Daily Devotional

August 08

A First Book of Daily Readings

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

‘... since Jesus came into my heart ...’
Is my life different?

Does my Christian faith affect my view of life and control it in all matters? I claim to be Christian, and hold the Christian faith; the question I now ask myself is, ‘Does that Christian faith of mine affect my whole detailed view of life? Is it always determining my reaction and my response to the particular things that happen?’ Or, we can put it like this. ‘Is it clear and obvious to myself and to everybody else that my whole approach to life, my essential view of life in general and in particular, is altogether different from that of the non-Christian?’ It should be.

The Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes. They describe people who are altogether different from all others, as different as light from darkness, as different as salt from putrefaction. If, then, we are different essentially, we must be different in our view of, and in our reaction to, everything. I know of no better question that a man can ask himself in every circumstance in life than that. When something happens to upset you, do you ask, ‘Is my reaction essentially different from what it would be if I were not a Christian?’

Let us remind ourselves of the teaching ... at the end of the fifth chapter of [Matthew’s] Gospel. You remember that our Lord put it like this: ‘If ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others?’ That is it. The Christian is a man who does ‘more than others’. He is a man who is absolutely different. And if in every detail of his life this Christianity of his does not come in, he is a very poor Christian, he is a man ‘of little faith’.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 139–40