Daily Devotional For Monday, January 20, 2025
Good morning or good day, whichever it is for you. Today, we will inaugurate a new president. The thing about our democracy is that it can be similar to the weather – you don’t like it, it will change. Every year across this country we have the right to choose new leaders. Some based on their electorate keep getting re-elected and others are booted out for all kinds of reasons. This makes me think of how some people view Jesus Christ.
Some view Him as a great moral teacher who blessed us with principles to live by such as The Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12 and The Football Rule such as John 3:16. I say that because at most football games on TV you will see someone holding up a placard with John 3:16 written on it. Even people who do not believe Jesus was the Messiah respect His teachings on personal relationships. Yet, some people see that while Jesus was a great moral teacher, He was a criminal condemned to death by crucifixion by Rome even though He was critical of the Roman Empire nor broke any of its laws.
For over 2,025 years billions of people have given their lives to this condemned criminal of Rome. They have come to live, fulfill and experience what the Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, “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” (NASB). In Jesus’ day the cross was a sign of death and people back then would be shocked to see us wearing it as jewelry, tattoos on our bodies and emblems on our cars.
The Bible tells us that after Jesus’ resurrection, He appeared to many of His disciples. But from the world’s perspective, the last image of the man named Jesus of Nazareth is of Him suffering and dying on a Roman cross. It wasn’t a victorious ending in the eyes of the world, but God has never made any attempt to vindicate Jesus. Instead, Scripture says that through His Church—through you and me—the name of Jesus will be lifted up and God will bring glory to His Son. Paul reminds us that our very lives are to be an expression of the glory of God. We have been crucified with Christ, he says, and now Christ is living in us. So, we live by faith because of His sacrifice. God’s power is at work in our lives, not just to alleviate our discomforts, but so that through the victories we experience, the name of His Son will be glorified.
Theologian Alister McGrath outlines the following three stages of receiving what Christ did for us on the cross:
“[First], I may believe that God is promising me forgiveness of sins; [second], I may trust that promise; but [third] unless I respond to that promise, I shall not obtain forgiveness. The first two stages of faith prepare the way for the third, without it they are incomplete.
Then he illustrates these three stages with the following true story:
Consider a bottle of penicillin, the famous antibiotic identified by Alexander Fleming, and first produced for clinical use in [Great Britain]. The drug was responsible for saving the lives of countless individuals who would otherwise have died from various forms of blood poisoning. Think of the three stages of faith like this. I may accept that the bottle exists. I may trust in its ability to cure blood poisoning. But nothing will change unless I receive the drug which it contains. I must allow it to destroy the bacteria which are slowly killing me. Otherwise, I have not benefited from my faith in it.
It is the third element of faith which is of vital importance in making sense of the cross. Just as faith links a bottle of penicillin to the cure of blood poisoning, so faith forges a link between the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ and ourselves. Faith unites us with the risen Christ, and makes available to us everything he gained through his obedience and resurrection” (Source: Alister E. McGrath, What Was God Doing on the Cross , pp. 99-100).
This means when we wear the cross as jewelry, or as tattoos or an emblem on our cars, we are saying to the world, “Jesus Christ is the cure for your spiritual sickness. Accept Him and you will be healed.
Questions To Consider
- Unlike our elections, once we the elect respond to the Father’s plea to come to His Son, no one, not even ourselves, can do anything to boot us out of our Father’s hand. This is Jesus’ promise to us in John 10:28-30, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from Me, (29) for my Father has given them to me, and He is more powerful than anyone else. No one can snatch them from the Father’s hand. (30) The Father and I are one” (NLT). How is what Jesus says part of the promise of Galatians 2:20?
- The Apostle Paul says that our lives are the very expression of the glory of Christ. How is that a fact?
- In the illustration above, believe, trust and accept are the steps to salvation. As Alister McGrath illustrates, some refuse to accept the “spiritual penicillin” God offers. Why do you think such messed up and spiritually sick people would reject Christ?
- Would you say that your life today is one that is a life which you now live in the flesh as you live by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave Himself up for you?” Why or why not?
Scripture To Meditate On: 2 Corinthians 4:11, “For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (NLT).
Prayer To Pray: “Heavenly Father, thank You for the cross of Jesus Christ and the reconciliation and redemption it affords me as I proclaim, “Jesus is Lord.” I welcome the power of Your Holy Spirit to be at work within me so I can be an effective messenger on Your behalf. Be glorified in all I am and in all I do. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
I love you Southside!-- Pastor Kelly