DEVOTIONAL

The grace of God which He bestows upon His children is far greater than you could ever imagine. This grace which comes from the very heart of God, through His Son Jesus Christ, is so liberating that Satan, himself, has sought to corrupt the very understanding of it. It is God’s grace alone, through the work of the Holy Spirit, that pursues the corrupt heart and subdues it with eternal love, as it is written, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.” Now for just a brief moment let us dare to dive into the immensity of God’s eternal grace which is endless in measure.

In the realm of the heavenly’s, where God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit dwell in perfect harmony, in the secret counsel of the Godhead, a plan of creation was set forth before the beginning of time. A plan so unfathomable that not only would They create the angelic host above, but a world in which man would live and bear Their very own image. But in this plan, man’s original righteousness would fail through disobedience. So the Father would have to send His only begotten Son into humanity, in the person of Jesus Christ to save him.

So when the fullness of the time came, God the Father spoke and executed this perfect plan. God created the world and formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being and He named him Adam. Then from Adam God created Eve and said it was good. The human race had begun and they were placed in a Eden with only one command, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” As time went by, deception and disobedience entered into the human race. Man became an enemy to God and a curse of evil fell upon the whole world.

So just at the right time as all humanity was encompassed in darkness and sin, Jesus Christ came into the world, born of a virgin, born under the law, that He may redeem all whom the Father would give to Him. It was here on this battlefield that Christ took great pains for the redemption of man. He was tempted and tried as Adam of old, yet without failing. Sweating great drops of blood, He nevertheless flinches from the death that He must face. With wounded hands and feet, with a crown upon His head, His body ripped apart by the task masters lash, He maintained His ground, and for obedience sake, He bowed His head to die. He bore the wrath of God and vanquished hell and death when He rose on the third day, giving us a pledge that hell is conquered. Upon his girdle swings the keys of life, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Jesus undertook to pay our debt and to suffer that we may go free.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, for if we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death through faith, we were also united with him in a resurrection and are seated with Him in heaven. Therefore consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Christ has conquered sin, hell, and death and nothing can pluck you out of His hand, as it is written, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”