April 2 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother" (Proverbs 18:24).

Devotional

The power of human sympathy is amazing if it leads the heart to Christ. It is paralyzed if it leads only to ourselves.

Oh, how feeble and inadequate we are to administer to a diseased mind, to heal a broken heart, to strengthen the feeble hand, and to confirm the trembling knees! Our mute sympathy, our prayerful silence, is often the best advocate of our affection and the most effective expression of our aid.

But if, taking the object of our concern by the hand, we gently lead him to Jesus, portraying to his view the depth of his love, the perfection of his atoning work, the sufficiency of his grace, his readiness to pardon, and his power to save, the exquisite sensibility of his nature, and thus his perfect sympathy with every human sorrow—then we have then most truly and most effectually soothed the sorrow, staunched the wound, and strengthened the hand in God.

There is no sympathy like Christ's—even as there is no love, no gentleness, no tenderness, no patience like Christ's. Oh how sweet, how encouraging, to know that in all your afflictions he is afflicted; that in all your temptations he is tempted; that in all your assaults he is assailed; that in all your joys he rejoices, that he weeps when you weep, he sighs when you sigh, he suffers when you suffer, he rejoices when you rejoice.

May this truth endear him to your soul! May it constrain you to expose your whole heart to him in the fullest confidence of the closest, most sacred, and most precious friendship. May it urge you always to do those things that are most pleasing in his sight.

Beloved, never forget—and let these words linger upon your ear, as the echoes of music that never die—in all your sorrows, in all your trials, in all your needs, in all your assaults, in all your conscious wanderings, in life, in death, and at the day of judgment—you possess a friend who sticks closer than a brother! That friend is Jesus!

One there is, above all others,
well deserves the name of Friend;
his is love beyond a brother's,
costly, free, and knows no end:
they who once his kindness prove
find it everlasting love.

Which of all our friends, to save us,
could or would have shed his blood?
But our Jesus died to have us
reconciled in him to God.
This was boundless love indeed;
Jesus is a Friend in need.

When he lived on earth abasèd,
"Friend of sinners" was his name,
now above all glory raisèd,
he rejoices in the same;
still he calls them brethren, friends,
and to all their wants attends.

Could we bear from one another
what he daily bears from us?
Yet this glorious Friend and Brother
loves us though we treat him thus:
Though for good we render ill,
he accounts us brethren still.

O for grace our hearts to soften!
teach us, Lord, at length to love,
we, alas! forget too often
what a Friend we have above.
But when home our souls are brought,
we will love thee as we ought.

(John Newton, 1779)

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.