Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: February 2nd

And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; - Philippians 1:9.

AFTER all we know of Christ and divine things, how slight is our acquaintance with the one or the other! There is a hope laid up for the Christian in heaven, but what know we of it as yet? Believers partake of a joy, but that joy is “unspeakable and full of glory.” The Saviour, therefore, addressing Nathanael, says, “Thou shalt see greater things than these.” The apostle prays for the Ephesians, that they might be “able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that they might be filled with all the fulness of God.” He allows that this love is incomprehensible, yet he prays that they may be able to comprehend it; he allows that it passeth knowledge, and yet desires that they may know it; that is, that they may have more enlarged and influential views of it.

There is not only a real but a wonderful difference as to knowledge between believers and others, and between their present and their future state,-as much difference as between night and day. But in God’s light they see light; that is, they see things divinely; or, as Archbishop Usher expresses it, “As the sun can only be seen by its own shining, so God can only be known by his own revelation.” The apostle speaks of God’s revealing his Son in him, as well as to him; and when the eyes of our understanding are enlightened by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of Christ, there are no new revelations made to the mind; that is, no new revelations that are new in themselves: they are indeed new to us. They were, however, all in the Scriptures before we saw any of these things, but the Saviour promised to his disciples that the Spirit of truth should guide them into all truth; not only into the belief of it, but into the enjoyment of it, into the experience of it, and into the power of it.

Christians not only see the reality of the things revealed, but their infinite excellency. They are supremely enamoured with them. They feel their infinite value. They live under their influence. And thus they evince that they are “neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I will turn unto you, saith the LORD of Hosts. - Zechariah 1:3.

HIS command to turn unto him might have been enforced by his absolute right, and by his uncontrolled authority; but he softens and sweetens it by his goodness and grace, assuring us that we shall not seek him in vain, but find him to the joy and rejoicing of our heart. This assurance is necessary. “We are saved by hope;” nothing can be done without hope. We have something here more than mere conjecture-mere peradventure-mere possibility, or probability. Possibility will, in some cases, actuate a man-and the beginning of a religious life is sometimes a kind of venture with young converts-but probability will influence even much more. But here we have certainty- we have all the assurance we can desire-founded upon the veracity of a true and faithful God. He says, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” He in effect says,

“Look from the borders of the pit

To my recovering grace.”

And see what it has actually done. Look at Manasseh, who sinned away all the advantages of a pious education; and yet “in his affliction he sought the Lord God of his fathers, and was found of him.” How basely did the Prodigal conduct himself. He confessed that he was not worthy to be called a son; and all he could plead for was to be made like a hired servant; but when he turned to his father, the father saw him while he was yet a great way off, and had compassion on him, and “ran and fell upon his neck, and kissed him;” and not only clothed, but adorned him; not only fed, but feasted him. Let the goodness of God, therefore, lead us to repentance; and while God is turning to us with a smiling face and open arms, invoking us to return unto him, let us say, with the Church, “Behold we come unto thee, for thou art the Lord our God.”