March 9 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"...in Christ God was reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Devotional

The great glory of our Immanuel is his essential glory. When your faith can firmly grasp the deity of your adorable Lord—and on this precious doctrine may it never waver!—then there is a corresponding confidence and peace of mind in each particular of his sacrificial work.

It is then that you speak of him as a Mediator, and love to view him as the great Sin-bearer of his people. You admire his righteousness or extol his death in vain, if you do not look upon him in the glory which belongs to him as essentially God. From this truth, as from a source of light, beams forth the glory, which sheds its soft halo around his atoning work.

Oh, when death is near and memory summons back the past—when sin in battle array passes before your eye and you think of the Lord God, the Holy One, into whose dreadful presence you are about to enter—how will every other support sink beneath you except this! And, as the Holy Spirit then glorifies Christ in his essential glory, testifying that the blood and righteousness—the soul's great trust—are of the incarnate God, then you will rise above fear, smile at death, and pass in peace and triumph to glory.

Yes, reader, you shall be satisfied with nothing less than absolute deity when you come to die. And to the degree that you find this great truth to be the substance of your life, you will experience it the support of your death.

Who is this so weak and helpless,
Child of lowly Hebrew maid,
rudely in a stable sheltered,
coldly in a manger laid?
'Tis the Lord of all creation,
who this wondrous path hath trod;
he is God from everlasting,
and to everlasting God.

Who is this, a Man of Sorrows,
walking sadly life's hard way,
homeless, weary, sighing, weeping
over sin and Satan's sway?
'Tis our God, our glorious Savior,
who above the starry sky
now for us a place prepareth,
where no tear can dim the eye.

Who is this? behold him shedding
drops of blood upon the ground!
Who is this, despised, rejected,
mocked, insulted, beaten, bound?
'Tis our God, who gifts and graces
on his church now poureth down;
who shall smite in holy vengeance
all his foes beneath his throne.

Who is this that hangeth dying
while the rude world scoffs and scorns,
numbered with the malefactors,
torn with nails, and crowned with thorns?
'Tis the God who ever liveth
'mid the shining ones on high,
in the glorious golden city,
reigning everlastingly.

(William Walsham How, 1823–1897)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.