the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 1
Deuteronomy 15:17—Thy bondman for ever. (R.V., marg.)
This is what we desire to be to Christ. We have forfeited our own natural inheritance, and have taken refuge in His house. For six years we have enjoyed all that Jesus could do to make us happy; has not the time come when we should say to Him, "We do not want to go out from Thee again, but to remain with Thee for ever"? Paul delighted to call himself "a bond-servant of Jesus Christ" (Romans 1:1; Galatians 1:10; Philippians 1:1, R.V.; etc.).
There are two stages, so to speak, in our dealings with Him. First, we come driven by fear; the produce of our own efforts has failed; we have no other resort. Like the bird fleeing from the hawk, we have made for His breast; like the sailor driven by the tempest, we have taken the first harbor that offered. But when we have tested the blessed Master, and found Him so sweet and strong, we elect to remain with Him, not for His gifts or even His salvation, but for Himself. We do not wish to go out free; we love Him so dearly that we would rather go anywhere with Him than remain without Him.
This resolve of ours is ratified by Him. He nails our ear to His cross. Through the blood of self-sacrifice, and self-surrender; through our deeper appreciation of the meaning of His cross, as separating us from the old selfish life; through our identification with Him in death and resurrection; through our sacrifice of all that would hinder us—we come into deeper and closer oneness with Himself. As the Father bored through his ear, in accepting his glad delight to do His will, so does Jesus make real and permanent the consecration we lay at His feet (See Psalms 40:6-7).
