THE REFUGE DEVOTIONAL
“For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” Romans 6:14 NASBS
The Lord Jesus Christ proves over and over again His divinity in His earthly ministry. His life was one succession after another of divine power, as He proved Himself to be God over all Creation. Not only did he hush the wind and the waves of the sea, but He restored the sight to the blind, He raised the dead, He stilled the winds, and He healed the diseases of those who were afflicted. Yet there’s one thing that proves He is God that stands above all, and that is the empty tomb. His death was marked by surpassing wonder. The word of God opens the eyes of our hearts to see the earth beneath His feet being filled with the crimson blood from His wounded body. He allows us to understand that it was the Father Who was pleased to crush the Son, darkening the sky above Him which held the echoes of His anguished cries. Yet, never had we seen such power of the Godhead when Jesus broke forth from the tomb on the day God the Father, raised Him from the dead. It was then Jesus triumphed over hell, death, and the grave, laying His life down for all whom the Father would give Him. Jesus was the first born from the dead, raised to receive a glorified body and to stand in the presence of holiness without being put to death. He has made a way for me and you, through His shed blood, to enter into His father‘s presence on the great day when we shall pass from this earth. “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
Christian, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Beloved of God, “Jesus whose guardianship you have committed your precious soul is able to keep it until the morning of your own resurrection glory? Behold it in the risen life of the incarnate God! He has come up from the grave to make good all His previous claims to Deity, thus to encourage and confirm your belief in the truth, dignity, and glory of His person, and to assure you that he that “believeth on Him shall not be ashamed.” Now may you take up the triumphant cry as it falls from the lips of the departing apostle, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.”