How eager are you to help the LORD change you into the image of Christ Jesus? Have you thought of ways you could assist God in redeeming you or restoring yourself into the life God desires for you?
A friend of mine was telling me over coffee recently about the biography of John Newton he’s been reading and how Newton had come to believe his Jesus model for Newton’s life was the four little words of 1 Corinthians 1:30-31,
Newton, while famous for the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ had begun his professional life as a sea captain invested in the slave trade of the mid-1700s. When he died, December 21, 1807, with failing mind and body he was said to have commented, “My memory is nearly gone. But I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.” His tombstone’s epitaph, “…once an infidel and libertine, as servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.” His fourfold model was Christ:
We do not have the ‘smarts’ necessary to make our own way to God which will be acceptable to the LORD but must depend upon God to show us His Way rather than trust our own. Only the Righteousness of God is sufficient to know what is needful, what is acceptable, what comes up to the standard of who God is. We cannot determine ‘righteousness’ from our own perspective for we do no fully comprehend the LORD. Sanctification is that distinctiveness that originates with the LORD and separates Him from all of creation. He is Holy and defines by His own nature all that agrees with who He is. Redemption is only available by Him for mankind lacks the resources to change our sinful state. There is no way mankind can redeem what was lost when we as a group and we as individuals sinned against God.
His conclusion is that only the means of God is sufficient to restore any of us back into relationship with the Holy God, that it is only because God is merciful in His nature that He has provided the means of Grace whereby we may be saved. If we accept the relationship on the terms He offers. To mankind, the Wisdom of God may seem foolish and we may not recognize the Power of God which we see as demonstrated in the Weakness of Jesus’s sacrifice but, nevertheless, to the LORD it is the Wisdom of God and the Power of God.
Thank You, LORD and Amen.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in
And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
… they seek me daily and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness
“When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, “What have
…but they do not regard the deeds of the LORD, or see the work of his hands. Therefore my people
And Hezekiah prospered in all his works. … God left him to himself, in order to test him and to
And because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and