The Devotional - 17

The Devotional

Comment:

Once in Boston, MA we were visiting with our niece, there were four of us, the niece, my wife’s sister and mother of our niece and myself. We were in a fancy restaurant, to three of us the surroundings were unfamiliar, to my niece she had been there before. As the meal ended and I began to reach for my wallet to pay for the meal, the waitress explained that the tab had been paid. I could hardly believe it and when the truth finally sunk it, I still wanted to do something, like pay the tip. “All had been paid, I could only say thank you to the waitress” it was an associate of our niece who paid the cost of our lunch and had already left the restaurant.

Challenge:

Now the four of us are not alone in this, while it may be a rare occasion to have someone pay for your meal in a restaurant in a city that is strange to you; it does happen. So I am not seeking to nullify or disqualify the things that just seem to happen to people that are simply wonderful at times when wonderful is not expected.

As we approach this coming Sunday our thoughts ought to focus on another debt, one that is already “paid in full”! We need only to say “thank You” since something WONDERFUL has happened. Every precept, commandment, judgment, law, statute and testimony offered by the Creator God to man has; since time began been broken and disregarded by all men, women and children.

This infraction of mankind on the ordinances of God is called by God “SIN”, the debt is impossible to reconcile by any man since we are all strangers to His Goodness. Yet there is ONE, One whom we do not know because we are “dead” to this knowledge who has paid this DEBT. Notice the following.

Colossians 2:13-14 – And YOU, being dead in your trespasses (sins) and the uncircumcision of your flesh (sinfulness), He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven your trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting (certificate of debt) of requirements that was against us. And He (Jesus the Lamb of God) has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Now if you seek to believe this you will experience forgiveness of sins (your debt is already paid in full, since the debt was resolved long before you were born, there is nothing else to do, but believe it. Ephesians 2:8 says this – For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of YOURSELVES; it is THE gift of God.

You cannot even leave a tip for Ephesians 2:9 says this – not of works, lest anyone should boast. You cannot walk away from being saved by God and say… “Well, at least I left the tip”! Jesus paid it all.