Reading: “The God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus.” Hebrews 13:20

Daily DevotionalsHow beautifully the apostle associates the two blessings! He is now truly the “God of peace”—the pacified God, the reconciled Father—and the evidence of it is His raising up His dear Son from the grave. Thus what a bright view does this truth unfold to us of God! When we retire within ourselves, we see much to engender dark views of, and distrustful feelings towards, Him. But when faith travels to the grave of Jesus, and we see it empty, we have such an overwhelming evidence of the perfect reconciliation of God, of His thoughts of peace towards us, that instantly faith triumphs, and all our gloomy, trembling apprehensions of His character vanish and disappear. He is the “God of peace,” because Jesus is a risen Saviour.

Oh, deal believingly with a risen Christ! The same resurrection power which brought back to life again the Head of the Church is exerted in effecting the spiritual resurrection of the Church itself. The true believer is already risen. He was once dead in sin, and entombed in the grave of his iniquities. But a power has darted from the tomb of Jesus, and has quickened Him to a new and a deathless life. Oh, were we more directly to trace the mighty energy of the Eternal Spirit in our souls. What must be the power of our Lord’s resurrection, that can even now awake the profoundest sleep of spiritual death! When the Spirit of God puts forth His own grace to raise a soul from the grave of sin, oh, forget not it is in virtue of a risen, living Saviour.

Despair not of the spiritual life of any, though they may have laid in the grave so long as well near to have quenched all hope of their conversion, since Christ has risen from the dead, and is alive, to give life in answer to the prayer of faith.

“The little world within us, like the great world without, is full of confusion and strife; but when Jesus enters it, and whispers “Peace be unto you,” there is a calm, yea, a rapture of bliss.”—C. H. Spurgeon

 

Adapted from Octavius Winslow