Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: March 31st

Sin shall not have dominion over you. - Romans 6:14.

ONE of the Christian’s most inveterate enemies is sin. This is the cause of all his other evils and enemies. Sin is nothing to some, and they are well aware of it. They neither hate nor fear it; they do not oppose the stream, but they are sailing down by it, and often singing as they go, though they are moving down to the gulf of perdition.

The name of Jesus was imposed upon the Saviour at his birth, because he was to save his people from their sins, and his people consider sin as their chief enemy, and they rejoice in the persuasion that the Saviour gave himself for them, not only “to redeem them from all iniquity, but to purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” It will be acknowledged that sin, even now, is to be found in a believer. Paul speaks of sin dwelling in him: he says, “I delight in the law of God, after the inward man; but I find another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

But, though sin lives in the Christian, the Christian does not live in sin, and, though sin be not destroyed in him, it is dethroned in him; it shall no longer reign in his mortal body, that he should fulfil it in the lusts thereof; and he has this assurance given him:-that “sin shall not have dominion over him, for he is not under the law, but under grace.” And grace deserves its name: it is able to subdue every other principle; it occupies the place which sin had done before; it “reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord;” and though there be sin in the Christian, yet it is resisted, it is abhorred. A Christian is not only restrained from the practice of sin while his inclination attaches him to it, but he has mortified it; he is “dead unto sin but alive unto God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” A change took place at the foot of the cross: he saw by faith Him whom he had pierced, and he mourned for it. Hear his language:-

“Furnish me, Lord, with heavenly arms

From grace’s magazine,

And I’ll proclaim eternal war

With every darling sin.”

How little his fellow-creatures know of him! They that receive not the things of the Spirit of God judge of Christians by themselves, and because they love sin they think the Christian loves it, and, therefore, that he embraces particular doctrines because they favour licentiousness. Why, he does not desire a license to sin; why, he is not a swine, and therefore does not deem wallowing in the mire any privilege. He loves purity, and therefore dislikes impurity, and prays that he may be “cleansed from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.”

There is as much difference between sin found in a Christian and sin found in a natural man, as there is between poison found in a serpent and found in a man. Now, poison is found in a serpent, but it does him no injury. Why? Because it is natural to him; it is part of his system: but poison in a man makes him sick; it is no part of his nature. And so it is with regard to the Christian. Sin in him will always be abhorred, and he cannot be happy until he be entirely delivered from it; he therefore abhors it in his heart and resists it in his life. But he will not be called to resist it always, nor to resist it long. Now “the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” Now he rises to a daily conflict, but the conflict will soon be over:-

“Sin, his worst enemy before,

Shall vex his eyes and ears no more;

His inward foes shall all be slain,

Nor Satan break his peace again.”

Ye are all the children of light and the children of the day. - 1 Thessalonians 5:5.

THE gospel is a system of knowledge. Hence it is called “light.” “The light of life,” “a great light,” “the light of the world.” When we think of this subject comparatively, three states with regard to knowledge present themselves to our notice. First, If we refer to the heathen, they were the children of night; all was dark with them. This was the case with these boasters of knowledge. “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools;” they were “vain in their imagination, and their fleshly hearts were dark.” If some of these philosophers had a belief in the immortality of the soul, it was “only,” as Paley said, “one of conjecture; they never taught it as a principle, never urged it as a duty.

Secondly, ‘If we turn from the heathen to the Jews, we shall find they were the children of the light. They had some light. Here was God known. “His name was great in Israel.” “To them were committed the oracles of God.” They possessed all the revelation the world then contained. But much as this was the case compared to the destitution of all around them, it was little compared with what was possessed by those who should come after them; and therefore our Saviour said to his disciples “that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things that ye see, and have not seen them, and to hear those things that ye hear, and have not heard them.”

Therefore, Christians are the children of the light and of the day. The Jews had the types and the shadows; Christians have the realities. The Saviour was to them “afar off,” and they could not discern his lovely features, but we behold him “face to face.” To them the Sun of Righteousness was below the horizon, but upon us he has “risen with healing in his wings;” and, says the Apostle John, addressing believers, “Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and know all things;” not that we are to understand that we derive from the Scriptures a knowledge of the arts and sciences.

We do not go to the gospel for philosophy but divinity. It does not profess to teach us astronomy, but something beyond the stars. Its language is the language of Him whose words are words of “eternal life.” It is wisdom: it is the “wisdom from above;” and it is knowledge: it is the excellent “knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.” There we know all that is necessary for us to be acquainted with as sinners: and there we find things made plain just in proportion as they are important, so that the wayfaring man may not err therein. And as the dial tells us the hours of the day by the shadow as well as by the sunshine, so shall it be found that the gospel teaches us by what we do not see as well as by what is revealed. How much may we learn from its silence, and how much wiser would some men be if, when the gospel ceases to guide them, they would choose not to advance and intermeddle with what they ought not to know, and pry into things which they have not power to discern, and which puff up the fleshly mind. But let us not forget or neglect the intelligence derived from the gospel.

Seeing that we are “children of light and of the day, let us not sleep as do others.” How lamentable it is that we, who have the Scriptures, and sabbaths, and sanctuaries, and such abundant opportunities and advantages “to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” should make so little proficiency. To us the words of our Lord will, we fear, be applicable: “Are ye also yet without understanding?” “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?”