October 8 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light" (Col. 1:12).

Devotional

The order of the Holy Spirit here is beautiful.

Observe to whom this grateful acknowledgment is made—"to the Father." Then the sweet truth stands revealed, luminous in its own celestial light, that heaven is the Father's gift. And oh, how sweet to trace all our mercies to a Father's love, to a Parent's heart. How sweet to look to Jesus, whose righteousness gives us a title; to look to the Holy Spirit, whose sanctifying grace gives us a fitness as the precious gifts of a Father's love; and then to rise through these up to the Father himself. How sweet to trace the gift of heaven—the consummation of the inner life—to the heart of the First Person of the glorious Trinity.

Who, after reading this passage, will not, by the Spirit as the enabler and through Jesus as the Mediator, rise to the Father, and trace up all the blessings of redemption, and all his hope of glory, to the part which the Father took in the great and wondrous work? Oh, how unutterable blessed is it to see the Father engaged equally with the Son and the Spirit in preparing for us and in preparing us for "the inheritance of the saints in light"!

"Giving thanks to the Father." Upon what grounds, beloved? Oh! it was the Father who sent the Savior, his only-begotten, beloved Son. It is from the Father that the Spirit proceeds who renews and sanctifies. It is the Father who has prepared the inheritance. It is the Father who, by his upholding power, will at last bring you safely there. All thanks, then, all adoration and praise to the Father, "who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light."

O reader, let me affectionately ask you, in what does your fitness for heaven consist?

Do not put off the question. Do not shift it to another. Let it come home to your own conscience. In a little while your destiny will be fixed—eternally, irrevocably fixed—and one half-second of hell's torment will fill your soul with remorse, terror, and unavailing regret that in the day of hope and grace you turned your back upon both, refused the mercy of God in Christ, rejected his dear Son, and died in your sins.

In what, then, does your fitness for heaven consist? If it is only the fitness of a mere outward profession, if it is but the fitness of a mere notional reception of truth, if it is merely the fitness of an external going through the motions—it is a fitness not for heaven, but for banishment from heaven!

Are you born again of the Spirit of God? Have you fled to the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation? Do you have the "earnest," the pledge of heaven, in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God—in the life of God in your soul? Do you have the first sheaf of the harvest bound up in your bosom? Have you been sealed by God's Spirit as an heir of glory?

To God's saints I would say: cultivate a habitual and growing fitness for heaven. Do not be satisfied with past attainments. Do not be content with your present measure of grace and standard of holiness. But, beloved, since heaven is a holy place, cultivate holiness. Nurture a habitual growing fitness for "the inheritance of the saints in light." Be advancing, be progressing, be pressing onwards. "Put on the whole armor of God" (Eph. 6:11). "Lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely" (Heb. 12:1). Press onward and heavenward, until you reach the confines of bliss, and enter within the portals of glory.

Father of heav'n, whose love profound
a ransom for our souls hath found,
before thy throne we sinners bend;
to us thy pardoning love extend.

(Edward Cooper, 1805)

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.