Permission to Speak Freely
Good Morning Ladies (and few gents),
Today’s devotion included below “Permission to Speak Freely” is a reminder from GiG Gwen that, “In the shelter of His everlasting arms, we can pray unfiltered, ask hard questions and seek comfort from a God who understands pain, knows all and loves perfectly. We can trust Him.”
Well, it’s Monday and time to share our 29th Catechism truth.
8 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. Ephesians 2:8-9 NLT
Question 29: How can we be saved? (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Answer: “Only by faith in Jesus Christ and in his substitutionary atoning death on the cross; so even though we are guilty of having disobeyed God and are still inclined to all evil, nevertheless, God, without any merit of our own but only by pure grace, imputes to us the perfect righteousness of Christ when we repent and believe in him.”
GiG, the answer to our catechism question provides a wonderful summary of what it means to have faith in Christ—the sort of faith that saves—and how God saves through faith.
Our answer contains one key word—only. Yup, only faith in Jesus Christ matters. It wouldn’t be terribly controversial to talk about faith. People are into faith and believing something. Don’t get this twisted; it’s only faith, not faith plus something else. It’s not faith in addition to our background, faith plus our family of origin, faith plus how many good things we can do for social justice, or faith plus how often we pray. It’s ONLY faith, and it’s faith in Jesus Christ—there is an object to it.
Kevin DeYoung, senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church an American Reformed Evangelical theologian and author in Matthews, North Carolina reminds us that faith by itself means nothing. It is the object of faith that saves us. It’s not being a person who has strong beliefs, who is sincere, or who has a mystical belief in spiritual things that saves us. It’s faith in Jesus Christ. He’s the object of our faith and that’s what saves us. Faith is what joins us to Christ, and then he saves us. It’s the object that matters.
GiG, the good news of the gospel teaches us that though we are still sinners; God justifies us (aka, just as if we never sinned). Now I’m not saying he waves a magic wand or says sin’s not a big deal; it’s because we belong to Christ and his righteousness is our righteousness that God can be just and we can be justified.
May we be encouraged to renounce our pride and all pretensions of self-righteousness and trust Christ’s death to give us life.
God’s Got It…so we can receive His LOVE—God’s boundaries are not designed to steal our joy, but to ensure that we keep it. Kevin DeYoung
Have a “Merciful” Monday, April 1, 2019—Our hope does not live because we are not sinners, but because we are sinners for whom Christ died; our trust is not that we are holy, but that being unholy, he is our righteousness. Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Called to serve and encouraging others to thrive,
DEA: Embracing a Work-Hard, Rest-Well Life and Loving My Priorities,
Loving My Life
