May 19 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"...those who love God..." (Rom. 8:28).

Devotional

Surely this indicates no small mercy that belongs to the church of Christ. Even though it is composed of all people and tongues, even though its members are "strangers scattered abroad" (Jas. 1:1; 1 Pet. 1:1), even though its essential unity is deeply obscured, and even though its spiritual beauty is sadly disfigured by the numerous divisions that mar and weaken the body of Christ, yet there is still an identity of character in all by which they are not only known to God, but are recognized by each other as members of the one family—"those who love God."

Love to God, then, is the grand distinctive feature of the true Christian.

The very opposite marks all the unregenerate. Harmonious as their nature, their creed, and their church may be, no love to God is their binding assimilating feature, their broad distinctive character.

But the saints are those who love God. Their creeds may differ in minor shades. Their ecclesiastical relations may vary in outward form. Like rays of light, the more remote they are from the center, the more widely they diverge from each other. Yet in this one particular there is an essential unity of character and a perfect assimilation of spirit. They love one God and Father. And this truth—like those separate rays of light returning to the sun, near to each other—forms the great assimilating principle by which all who hold the Head and love the same Savior are drawn to one Center, and in which they all harmonize and unite.

Regeneration—the new birth through which they have passed—has effected this great change. Once they were children of wrath, even as others, at enmity with God. Ah! is not this a heart-wrenching thought? But now they love him. They love him! The Holy Spirit has supplanted the old principle of enmity by the new principle of love.

They love God as revealed in Christ, and they love him for the gift of the Revealer—the visible Image of the invisible God. Who, as he has surveyed the glory and realized the preciousness of the Savior, has not felt the kindling of a fervent love to him who commended his love to us by the gift of his dear only-begotten Son?

They love him, too, in his paternal character. Standing to them in so close and endearing a relation, they address him as a Father; they confide in him as a Father; they obey him as a Father. The spirit of adoption takes their hearts captive, and they love God with a child's fervent, adoring, confiding affection.

They love God, too, for all his conduct. It varies, but each variation awakens the deep and holy response of love. They love him for the wisdom, the faithfulness, the holiness of his ways. They love him for what he withholds, as well as for what he grants. They love him when he rebukes, as well as when he approves—for they know his frown to be a Father's frown; and they feel his smile to be a Father's smile. They love him for the rod that disciplines, as well as for the scepter that governs. They love him for the wound that bleeds, as well as for the balm that heals.

There is nothing in God, and there is nothing from God, for which the saints do not love him. Of one truth—the source of this feeling—let us not lose sight. "We love him because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Thus the motive of love to God springs from him as much as does the power to love him.

I was a wand'ring sheep,
I did not love the fold;
I did not love my Shepherd's voice,
I would not be controlled.
I was a wayward child,
I did not love my home;
I did not love my Father's voice,
I loved afar to roam.

The Shepherd sought his sheep,
The Father sought his child;
They followed me o'er vale and hill,
o'er deserts waste and wild:
they found me nigh to death,
famished and faint and lone;
they bound me with the bands of love,
they saved the wand'ring one.

Jesus my Shepherd is;
'twas he that loved my soul,
'twas he that washed me in his blood,
'twas he that made me whole;
'twas he that sought the lost,
that found the wand'ring sheep,
'twas he that brought me to the fold,
'tis he that still doth keep.

I was a wand'ring sheep,
I would not be controlled;
but now I love my Shepherd's voice,
I love, I love the fold.
I was a wayward child,
I once preferred to roam;
but now I love my Father's voice,
I love, I love his home.

(Horatius Bonar, 1843)

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 2011.