2004-07-02
Good Morning Cherished Readers,
I’m reminded each time that I write to you that the Holy Spirit loves me enough to give me the words to say. So, I begin today’s devotion with the reminder to all of us that God deserves all the glory for who we are, what we have, and what any believer accomplishes for Him. For quite awhile the topic has been how God transforms human hearts. God has a lot for us to learn about this, as evidenced by how much the Holy Spirit is giving me to write about it. Our very faith in Christ and any desire we have to live sanctified lives is given to us by Him. Last week we looked at RO 7:24-25, the last two verses of the passage Paul wrote about the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit.
Today, I’m led to begin with PHIL 3: 8b-11, which outlines the true righteousness the Spirit indwelt in the believer gives us. “…I reckon everything as complete loss for the sake of what is so much more valuable, the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have thrown everything away; I consider it all as mere garbage, so that I may gain Christ and be completely united with Him. I no longer have a righteousness of my own, the kind that is gained by obeying the Law. I now have the righteousness that is given through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is based on faith. All I want is to know Christ and to experience the power of His resurrection, to share in His sufferings and become like Him in His death, in the hope that I myself will be raised from death to life.” That’s a lot to consider. The discussion in previous devotions about a new believer gradually opening his soul to the Holy Spirit and closing it to the evil that Satan tempts us with should be brought to mind. As the believer matures, the melding of his spirit with the Holy Spirit becomes more and more a reality. That is coupled with the closing off of access to his spirit that Satan might attempt to gain at the same time. This is described eloquently in COL 3: 3-4, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Your real life is Christ and when He appears, then you too will appear with Him and share His glory.” As for the issue of our own resurrection, that too is promised in RO 8: 29 with the description of Christ as “the first among many brothers.”
Does this mean that the Law is simply discarded? Does this mean that believers can no longer sin? The answer to both those questions is “no.” Once we are mature believers, we still live according to the Ten Commandments, but the difference is that we want to live according to them. Repeatedly, God has expressed His will for His people as He did in JER 31: 33-34, “The new covenant that I will make with the people of Israel [and those engrafted to this cultured olive tree –RO 11: 17] will be this: I will put My law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. None of them will have to teach his fellow countryman to know the Lord, because all will know Me, from the least to the greatest. I will forgive their sins and I will no longer remember their wrongs.” This statement of God’s will is nothing Jeremiah suddenly conjured up on his own. This was made very evident by God to Moses in the “Shema,” DT 6: 4-9, and the other restatement of God’s will in DT 11: 18-19, which I hope you will review. This statement of God’s will is so key to the issue of righteousness that every observant Jewish household is entered through a doorway with a mezuzah hanging on the door post or its gate. You’ll remember that a mezuzah is a small metal or wood cylinder containing DT 6: 4-9 printed in Hebrew on a tiny piece of rolled parchment paper. My mezuzah has “shin”-the 22nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet, on it, which is the first letter in God’s name. As for the question about the Law, RO 10: 4 clarifies it. “Christ is the fulfillment of the Law.” To me, this means that with Christ in your heart, you simply desire to obey the Ten Commandments, because the Holy Spirit is in leadership in your life and leads you to that decision.
The matter of sinning is also a decision a believer makes. Before the Holy Spirit melds with one’s own spirit, a person has no choice but to sin. Afterward, the choice is the believer’s. The Holy Spirit will allow the believer to know which thoughts, decisions, and behaviors are sinful and which are not; but, the believer makes the choice. The impact on one’s life of God’s work of transforming his heart is tremendous. That’s why we are looking at “A New Perspective” in this segment. The obediently faithful believer looks at issues like physical death and whether or not to sin completely differently than a person without faith. To the true believer, there is a profound appreciation of the huge sacrifice that God made of His Son on the cross and all that transpires as a result of it in his life. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to read God’s word and understand it well enough to put it into practice in our daily lives. The open two-way communication that comes from an active prayer life allows us to obey Christ’s directive in JN 15: 5, “I am the Vine and you are the branches. Whoever remains in Me and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without Me.” We can truly appreciate the worst of Christ’s suffering, even worse than the scourging, humiliation, and physical trauma of being hung on the cross. That was the temporary separation from the Father that He had to endure to open the way for our redemption. Join me today in meditating on that fact and on how it impacts our personal and congregational lives right here on earth. Remember that Christ knew what was ahead of Him that important day when He preached the Sermon on the Mount [MT 5-7].
PRAYER: O Lord, today we are attempting to have a deeper understanding of the amazing work You are doing to transform human hearts and give Your people a new perspective-Your perspective. Because of our sinful nature, we haven’t made this job easy for You, and for that, we apologize. As a child, I often wondered if You were really there. Had I read the Scriptures at that time, I would have found PS 33: 13, “The Lord looks down from heaven and sees every person,” and 2 CH 16: 9, “The eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.” I would have felt that I wanted to commit myself to You, because I would have wanted Your constant presence and leadership in my life. But, Dearest Abba, You always knew best when the right time was for me to know about the truth of Your love for me and desire to be in my life. Waiting for so long was difficult for me, because You had many lessons to teach me beforehand. The OT, which was available to me in my Jewish upbringing, is full of people’s pleas for You. PS 4: 6, “Many are asking, ‘Who can show us any good?’ Let the light of Your face shine upon us, O Lord.” PS 54: 1-2, 4, “Save me, O God, by Your name; vindicate me by Your might. Hear my prayer, O God; listen to the words of my mouth…Surely God is my Help; the Lord is the One Who sustains me.” I now know it was during this long spiritual dry spell of my life that You were beginning to do the work of transforming my heart. That is what You do with others too. Even now when I experience a spiritual dry season, You are still working to perfect me, so that I can have eternal life with You. I love You, Lord, for caring enough about me, and all the others whose hearts You are transforming, to do this long, hard task for us. You are our One and Only God, our Alpha and Omega, and You are awesome! We thank and praise You forever. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.
Next week, I am led to write about human trouble with the desire to be holy. It wouldn’t be fair not to look at the other side of the coin to that which has been discussed today. Once God’s light is cast on the darkness of human sin, it is exposed for what it is. That way, we imperfect beings can have a chance to get rid of it from our lives. God’s light gained through daily time in the Scriptures, prayer, learning the lessons that arise from the circumstances of our lives, from our congregational interactions with God and our fellow believers, and from our head-on dealings with spiritual warfare are some of the ways that God allows us to do our part to help Him transform our hearts. We experience God’s presence and leadership in our lives through obeying Him, knowing His will, making changes to conform to it, and by having faith [taking God at His word]. That is why the reality of God caring about every detail of our daily lives is so very powerful. The love that He has for us is nothing short of spectacular! We can take comfort in knowing that the same Deity Who rebukes us for sinning is rooting for us to be victors over sin in Christ’s name. Then, Satan’s attempts to bring us to spiritual death through sin fail. He is the same God Who equips us to win the battle against Satan by making 2 COR 5: 17 so. “When anyone is joined to Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come.” Hallelujah!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn