May 1 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart; they have turned aside and gone away" (Jer. 5:23).

Devotional

We look at a believer's lax practice, we mourn and weep over it, and we do well. We trace our own, and still deeper, open shame covers us. But we forget that the cause of our bitterest sorrow and humiliation should be the hidden principle of evil out of which springs this unholy practice.

How few among the called of God are found confessing and mourning over the sin of their nature—the impure fountain from which the stream flows, the unmortified root from which the branch originates, which feeds and nourishes both the stream and the branch. This is what God sees—the sin of our fallen, unsanctified nature. And this is what we too should look at, and mourn over.

Indeed, true mortification of sin consists in a knowledge of our sinful nature and its subjugation to the power of God's grace in Christ. The reason why so few believers "by the Spirit ... put to death the deeds of the body" (Rom. 8:13) is a forgetfulness that the work has to do first and mainly with the root of sin in the soul. "Make the tree good, and its fruit will also be good" (Matt. 12:43). Purify the fountain, and the streams will be pure.

Oh, if only there was a deeper acquaintance with the hidden iniquity of our fallen nature, a more thorough learning of the truth, that "nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh" (Rom. 7:18), a more heart-felt humiliation on account of it, and more frequent confession of it before God—how much higher the attainments in holiness of many believers would be than they now are!

In every child of God, then, there is the innate principle of departure. In spite of the wonders of grace that God has wrought for the soul—even though he has elected, called, renewed, washed, and clothed the believer—yet if God did not check and bridle us in, we would depart, and that forever! This unsanctified, unmortified principle would bear us away.

Is there not something truly heartbreaking in this? To be the subject of God's kind and benevolent government, and yet to be always rebelling against the Sovereign! To dwell under a kind and loving Father's roof, and yet to be perpetually grieving him and departing from him! To receive so many costly proofs of his love, and yet to render the most ungrateful returns! Oh, it is enough to sink the soul into the deepest self-abasement before God.

Reader, what has the Lord been to you? Come, bear witness for him. Has he ever been a wilderness to you, a dry and barren land? Has there been anything in his dealings, in his conduct, in his way with you, why you should turn your back upon him? Has there been any harshness in his rebukes, any unkind severity in his corrections, anything vindictive in his dealings? No, on the contrary, has he not been a fruitful garden, a pleasant land, a fountain of living waters to you? Has he not blended kindness with all his rebukes, tenderness with all his chastisements, love with all his dealings? And has not his gentleness made you great?

Why then have you departed from him? What is there in God that you should leave him? What in Jesus that you should wound him? What in the blessed Spirit that you should grieve him? Is not the cause of all your departure, declension, unkindness, unfruitfulness in yourself, and in yourself alone?

But if this has been your conduct towards God, it has not been his conduct towards you.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be.
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
bind my wand'ring heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love—
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

(Robert Robinson, 1758)

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.