Daily Bible Reading 21st June 2026 // Luke 11-17
11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. 12 As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. 13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14 Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” 15 And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!” 17 And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.
We spoke of the miracle being a token of the gospel. In one very particular sense this is so; for the raising of the widow's son was simply a reversion to the status quo. There would, necessarily, come a time when he would die again and return to dust. And as such, his being raised from the dead, being a token, was only a faint illustration of something much greater, which is Christ's primary purpose in His dealings with men. For death, being the wages of sin, the sacrament of guilt, is what He has come to deal with, not with its physical aspect only, but in its essence. And so, as well as raising the dead in the physical sense, He is also - and supremely - concerned to raise men in the spiritual sense, and to give them newness of life. And this is something infinitely greater than a return to the status-quo, for 'if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.' And those who are thus raised to newness of life will never die: death can have no more dominion over them - just as Jesus, being raised from the dead, lives forever more. In a far greater and deeper sense than they could ever have realised, what the people said on seeing the miracle was gloriously true: 'God hath visited His people'. Little wonder that the fame of Him went forth throughout all Judaea and the region round about!