Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: June 12th

"As the Father hath loved me, so have I you." - John 15:9.

These disciples were the representatives of the universal church. They stood in the place of all believers. We were all there by proxy. It must never be supposed that the beautiful words and condescending acts of Christ were just for Peter, John, James, and their companions. John is not the only beloved disciple who is encouraged to lean upon the bosom of his Lord. His love for the family of Bethany is not a singular love, with which other families have nothing to do. It is a specimen of his love rather, intended to make glad ten thousand families. That loving, solicitous question, "Lovest thou me?" addressed to Peter, stops not with Peter, but makes its whispered way to innumerable other professors, preserving all its tenderness of intonation and fullness of expression.

The great thing is to have a persistent, unvanquishable faith with regard to this, so as to be able to take our place at the side of Christ, and accompany him through Galilee and Judea; or, if you choose to express it so, to have him by us, in our own place of residence, mingling his life with ours, questioning us, upbraiding us, educating us for his own heaven of love. And it is a happy thing for us that there is nothing about the character of those first disciples to make us diffident in appropriating the gracious words addressed to them. There is no halo of excellency about them to intimidate us. In fact, they are just ourselves. Those things which, we are well aware, constitute the most repugnant elements of our character, - pride, unbelief, selfishness, passion, carnality, envy, sloth, cowardice, - these very things are found in them. They afterwards put on, it is true, the armor of light, and shed lustre upon their sacred calling, but this was after Christ had given all his proofs of love.

I have loved you; and if you wish to know how much, why, let us take the highest possible expression, even the love of the infinite Father for his Son; so have I loved you. Nothing could exceed the preciousness of this statement; no statement was ever more corroborated by evidence. It is painful to think of such a heavenly declaration being made in vain in the ear of men; for the honor of Christ, see that you receive it, believe it, live upon it.

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