Daily Devotional

July 04

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

The Blessed Hope

[The Christian] finds himself guilty of sin, and at first it casts him down and makes him mourn. But that in turn drives him back to Christ; and the moment he goes back to Christ, his peace and happiness return and he is comforted.... The man who mourns truly is comforted and is happy; and thus the Christian life is spent in this way, mourning and joy, sorrow and happiness, and the one should lead to the other immediately.

But ... there is another comfort, that which we may call ‘the blessed hope’, elaborated by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8.... He says that at the present moment even we who ‘have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body’. ‘For we are saved by hope’, he continues, and we are confident that ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed’ ... as the Christian looks at the world, and even as he looks at himself, he is unhappy. He groans in spirit; he knows something of the burden of sin as seen in the world which was felt by the apostles and by the Lord Himself. But he is immediately comforted. He knows there is a glory coming; he knows that a day will dawn when Christ will return, and sin will be banished from the earth. There will be ‘new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness’. O blessed hope! ‘Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.’

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, i, pp. 60–1

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“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”