October 30 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

1 Corinthians 12:14:

¹⁴For the body is not one member, but many.

Devotional:

Christ is your King.

Not merely King anointed over Zion, the mountain of His holiness. Nor yet, after the earthly Zion had been profaned, King merely over God's kingdom on earth. No, Christ is also King over the persons who are His subjects.

Your relation, your personal connection with Christ can not be expressed in one word. It is a many-sided relation.

When you think of the guilt of sin which threatened you with doom, then Christ is your Reconciler. When you seek protection with Christ from the power of sin and of temptation, then this same Christ is not your Reconciler but your Redeemer. Or, when you look to Christ for direction and guidance on your course through the labyrinth of life, then, again, this selfsame Savior is not your Reconciler, and not your Redeemer, but your Shepherd Who goes before you in the way and leaves you His example.

But your many-sided relation to your Savior is by no means exhausted even with this, for this selfsame Christ is also with the Father your glorified Head, the Lord before Whom your knee must bend, Whom your tongue must confess; and therefore your King Who has incorporated you with His people; Whose subject you have become; and in Whose palace you shall one day be expected.

So little is this honor-title of King here accidental, that the great vindication on Golgotha is at length fought out under this title, and before the judgment-seat of Pilate the conflict between the Emperor of Rome and the Anointed of God centered itself in the struggle for the honor of Kingship.

The Lamb, so it is proclaimed unto you in Revelation (17:14), is not merely your Reconciliation and your Surety, not alone your Redeemer and Savior, nor yet alone your Shepherd and your Guide. No, the Lamb of God—and in this antithesis you feel what amazes and inspires—the Lamb of God is at the same time Lord of lords and King of kings.

The Lamb with the crown, the high, the holy union of self-effacement and dominion.

Your King!

But how, in what sense?

Is the king here on earth the real, the actual; and is the kingly image of the earthly prince applied to your Savior purely by way of comparison by which to express His power and honor?

Christ also your King! Tends this title of honor merely to have you think of Christ as in a distant hamlet the man behind the plow thinks of his Sovereign in the Royal residence?

One who is to him a hidden and a mysterious power, expressed in the image on the coin, but, for the rest, a power which remains foreign to him, a power from afar, of whose splendor and luster, of whose glory and pomp, he can form no faint idea, but which he honors from afar. A Sovereign in the glorious palace, but who as far as this farmhand is concerned is unapproachable, to whom he pays taxes because he is subject unto him, and for whom, if he is godly, he intercedes in his daily prayer.

And surely there is a likeness here. Christ, too, is enthroned in a palace of glory, even in such a one, that compared with the splendor of His greatness all royal splendor on earth pales. He who is Jesus' subject also places his child at the service of his King. His money he sacrifices in the ministry of love, his strength he spends in behalf of what must be done for His kingdom. And this King too is enthroned afar off. And here on earth His subject shall not see the King of God's Kingdom.

But herewith the likeness ends.

For, that Christ is your King, is so little an imagery borrowed from earthly princes, that rather the kings on earth are merely image-bearers of His glory, and that true, real, actual Kingship has never been realized in a prince on earth, but is known alone in Christ.

Head, Lord, and King are but three rays of the same glory.

Head points to the inner relationship and solidarity of your life, of your existence, of your inner being, with the life, the existence and the being of your Savior.

Lord expresses the fact that Christ owns you, that you are His property, that you belong to Him, that He has bought you free from the dominion of Satan and has obtained possession of you by His Blood.

And only in this twofold relation, because He is your Head and your Lord, therefore, is He also your King, Who has taken you up into His kingdom, has incorporated you with His people, made you a sharer in a common lot with Himself, and now rules you with His Royal law of life.

You are His subject, but this alone because, and in consideration of, the fact that you are a member of that selfsame Body of which He is the Head.

This is surely, at first hearing, an enigmatical relationship. But it gloriously explains itself, when you clearly understand the significance of that Body, and, in that Body, of the Head, and, under that Head, of each member.

Imagine to yourself man, as in paradise he came forth from the hand of God. The pure, perfect beautiful body; in that body all the members in which it manifested itself; and with that body the noble head, with all the fullness of facial expression, with the fine expressive features, with the animation that outpours itself from it; and thus only can you have the Image before you of the Body of Christ, and in that Body the members, and over all these members the glorious Head.

And yet the human body by itself here is not the perfect Image. Body in this connection indicates rather in a broader sense what we are more accustomed to call an organism, in which sense also the animal is an organism, and the plant an organism, and as we also apply the image of a body or of an organism to all sorts of associations of man and man.

Thus we speak of a corporation which is nothing else than a body, signifying thereby all sorts of associations, societies and confederations that are formed. So we say that the family has an organic existence. And so we speak of the body of the State and of the body of the people. And for this reason, and in this connection, we call him among the people who directs such a corporation the head of such an association or the head of the body of the State. And it is even the rule to call those who belong to such a society or body, the members of the association, or the members of the Church. To become a member of a nation is to become incorporated in that nation.

And this is an image which the holy Apostle applies to Christ and to those that are His.

Also the organism of the plant renders service in behalf of this. Did not Jesus Himself say: "I am the true vine, and ye are the branches?" And does not Paul speak of having become one planting with Jesus?

Thus it is always again that one effort to make it tangible to you, to make it clear to you, that Jesus' Kingship is to you no external dominion coming upon you from without, but that before you become a subject of Jesus, you have been linked into His life, that with the strand of life itself, if we may say so, you have been bound to Him; so that it is one life-blood that courses through you and Him; and that it is one spirit of life that animates you both unto life. Yea, as little as you can move your head from one place to another, but that your foot, your hand, your eye, your ear goes with it, so, likewise, every movement of life on the part of your King of itself stirs also in you, and puts you into motion with Him.

Christ is your King because of itself the member necessarily follows the body, and the body goes wherever the the head directs.

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.