God's Transforming Love

September 30, 2015

Devotions:

        Human love and human goodness is not enough to change us.  Even though we respond to the love and goodness it has no power to remove the wickedness from us but just masks it.  It takes the love of God demonstrated in Jesus' passion that draws us into His gift of eternal life.  It is that we died with Him on the cross not just figuratively but literally.  The book of Hebrews states that Levi was in the loins of Abraham when he paid the tithe to Melchizedek and so Levi also paid tithes, he who would receive tithes.  So we were in the spiritual loins of Jesus when He died on the cross for our sins so we died with Him and were buried with Him and rose with Him to newness of life. We were dead in trepasses and sins and we died under the penalty of that sin in the body of Christ.  When we believe that Jesus died for our sins, was buried and rose on the third day and declare Him as Lord thus breaking the lordship of satan over our lives we are radically transformed from the darkest darkness into brilliant light.  The real me, my spirit, is transformed from death unto life.

        Christianity is not a religious philosophy to which we adhere, but it is a receiving of the life of our Savior and receiving His nature and standing.  God makes us new creations in which our salvation does not depend on how tight we hold on to our Father but on HIs radical, completed work which only He has done.  Then as we feed upon His word, it works in us to reveal the fullness of the work of salvation that He has accomplished in us.  What we are to do is to embrace the word of God and honor it for what it is, the word of the Living God who created all things.  As we honor His word. we honor Him.  The importance which we give to His word determines the amount of revelation which He shares with us.  

        Without this radical change, humans are left sinners with an evil heart and desparately wicked.  All of this was erased at the cross and becomes real to us as we receive what Jesus did for us.  By the word our minds are transformed to accept all that He did and renewed to this new life.  

        You are a new creation and your salvation does not depend on you but on God alone.

        “For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”  Galatians‬ ‭2:19-20‬ ‭NASB‬‬