Dear Friends,

None of you, I hope, responded to the title “Comfort for those who have sinned greatly” with anything like “But they don’t deserve comfort!” Of course they don’t. Neither do any of us! But God is so good He offers comfort to those who know they have sinned greatly and seeks to deliver them from despair. Read today’s devotional and see how this is so. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

• John 20:16

  John 20:16   English Standard Version (ESV)
  16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic,[a] “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).

John 20:16

“…Mary Magdalene was not only a great sufferer who had been relieved, but a great sinner who had been purified. Yet she is the first to hear a word from the risen Christ, and to behold him face to face. I may be addressing some great sinner at this moment. Dear friend, the greatness of your sin may not prevent you from yet occupying a first place among the saints; if you seem to be sore beset by Satan, as though seven devils were in you, there is no reason why you should not be filled with the seven spirits of God, and become even a leader in the Church of Christ. There are first that shall be last, but there are also last that shall be first. Such a case as that of Mary Magdalene should give great encouragement to those of you who seem to be far away from Christ; if he calls you to humble penitence and childlike confidence in himself, you may yet be one of the nearest and dearest of his disciples, and his manifestation of himself to you may be even clearer and sweeter than to some of the more publicly known among his people.”

[Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLIV, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1898), p. 133]