our faith. If you trust Him as the Son of God who comes down to earth that we in Him might have the immortal life He is ready to give, then the end that God has in view in all His revelation, that Christ had in view in His bitter Passion, has been accomplished for you. If you do not, it has not. You may admire Him, you may think loftily of Him, you may be ready to call Him by many great and appreciative names, but oh! unless you have learned to see in Him the Divine Saviour of your souls, you have not seen what God means you to see. But if you have, then all other questions about this Book, important as they are in their places, may settle themselves as they will; you have got the kernel, the thing that it was meant to bring you. Many an erudite scholar that has studied the Bible all his life has missed the purpose for which it was given; and many a poor old woman in her garret has found it. It is not meant to be wrangled over, it is not meant to be read as an interesting product of the religious consciousness, it is not to be admired as a specimen of the literature of a nation that had a genius for religion, but it is to be taken as being God’s great Word to the world, the record of the revelation that He has given us in His Son. The Eternal Word is the theme of all the written Word. Have you made the jewel which is brought us in that casket your own? Is Jesus to you the Son of the living God, believing on whom you share His life, and become sons of God by Him? Can you take on to your thankful lips that triumphant and rapturous confession of the doubling Thomas - the flag flying on the completed roof-tree of this Gospel - "My Lord and my God "? If you can, you will receive the blessing which Christ then promised to all of us standing beyond the limits of that little group, " who have not seen and yet have believed " - even that eternal life which flows into our dead spirits from the Christ, the Son of God, who is the Light of the world and the Life of men.
'Music For The Soul' daily readings for a year from the writings of the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D., selected and arranged by the Rev. Geo. Coates, published by A.C. Armstrong and Son, 51 East Tenth Street, (1897). The original text is in the Public Domain and this electronic version is free for anyone without cost or obligation. This a year long daily devotional was written by the Rev. Alexander Maclaren over 100 years ago. This Scottish pastor had a heart to follow Jesus and a love for souls.
