Abide in Me

July 11

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup...but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.

“So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?" Matthew 23:25-28, 33.


“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’

“And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’ Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.'” Matthew 7:21-27.

The old joke in Christian circles is that upon arriving in Heaven believers will not so much be surprised at who is and who isn’t there as that they will be surprised that they are there! Oh, yes, we know we’re born again. We know we’ve wept tears at the altar where we have placed our sins. Yet we know we know there is no good thing within us and we would perish but for the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

And we know we have fallen short of our lofty estate. We know we have disappointed the God who loves us and who saves us by His own inestimable sacrifice. We know the transaction of salvation is totally one-sided and that even though we are blessed beyond measure to be recipients of His grace and mercy, we are totally undeserving.

He knows that, too, and He accepts the one-sided transaction. But the reality is that there must be sincerity within the bosom of the one who receives. We cannot presume that because we have gone through the motions of salvation, or that we have applied the gifts He’s given toward His purposes that we are satisfying His expectation of us.

If we flagrantly defy His law, if we are “hearers of the Word rather than doers of the Word,” (see James 1:22), we are deceiving ourselves. A man builds his house where he intends to live. If we intend to abide in Christ, we will build our house upon the rock of His truth and love. If we intend to trifle with God’s truth, we will build our house upon the shifting sands of the world and merely dabble in our salvation.

The Lord will not be deceived by our dalliance with the devil’s allurements while we program a time for Jesus into our schedule. Jesus said of us that we must "Abide in Me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit apart from the vine, neither can you bear fruit apart from Me," John 15:4.

If we are serious about our salvation, we will abide in our Savior and bear fruit to His glory. Our faith will not be a mere social pursuit. We must build our lives upon the Rock of our Salvation and we must live our lives there. Anything less may allow us to fool ourselves, but we will never deceive the Holy One who knows our hearts.