April 28 Daily Devotional

"For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country."
     "Hebrews 11:14.

Devotional

(continued)

The clear and assured conviction of things not seen set the saints of the past in motion. They believed in the Savior and prepared themselves to meet Him. When one truly looks for the Savior he minds not earthly things and his conversation is in heaven. He readily gives up lesser interests for future and greater ones promised to him by God. Thus he declares plainly that he is in the faith.

But let no one have any misunderstanding. Heaven cannot be won by purchase. Man has incurred a guilt for which no human payment or penance can atone. Neither can God connive at sin. No creature by his own deservings can claim a place in heaven while one single commandment is violated or resisted. The gospel never relaxes into any compromise with human unworthiness. Eternal life is never earned by us in the shape of wages. Our obedience, then, must never be understood as rendering an equivalent price.

But if heaven is held out in the gospel as a fulfillment to our hope of God's promise, and is therefore already the possession of the true believer, what more need we do but lay hold upon it with the delight of that which is now certain? True it is that heaven is of grace and not of works, lest any man should boast. Yet it was the promises that made the patriarchs render obedience. Seeing their fulfillment afar off, they embraced them and declared plainly by their desires and doings that they sought the land of promise.

It is free grace that loosens a man from his inabilities and bondage. Instead of doing nothing for heaven he embarks on a career of striving, seeking, and obedience. He declares plainly by his acts that heaven is the country toward which he is traveling. It is a gospel of works that keeps a man from working for eternal life. On that platform it is unattainable, for he is still bound by the fetters of sin and the old life. Still being a citizen of earth he cannot but set his heart upon the country that is below.

Now when a man is freely justified by God's grace a burden rolls off his back and a path is opened before him that winds upward toward the Celestial City. He dies more and more unto sin and lives more and more unto righteousness.

A man's distance from his old character and nature and his nearness to heaven by his walk and conversation show that he is on the way. The road that a man is traveling indicates where he is going. You can tell if he is seeking the heavenly country by the objects on which his heart is set.

Drawn by the cords of love the Christian is lured by bright prospects. He sees objects better and lovelier than those he leaves behind. Setting his affections on things above he sees Christ sitting at the right hand of God the Father, welcoming every penitent to the fountain of mercy which He Himself has opened.