A
Weekly Devotional – man – Personal Meditation
Comment: Is
there anything in your life that you are ‘assured of’? Many people it seems are
like the drunk trying to walk a straight line, unable to find any firm footing.
One moment we are purposed to go in a direction that seems to be right, only to
change our mind and follow another course. These temporal ways of living life
(and there are many) are a distraction, a distraction of the devil! Go ahead
and say it; “Oh Balder-dash, Jesse” where do you come up with stuff like that? If
you said that or something similar I would say that you are not reading your
Bible. All the ways of man stem from the heart, this is where wickedness is
rooted, notice Psalm 58:1-2 – Do you indeed speak righteousness, you silent
ones? Do you judge uprightly, you sons of men? NO, in your heart you work wickedness;
you weight out the violence of your hands in the earth. David the Psalm writer
is expressing justice on those who think they are ‘just and righteous’ but in
fact, are applying ‘self-righteousness’ to their pathway and work wickedness
and violence in their daily life.
Devotional: The
many ways of the human heart are not paths that lead us to “Righteousness”. There
is a standard, only ONE and it is ETERNAL. This standard has never changed, nor
will it EVER change as it is the way of God. Jesus Christ is that Standard, if
you are saved and it is my prayer that you are, note the following verse of
scripture from the apostle Paul in Galatians 2 verse 20. The apostle writes; “I
have been crucified with Christ; 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 for me.”
I sense that one of the biggest hurdles we face as believers in
Christ is that we fail to understand, that like Paul the apostle, we too have
been crucified with Christ, our lives are not to be lived in the confines of
our own self-righteous ways of the past. When the LORD Jesus was crucified, we
were crucified with Him, our SIN (self-righteous deeds of the flesh) were
removed from us and placed on Him. Now we live, yet still in the flesh, but now
by FAITH in the One who took our sin upon Himself (Jesus), Paul says in Romans
6:6 that we know this, “our ‘old-man’, that is life before Christ was crucified
with Him (Jesus) and that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
Again in 2 Corinthians 5:14-21, the apostle Paul in similar words
says that if ONE died for all, then ALL died. And He did die for all, that
those who live (are you not alive?) should live no longer for themselves
(SELF), but (NOW) live for Him (Jesus) who died for us and rose again for us.
We need to stop living for ourselves according to the flesh. Once Jesus was
alive and known in the flesh, but we know Him no longer this way. Thus, if
anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation, not of the flesh but of the
Spirit, like that of Christ. For God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us,
that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
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