November 6 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (Matt. 11:11).

Devotional

If there are degrees of glory—and we see no reason to question that fact—then we believe that they will be graduated, not by the strength or capacity of the intellect, but according to the measure and standard of holiness which the believer attained in this life.

If glory is the perfection of grace, then it follows that the degree of glory hereafter will be proportioned to the degree of grace here. If the great perfection of God is his holiness, then the more clearly I approximate to that holiness, the more deeply I must partake of the glory of God, and the higher must be my degree of glory.

It is knowing and conforming to God's moral—and not his intellectual—being that will constitute the highest source of your happiness in heaven. Surely your enlarged intellectual capacity will be a vast inlet to expanded views of God; but it will be the conformity of your moral nature to his that will constitute and enhance your perception of glory.

If you were to search throughout the various communions of the church of God and find the individual who would be the richest heir of glory—whose degree of happiness would, perhaps, transcend that of the glorified scholar—it may be that you would find him the inmate of some obscure hut. It may be that you would find him dwelling amid lonely poverty, sickness, and neglect; and yet holding communion with God that is so filial, so endearing, and so close that you see his soul uplifted and soaring, as "the wings of a dove covered with silver, its pinions with shimmering gold" (Ps. 68:13). He whose heart is thus breathing after holiness, whose spirit is thus imbibing more and more of the mind of Christ, who in this lowly and suffering school is learning more deeply of God, is surely the one whose degree of glory will be transcendently great—grace enriching and encircling him with more glory.

O reader, do you want to be a star of the first magnitude and luster in heaven? Then aim after a high degree of grace on earth. The nearer your present walk with God, the nearer will be your future proximity to God. The closer your resemblance to Christ, the deeper your holiness, the more spiritual and heavenly-minded you become on earth, then the higher and the more resplendent will be your glory in heaven.

As the ungodly man is storing up wrath for the day of wrath and is growing more and more suited for hell (Rom. 2:5), so the godly man is laying up glory for the day of glory and is growing more and more suited for heaven (Matt. 6:20).

We do not need to speculate about the future. Let the child of God be careful as to his growth in grace, and he may calmly and safely leave his degrees of glory to the period when that glory shall be revealed.

By the sea of crystal, saints in glory stand,
myriads in number, drawn from every land,
robed in white apparel, washed in Jesus' blood,
they now reign in heaven with the Lamb of God.

(William Kuipers, 1932)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2025.