August 9 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8:3).

Devotional

What words these are, "sending his own Son"! A person less exalted, less Divine, could never have accomplished what the Divine law failed to do. And since an enactment that was a transcript of God proved too feeble for the purpose, God himself undertakes the work. God's own eternal and essential Son embarks in the enterprise, and achieves it.

O saint of God, what a Rock of salvation this is! Springing from the lowest depths of your humiliation, see how it towers above your curse, your sin, your condemnation! It is a Rock higher than you (Ps. 61:2). That soul whose faith is planted upon this Rock is infinitely removed beyond the reach of condemnation.

"In the likeness of sinful flesh." These words place the true humanity of the Son of God in the clearest possible light. It was not merely human nature in appearance that he took, as some have taught, but human nature in reality. It was a perfectly organized body, having all the properties, affinities, and functions that belong to our own—bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, made in all points like his brethren. Now, with a feeling of the most exquisite sympathy, he can be touched with my infirmity; for this nature which I drag about with me, feeble and bruised, jaded and crushed, was the very nature which he took into mysterious union with his Godhead. He wore it here below, and he still wears it in heaven.

But note with what care and skill the Holy Spirit guards the perfect sinlessness of our Lord's humanity! Observe, it was not the reality of sinful flesh that the Son of God assumed, but its "likeness" only. What he took was real flesh, but the resemblance of sinfulness. He was "made like his brethren" (Heb. 2:17). "Tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15). And so in the passage before us, "in the likeness of sinful flesh." The words suppose a resemblance to our sinful nature.

And, oh! how close that resemblance was! As like a sinner as one could be, who yet in deed and in truth was not one—"who knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21), but was "holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners" (Heb. 7:26). Man is a sinner; our blessed Lord is man—so truly man, that his enemies exclaimed, "We know this man is a sinner" (John 9:24). They could not understand how one could be so really human, and yet be untainted with sin.

And then, did there not cling to Jesus the infirmities of our fallen nature, which, though sinless in him, were nonetheless the effects of sin? He hungered. He thirsted. He wept. He was wearied. He slept. He was afflicted. He sorrowed. He trembled. He suffered. He died. And as we trace these infirmities of our humanity floating on the transparent surface of his pure life, how forcibly do we feel the words, "in the likeness of sinful flesh"!

And when we see him on the one hand maligned by man as a sinner, and on the other hand—standing beneath his people's transgressions—dealt with by God as a sinner; when we see him on the one hand denounced by man as "a glutton," "a drunkard," "a friend of publicans and sinners," "an impostor", "a deceiver," a "blasphemer;" then arraigned, condemned, and executed as a criminal not worthy to live; and on the other hand accursed by God, charged with all the sins of his elect church, bruised and put to grief, and at last abandoned by him on the cross, then numbered with transgressors, and making his grave with the wicked in his death—oh! how like sinful flesh was the robe of lowliness and suffering that he wore!

And yet, he was "without sin" (Heb. 4:15). It was the resemblance, not the reality. The human nature of the Son of God was as free from sin as the Deity it enshrined. He was the Lamb of God, "without blemish or spot" (1 Pet. 1:19).

The least taint of moral guilt—a mere shade of inherent corruption—would have proved fatal to his mission. One leak in the glorious Ark which contained the church of God would have sunk it to the lowest depths.

Oh! this is the glory of his work, and the comfort of your heart, that Christ your Savior "offered himself without blemish to God" (Heb. 9:14). And now you may plead his sinless atonement as the ground of your pardon, and the acceptance of your people. "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21).

May the Lord bless these truths to the comfort and edification of our souls.

Man of Sorrows! what a name
for the Son of God, who came
ruined sinners to reclaim:
Hallelujah! what a Savior!

(Phillip P. Bliss, 1838–1876)

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.