Daily Devotion

These verses have two great warnings in them. (1^st) it tells the risks of free-will. The Scribes and the Pharisees had succeeded in frustrating God's purpose for themselves. The tremendous truth of Christianity is that the coercion of God is not of force but of love. It is there that we can glimpse the sorrow of God. It is always love's greatest tragedy to look upon some loved one who has taken the wrong way and to see what might have been, what could have been and what was meant to have been.That is the greatest heartbreak.

 

God's sorrow is His knowledge of 'the might have been' of a person's life. As G.K. Chesterton said, "God had written not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play He had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage managers, who had since made a great mess of it."God save us from making shipwreck of life and bringing heartbreak to himself by using our free will to frustrate His purpose.

 

(2^nd) it tells of the perversity of men. John had come, living with a hermit's austerity; the scribes and Pharisees had said that he was a mad eccentric and that a demon took his wits away. Jesus had come, living the life of men and entering into all their activities; nevertheless, they had taunted Him with accusations that He loved earth's pleasures far too much. We all know the happy days of a child when he will grin at anything and of his moody days when nothing will please him. The human heart can be lost in a perversity in which any appeal God may make will be met with childish discount.

 

(3^rd) But there are the few who answer; God's wisdom is, in the end, justified by those who are His children.Men may misuse their free will to frustrate God's purposes; men in their madness may be blind and deaf to all of His appeal. Had God used the force of coercion and laid on man the iron bonds of a will that could not be denied, there would have been a world of automation and a world without trouble. ButGod chose the dangerous way of love, and love, in the end, will triumph.

 

Life Application: Grasp hold of my statement, "Love, in the end, will triumph and the Gospel presented in love is greater than the Gospel presented with judgment." How were you won to Jesus?