Tag: thanks be to God
Thanks be to God!
Scripture reading for June 1st: 1st Kings 2, 1st Chronicles 29, Romans 7
Key Scriptures: Romans 7:21-25 “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”
Paul describes his own struggle as a Jew under the law. He learned to know God’s law and love it and wanted to obey it. He purposed to do that in his inner man, but he often found himself doing the opposite. There was a war between his desire in the inner man and what actually happened in real life as his members failed to obey. Paul was in a state of wretchedness and despair until he was found by Jesus Christ and by faith received God’s righteousness as a gift! Thanks be to God!
1st Kings 2:2-3 “”I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in His ways and keeping His statutes, His commandments, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, . . “
Faith confession and prayer: Lord Jesus, thank You for keeping God’s laws perfectly and purchasing my salvation from the wretchedness of sin. Strengthen me today with grace and the Holy Spirit to declare this “Good News!”
The new way of the Spirit!
Scripture reading for June 23rd: Romans 7
The way of Jesus Christ is not a set of laws or rules that one keeps to be right with God! Paul, a devout Jew before conversion, knew the futility of trying hard to keep God’s law and wrote about the experience to help those familiar with the law to experience the new freedom found in following Jesus by the Holy Spirit.
“So my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to Another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” (Romans 7:4-6)
Paul explained that the law of God was given to help man know what sin was. When Paul was young, before knowing God’s law, he was alive and unaware of the laws demands. When he learned the law, sin came to life in him and brought death to light. He became aware that he was ‘utterly sinful’ and a ‘slave to sin’. (Romans 7:13-14) He tried hard to keep the law, but failed repeatedly because of his sinful nature! (Romans 7:18-21)
But Paul found relief from his state of condemnation and death through Jesus Christ! Through the ‘new way of the Spirit’ he was released from the law, made alive, and set free to produce fruit for God! This way is available to all who would believe in Jesus Christ the Lord!