the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
" That he might bring us to God." ― 1 Peter 3:18.
Take this text as your interpreter, and join yourself to the Lord Jesus, as he sets his face steadfastly to go up to Jerusalem. With tears he gazes on the city. He endures the contradiction of many sinners; ― Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians. He partakes of the passover with Judas. Washes the feet of his disciples. Gives the symbols of his broken body and shed blood to a little company the hope of the world, the elect of mankind, that were about to forsake him and flee. Look at these things under the surprising light of this explanation, that he might bring you to God.
See him in the garden of Gethsemane. Approach to within a stone’s throw of that awful place, and by the light of the pallid moon, notice the agony, the sweat, as it were great drops of blood, the face in the dust, the frequent cry of anguish to the Father. Measure, if you can, the frightful depth of that abyss into which the Prince of life, the Lord of glory, has been willing to descend; and as you measure, remember why all this was ― namely, that he might bring you to God. See this Lamb of God led to the slaughter; follow him step by step, from tribunal to tribunal, to the cross; ask why he opened not his mouth to transfix all his enemies with a word; the answer is, that he might bring you to God. Are there not ten thousand glorious things in the word of God, the true glory of which only comes out when the light of this text is turned upon them? You see how far you were from God. Omnipotence, not merely omnipotence, but self-immolating omnipotence, had to embark in the enterprise of recovering you to God; while all the angels of heaven looked on with wonder and semi-incredulity.
Why are you brought to God? That he may have a superlative opportunity of showing that God is love, by raising you to the sublimest heights of purity and perfection.
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