October 4 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life" (Jude 20–21).

Devotional

Nowhere does the Bible speak of or address the believer as a lifeless machine, a mere automaton. Rather, God's Word addresses him as one "alive to God" (Rom. 6:11), as "created in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:10), as a "partaker of the Divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). As such he is commanded to "work out [his] own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12), to "be all the more diligent to make [his] calling and election sure" (2 Pet. 1:10), to "watch and pray that [he does] not enter into temptation" (Mark 14:38).

Thus God throws a measure of the responsibility for his own standing upon the believer himself, so that he might not be slothful, unwatchful, and prayerless, but be ever aware of his solemn obligations "to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age" (Titus 2:12), remembering that he is "not [his] own, but [is] bought with a price" (1 Cor. 6:19–20).

The power of God is the efficient cause of the eternal security of the believer. Yet, as auxiliaries that God has appointed and by which he instrumentally works, the believer is to use diligently all holy means of keeping himself from falling.

He is a temple of the Holy Spirit, the subject of the divine life, and a pardoned, justified man. Accordingly, he is called to labor perseveringly, to pray ceaselessly, and to watch vigilantly.

He is not to run willfully into temptation, to expose himself needlessly to the power of the enemy, to surround himself with unholy and hostile influences, and then take refuge in the truth so that the Lord will keep him from falling. God forbid! This were most awfully to abuse "the teaching that accords with godliness" (1 Tim. 6:3), to "hold the truth in righteousness" (Rom. 1:18), and to make "Christ the servant of sin" (Gal. 2:17).

Dear reader, watch and pray against this! Let the cheering prospect of that glory for which God is guarding you stimulate you to all diligent perseverance in holy duty. Let it constrain you to all patient endurance of suffering. In all your conflicts with indwelling sin, under the pressure of all outward trial, let this precious truth comfort you—that your heavenly Father has "caused [you] to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Pet. 1:3–5). Take heart that soon—oh, how soon!—all that now loads your heart with care and wrings it with sorrow, all that dims your eye with tears and renders your day anxious and your night sleepless, will be as though it had never been. You shall emerge from the entanglement, the dreariness, the solitude, the loneliness and the temptations of the wilderness. And you shall enter upon your everlasting rest, your unfading inheritance, where there is no sorrow, no declension, no sin. There will be no sunset, no twilight, no evening shades, no midnight darkness. Rather all will be one perfect, cloudless, eternal day, for Jesus is the joy, the light, and the glory thereof.

The sands of time are sinking, the dawn of Heaven breaks;
the summer morn I've sighed for— the fair, sweet morn awakes;
dark, dark hath been the midnight, but Dayspring is at hand,
and glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel's land.

(Anne R. Cousin, 1857, from Samuel Rutherford, ca. 1600–1661)

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.