August 3 Daily Devotional

AUGUST 3

Bible Verse

"We wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom. 8:23).

Devotional

Here we must take the terms "adoption" and "redemption" in a restricted sense.

Our present adoption into God's family is as perfect as God can make it. We shall not in reality be more the children of God in heaven than we are now. Dwell upon this truth, beloved; press it in faith and gladness to your sighing, groaning heart. Is God's hand uplifted? Oh, do not tremble! It is a Father's hand. Do not say that it presses heavily upon you. It is the pressure of love. Do not think that there is one less throb of affection towards you in his heart. "Beloved, we are God's children now" (1 John 3:2), and all the immunities and blessings of a present sonship are ours.

Equally as complete is our redemption from all that can condemn. When Jesus exclaimed, "It is finished!" (John 19:30), by one offering he perfected forever the salvation of his church. Then he entirely rolled away the curse from his people. Then he completely hurled their sins into an infinite depth. Then he completed the work the Father gave him to do. Thanks be to God, the saints do not "wait" for the finishing of that work.

And still, all believers expect an adoption to be confirmed and a redemption to be perfected.

Now our adoption is concealed, but then our adoption will be visible. Our present adoption is limited in its privileges; our future adoption will introduce us to all the riches of our inheritance, and to all the splendors of our Father's house. For this unveiled, this manifest, this full adoption we are "waiting."

And so, too, of redemption. The ransom-price is paid, but our body is not yet fully redeemed. It still is confined and bound by a thousand clinging corruptions and weaknesses. But the day of its complete redemption draws near. In virtue of its ransom it will spring from the dust, its last link of corruption entirely and forever dissolved. "But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself" (Phil. 3:20–21). Like Christ's glorious body! Oh, then, no deformity will mar its symmetry! No weakness will impair its strength! No sickness, no fainting, no nervousness, no pangs of suffering or throes of death will ever assail and torment it more! For this "redemption of the body" the sons of God are waiting. Our heavenly Father has adopted it. Our Divine Savior has redeemed it. The Holy Spirit, our Comforter, has sealed it. Oh yes! The first-fruits of the "first resurrection" bloom on the grave of the holy dead.

This page may arrest the eye of a sufferer, not soothed in his grief or cheered in his loneliness by such prospects as these. But there still is hope. Jesus died for sinners, and there is mercy even for the foremost sinner (1 Tim. 1:15). Blessed suffering and hallowed sorrow if now, in the agony of your grief, you are led to the Savior to learn what in the sunny hour of prosperity and gladness you refused to learn, that only God can make you happy, and that in Christ God is prepared to make you happy.

O heaven-sent affliction! Sweet messenger of love! Beautiful in your somber robes, bearing to my soul a blessing so divine, so precious as this!

Foremost sinner though I be,
Jesus shed his blood for me;
died, that I might live on high;
lived, that I might never die.
As the branch is to the Vine,
I am his and he is mine.

(William McComb, 1864; alt. by LEW 2007)

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.