September 16 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Psalm 103:11–18

Devotional

God’s child can be very disappointed in himself. If his adoption to be a child of God depended on his obedience, he would be excluded from God’s grace a thousand times. But the Lord knows his frame. He is never disappointed with His child. If He was, he would have to be blotted out from God’s book.

“For he knoweth our frame.” The psalmist’s words are recorded especially for God’s child who is increasingly disappointed in himself. These words are intended for him who weeps and laments before God’s face, for he feels that he can only sow confusion in his life. Left to his own, the child can only sin himself outside of God’s grace. He views himself as a forsaker of God, and as one who forgets God. He fears that he will disappoint God forever and that in His justice God will cast him out. It is for the child of God that the words of our text are written, so that he “must not therefore despair of God’s mercy, nor continue in sin.” He is encouraged to still find a place at the feet of Him who knows his frame.

“For he knoweth our frame.” These words give no comfort to an indifferent child. Furthermore, the words of our text are not written to a child of God to give him liberty to sin as much as he wants because he can never disappoint God anyway. God’s grace does not give him permission to sin.

God’s child may disappoint himself, but miraculously he has a God who has not chosen him on condition of what he does, but only because of sovereign grace. God does not have children from whom He expects much, but children to whom He gives much. And what God now expects from His adopted child is only that which He has first given him in Christ, for Christ has fulfilled all God’s expectations.

 

From The Everlasting Word by Frans Bakker, compiled and translated by Gerald R. Procee. Reformation Heritage Books and Free Reformed Publications, 2007. Used by permission. For further information, click here.