The Truth That Sets Us Free

July 26

“The Lord is faithful and will give you strength and will protect you from the evil one,” II Thessalonians 3:3.

“God is strong and can help you not to fall. He can bring you before His glory without any wrong in you and can give you great joy. He is the only God, the One who saves. To Him be glory, honor, power, greatness and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord for all time past, now, and forever, Amen,” Jude 24:25.

The gulf between God and His errant creation is a vast divide that is so wide that man cannot even begin to fathom the distance between himself and our Holy Lord. It is as though we were standing on the seashore of the Eastern United States and attempting to see the coast of Europe. We simply can’t see it.

From our vantage point as sinners who are swallowed into the deception of the enemy of our souls, we cannot perceive the treacherous sea of indifference and licentiousness that stands between us and Heaven. We are busy with the interests of our lives—advancing our careers, building our financial portfolio, establishing our power base, indulging our romantic interests, raising our children to be reflections of ourselves—all without the attention to our relationship with our God and King that is our ultimate purpose.

We give little importance to the admonition of our Savior in Matthew 6:33 where He says, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all good things will be added unto you.” His promise is that if we make Him and His Kingdom’s purposes our priority, He will assure that we have all we need to abide in His truth and to abound in His eternal provision.

Will the evil one endeavor to steal away our promise of eternal glory in the presence of the Holy One? In fact, he will, but our promise is that the strength of God will protect us from him! Will God’s ancient foe try to trip us up in our pursuit of the will of the Lord? Indeed, if he does, he must fail because our promise is that our Savior can bring us before the presence of His glory with great joy.

Might we falter along the way? Indeed, we might, but our confidence remains unshaken for our complete faith has been placed in the One who has promised. Our confidence is not in ourselves or in our own ability to forge ahead to His Kingdom but in the complete and perfect work Christ has accomplished in our behalf.

Jesus’ exchange of His righteousness for our unrighteousness; His sinlessness for our sin assures us that as we believe and appropriate all He’s provided for us we shall see the fulfillment of the Lord’s claim, “The Father gives Me My people. Every one of them will come to Me and I will always accept them,” John 6:37.

When we come to Him in sincere repentance and true abandonment of the sin that besets us, we will “Know the Truth (Jesus is the Truth) and the Truth will set us free,” John 8:32.