Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: August 9th

"YE ARE MY WITNESSES"

And for their sakes I sanctify Myself that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. - John 17:19

The glorifying of men in Christ, which is the goal and highest end of Christ’s Cross and Passion and of all God’s dealings, is accomplished only because Christ dwells in the men whom He glorifies. And as is the Son with the Father, participant of mutual and reciprocal glorification, so is the Christian with Christ, glorified in Him and therefore glorifying Him.

What may be involved therein of perfect moral purity, of enlarged faculties and powers, of a bodily frame capable of manifesting all the finest issues of a perfect spirit, it is not for us to say. These things are great, being hidden; and are hidden because they are great. But whatever may be the lofty heights of Christ-likeness to which we shall attain, all shall come from the indwelling Lord who fills us with His own Spirit.

And then, according to this great teaching, this glorified humanity, perfected and separated from all imperfection, and helped into all symmetrical unfolding of dormant possibilities, shall be the highest glory of Christ even in that day when He comes in His glory and sits upon the throne of His glory with His holy angels with Him. One would have thought that if the Apostle wanted to speak of the glorifying of Jesus Christ, he would have pointed to the Great White Throne, His majestic Divinity, the solemnities of His judicial office; but he passes by all these, and says, " Nay! the highest glory of the Christ lies here, in the men whom He has made to share His own nature."

The artist is known by his work. You stand in front of some great picture, or you listen to some great symphony, or you read some great book, and you say, " This is the glory of Raffaelle, Beethoven, Shakespeare." Christ points to His saints, and He says, " Behold My handiwork! Ye are My witnesses. This is what I can do."

But the relation between Christ and His saints is far deeper and more intimate than simply the relation between the artist and his work; for all the flashing light of moral beauty, of intellectual perfectness which the Christian man can hope to receive in the future is but the light of the Christ that dwells in them, "and of whose fulness all they have received." Like some poor vapour, in itself white and colourless, which lies in the eastern sky there, and as the sun rises is flushed up into a miracle of rosy beauty, because it has caught the light amongst its flaming threads and vaporous substance, so we, in ourselves pale, ghostly, colourless as the mountains when the Alpine snow passes oft them, being recipient of an indwelling Christ, shall blush and flame in beauty. "Then shall the righteous blaze forth like the sun in My Father’s Kingdom." Or, rather, they are not suns shining by their own light, but moons reflecting the light of Christ, who is their Light.

And perchance some eyes, incapable of beholding the sun, may be able to look undazzled upon the sunshine in the cloud, and some eyes that could not discern the glory of Christ as it shines in His face, as the sun shineth in its strength, may not be too weak to behold and delight in the light as it is reflected from the face of His servants. At all events, He shall come to be glorified in the saints whom He has made glorious.