August 1
Jesus has done it all for us. We have nothing remaining to do to achieve our spiritual freedom, our eternal salvation, but to simply receive what He has purchased in our behalf. We don’t have to attend church a certain number of times a week. We don’t have to read a prescribed set of verses of the Bible daily. We needn’t pray.
Of course, we will want to do those things because we desire to draw close to the Lord who first loved us and Whom we now love, but there is a vast difference between being ‘required’ to do something in order to be worthy of receiving salvation and being ‘compelled’ to do something because we can better know the One we love by doing it.
The one thing we must guard against is our human penchant toward becoming complacent with familiar things. After a time, we take even the best things for granted. We do it in both the natural and the spiritual realms. We buy a new car and it delights us. We clean and wax it continually. We find a favorite food and we indulge it often. Then we become indifferent. The car begins to look as dirty as our old one and we pass when our former favorite food is served.
When we are first saved, we cherish our new status in Christ. We know who we were and from what He’s delivered us, but as time passes, so does our fervency in faith, so does our appreciation of His sacrifice in our behalf. Paul reminds us in Galatians 5:1, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” We who have received the gift of freedom mustn’t allow ourselves to lapse back into the mindset or the lifestyle of bondage.
No comments:
Post a Comment