November 9 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers" (Rom. 8:29).

Devotional

Predestination must be God's truth, since it stands essentially connected with our conformity to God's image. No standard short of this will meet the case. How conspicuous appears the wisdom and how glorious the goodness of God in this—that in making you holy, the model or standard of that holiness should be God himself! God would make you holy, and in doing so he would make you like himself.

But with what brush—even if it were dipped in heaven's brightest hues—can we portray the image of Jesus? The perfection of our Lord is the perfection of holiness. His Deity is essential holiness. His humanity is without sin, the personification of holiness. All that he was and said and did was as flashes of holiness emanating from the Fountain of essential purity and kindling their dazzling and undying radiance around each step he trod. How lovely, too, his character! How holy the thoughts he breathed! How pure the words he spoke! How humble the spirit he exemplified! How tender and sympathizing the outgoings of his compassion and love to man! O Lord Jesus, you are "the chief among ten thousand," "the altogether lovely" (Song 5:10, 17 KJV)!

Such is the believer's model. To this you are predestinated to be conformed.

And is not this predestination in its highest form? Would it seem possible for God to have preordained you to a greater blessing, or to have chosen you to a higher distinction? In choosing you in Christ before the foundation of the world, that you should be holy, he has advanced you to the loftiest degree of honor and happiness to which a creature can be promoted—assimilation to his own moral image.

And this forms the highest ambition of the believer. To transcribe those beauteous features which, in such perfect harmony and lovely expression, blended and shone in the life of Jesus, is the great study of all his true disciples.

But in what does this conformity consist? The first feature is a conformity of nature. And this is reciprocal. The Son of God, by an act of divine power, became human; the saints of God, by an act of sovereign grace, become 'divine,' "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). This harmony of nature forms the basis of all conformity.

Thus grafted into Christ, we grow up into him in all holy resemblance. The meekness, the holiness, the patience, the self-denial, the zeal, the love that are traceable—albeit faintly and imperfectly—in us are transfers of Christ's own faultless features to our renewed soul. Thus the mind that was in him is in some measure in us. And in our moral conflict, battling as we do with sin and Satan and the world, we come to know a little of fellowship with his sufferings, and conformity to his death.

This supplies us with a test of Christian character. It is an anxious question with many professors of Christ, "How can I know that I am among the predestinated of God?—that I am included in his purpose of grace and love?—that I have an interest in the Lord's salvation?"

The text under consideration supplies the answer—conformity to the image of God's Son. Nothing short of this can justify the belief that you are saved. No evidence less strong can authenticate the fact of your predestination. Christ's work is a salvation, not in sin but from sin. "Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him" (Eph. 1:4). In other words, that you should be conformed to the Divine image. That you should be like Christ—like Christ in the purity he embodied, in the humility he exemplified, in the self-denial he practiced, in the heavenly life he lived—in a word, in all that this expressive sentence comprehends, "conformed to the image of his Son."

And as you day by day grow more holy, more spiritually-minded, more closely resembling Jesus, you are placing the truth of your predestination to eternal life into a clearer, stronger light. And consequently you are placing the fact of your salvation beyond a misgiving and a doubt.

In view of this precious truth, what spiritual heart will not breathe the prayer, "O Lord! I cannot be satisfied merely to profess and call myself yours. I want more of the power of vital religion in my soul. I pant for your image. My deepest grief springs from the discovery of what little real resemblance I bear to a model so peerless, so divine—that I exemplify so little of your patience in suffering, your meekness in opposition, your forgiving spirit in injury, your gentleness in reproving. your firmness in temptation, your singleness of eye in all that I do. Oh, merciful Lord, transfer yourself wholly to me."

Take time to be holy,
speak oft with your Lord;
abide in him always,
and feed on his Word.
Make friends of God's children;
help those who are weak;
forgetting in nothing
his blessing to seek.

(William D. Longstaff, 1887; mod. 2010, LEW)

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.