August 17
The Continual Burnt Offering" I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
It is all-important that we recognize in Jesus not simply a great teacher or a religious leader who, having found God for himself, could now point out the right way to others. He is far more than one who showed the way. He is Himself the Way the Truth, the Life. The authority with which He spoke was the very voice of God, who had become incarnate in Jesus. He who subsisted in the form of God from eternity had divested Himself of His glory and taken the servant’s form that He might become the propitiation for our sins and that we might live through Him (1 John 4:9-10). He spoke with authority because He had come to reveal the mind of God; and though in humiliation He chose to be subject in all things to the Father’s will, the very words He uttered were those the Father gave Him. All His works too were in the power of the Holy Spirit, to whom He yielded Himself for service, choosing to learn obedience by the things which He suffered. He who had always commanded became the obedient Servant in order to carry out the counsels of the Godhead in all perfection.
By Thee, O God, invited,
We look unto the Son,
In whom Thy soul delighted,
Who all Thy will hath done;
And by the one chief treasure
Thy bosom freely gave,
Thine own pure love we measure,
Thy willing mind to save.
O God of mercy—Father,
The one unchanging claim,
The brightest hopes, we gather
From Christ’s most precious name;
What always sounds so sweetly
In Thine unwearied ear,
Has freed our souls completely
From all our sinful fear.
—Mary Bowley