October 1 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

Romans 13:12:

¹²The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

Devotional:

After our conversion, after we are brought to our Redeemer, we are here on earth in a middle state until our death.

"The night is far spent, the day is at hand," but as yet, it is not noon. That only comes when the glory of Christ shall break in upon all spheres. Until that hour we are ever approaching the day in its fullness, even though in fact we still walk in twilight. We truly walk in the light, but that light is still dim.

Even after conversion we continue, therefore, provisionally in a certain kind of sleep, and can only gradually shake ourselves free from its after effects.

So it is now, and so it was in the days of Paul when the change of conversion, especially with respect to outward conditions, was so much more overwhelming than now. Speaking for himself and for the converts at Rome, the Apostle emphatically declares: "It is now (i.e., so and so many years after their conversion) high time to awake out of this sleep (which is still upon us), for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." And then he adds: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand" (Romans 13:2).

This, of course, detracts nothing from the incontrovertible truth, that he who came to conversion today, and tomorrow falls asleep in his Savior, is sure of his everlasting blessedness. But it does say, that he who after conversion is given yet many years of life upon earth, gradually passes from the twilight into ever clearer light, gets ever farther away from the shades of night, and continually feels the closer approach of the light of day.

In nature there is no sudden departure of the night, in order with equal suddenness to give place to the day with the noontide sun. In nature there are transitions from darkness into glimmering light and from dawn into broad daylight. Transitions which are of longer duration in some parts of the world than in others, but which occur everywhere.

And so it is in the spiritual life. One does not become altogether holy in his deliberations, in his tendencies, in his actions and daily manner of life all at once. From being alienated from the life of God, he does not with a single bound come into full fellowship with Him. Where it was night in the soul, the sun, after conversion does not immediately stand at the zenith. Here also are transitions. Even in this way, that it begins with a first ray of light; for the first time the clouds part; for the first time the mists break, and higher brightness strikes the eye of the soul. And then it goes on farther and farther—from grace to grace. With one, more quickly than with another. First a waking out of the sleep of error and sin. Then a shaking of oneself loose from this sleep. After that, a waking up. And presently, a going out into the light.

And in this very transition hides the restlessly moving power of the Christian life. It is not a standing still and remaining where we are, but a going on and a reaching forward to make advance.

It is first a star that rises out of Jacob. Presently it is the sun of salvation which stands at the horizon. And finally the sun spreads effulgent light on those who first wandered about in darkness.

It is all one procession of triumph and victory for those to whom the lack of such light would mean an endless night. And it is a waxing light, a light that rises ever higher, and gradually becomes more clear. And your life as a Christian would have no worth in this world, if the eye of your soul, in its gradual accommodation to the stronger light of grace, did not acquire by this light an ever clearer insight into the richness of God's compassion.

Herein is a threefold increase.

Increase in inner strength; increase in an ever more effective exhibition of the powers of the kingdom; and increase in your fellowship with your God; i.e., in the heart of all religion.

There is increase in inner strength, insomuch as more abundant strength flows out to you from the heavenly Kingdom. The night is far spent and already clearer light shines down into your soul. This is the favor of God, which He shows you in your personal life. A brighter glow in your personal sky. Less night, more day, and in that day more and clearer light reflected on your pathway.

But this increase in inner strength leads necessarily to an increase in the exhibition of your power. He who is obliged to travel before dawn makes little headway, but when brighter daylight falls on his path, he quickens his pace. Hence the admonition of the Apostle: "Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the whole armour of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day."

As long as light and darkness struggle with each other in the soul, we constantly hesitate and our foot slips. But when a fuller light dawns on our pathway, we gain in moral courage. We become more animated. There enters into us a spirit of sacred daring. More light shines out from us on our loved ones and companions. Instead of tottering, the step becomes more firm. Instead of daring to venture half-way, there is completion and consummation.

But it does not end here.

However high a level our moral development may reach, our development of Christian character is more richly significant, and the richest gains which the clearer shining of heavenly light within brings us is the increase of intimacy and tenderness in our fellowship with God.

A dark and anxious night weighs on the heart of mankind through the stress of error and sin.

God is, and God is close by, but although mankind feels its way in seeking after God, it is not aware of Him, it does not see Him, it discovers nothing of His holy Presence.

What compasses it about and distresses it is fearful darkness, and in that darkness the sense of uncertainty, and of anxiety, and of suspicion, like a serpent steals into the heart.

In this dreadful darkness lies the explanation of all idolatry and of all heathen anguish. And therefore Simeon makes his boast in Christ as "a light," so great, so wondrously beautiful, which having come down from heaven's throne, lightens the darkened vision of the Gentiles.

The most dreadful darkness of the peoples is that they know not God, that an eternal night shuts them off from God, that no ray of light from above illumines their pathway, and that without God in the world they walk out from this world to the Judgment of God.

Therefore, every one who is converted is called a child of light.

The redeemed not merely walk in the light, but from that light they are born as children of God.

Light from above in the soul, even though that soul caught but a single ray, is inward wealth. It is peace for fear; rest for anxiety; confidence for despair; courage for inward faintness.

This light shines on his way. It makes him know his own heart and the heart of his fellowmen. It brings wisdom for self-conceit. It enriches his entire human existence.

But highest and holiest of all is the fact that this light gradually discloses to him the way of access to his God. It lifts the ban that separated and excluded him from God. And now by degrees, begins the tender, blessed life which enters upon the hidden walk with God and makes him discover God at every step of his life's way—as his Father Who loves him, as his Shepherd Who leads him.

And this fellowship, this walk with God, this dwelling in the tent of the Lord, does not continue to be what it provisionally was, but it advances, it makes progress, it gains, it increases in tenderness, warmth and clearness.

It is not only that the night, which to the eye of his soul hung also over God, is far spent, but from that night he gets ever farther away. It is continually the moving away of oneself from that night to ever clearer day. Until at length, there comes a fellowship with God, which the world does not know nor understand but which to him is the highest reality, the ever more abounding flowing fountain of the strength of his life.

Now, there are too many Christians, alas! who even after their conversion, continue to love to slumber, and therefore enjoy nothing of this more intimate fellowship with their God.

These are the sick ones among the brethren, from whom no virtue can go out.

But there are those, God be praised, who know nothing of standing still; who enter ever more deeply into the secrecies of the infinite, and now waken every morning with their God, and with their God labor all day long, and with their God retire to their rest by night.

And these are the salt of the earth, the salt even of God's Church among the saints, who preserve His church from desecration, and the congregation of the Lord, from dissolution.

This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."

The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit

Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.