“…but he who does the will of God abides forever.”
~1 John 2:17
The difficulty in the Christian life is consistently living what we confess to believe. Every Sunday morning, we pray these words to the Lord, “Thy Will Be Done”, yet so often we want our own will to be done and we lose sight of the truth that God’s will for us is holy, righteous, perfect, and acceptable (Romans 12:2). We easily forget that “we are not our own but belong to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ” and because we are not our own, we are called to live according to the will of our Master, both His revealed will in Scripture and His secret will, which is revealed through God’s wondrous providence. It takes a lifetime of submission to God’s will to learn and live this truth, and even then, we fall woefully short of submitting to God’s will as we ought.
The Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 114 reads, “Can those who are converted to God keep these commandments perfectly? No, but even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of such obedience, yet so that with earnest purpose they begin to live not only according to some, but according to all the commandments of God.” And the Apostle Paul declared in Romans 7:22-25, “For I delight in the Law of God according to the inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin being in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then with the mind I myself serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”
Praise God that our salvation is secured for us by the perfect Law-keeping life and perfect sin-atoning death of Jesus Christ who said, ‘Behold, I have come; in the volume of the book, it is written of Me; To do Your will, O God'” (Hebrews 10:7). It’s Christ’s perfect righteousness that is imputed to all who, by true faith, trust in the Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore, we are not condemned because we are covered in the righteous perfection of our King, Jesus Christ! Hallelujah! What a Savior!
I am not what I ought to be!
I am not what I want to be!
But, praise God, I am not what I used to be!
And because of Jesus I am headed for a glorious eternity!
“In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). Are you trusting Jesus as your only Savior from sin, the only One who can shelter you from the stormy blast of God’s holy wrath against sin? Look to Jesus today for there is salvation in NONE other (Acts 4:12).
Tuesday Encouragement: June 25, 2024
In Christ,
Pastor S. Henry