Daily Devotionals
Daily Devotional: Psalms 52:1-5
Ps 52:1-5
1 Why do you boast of evil, you mighty man? Why do you boast all day long, you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God? 2 Your tongue plots destruction; it is like a sharpened razor, you who practice deceit. 3 You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth. Selah 4 You love every harmful word, O you deceitful tongue! 5 Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin: He will snatch you up and tear you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living. Selah
Rom 3:21-24
21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
Paul says that the Lord knows those who are his. But his justice requires that sin – any sin – be punished with death. Since we all have sinned, we all deserve to die the second death. Sin is anything we do or have done that would cause us to fall short of God’s glory. So any time we fail to act as God would act, as Jesus would have done while on earth, we have sinned. In this sense there are no big sins or little sins. Sin is sin and deserves to be punished with death.
The wonderful good news is that God has made it possible for us to be forgiven by having a perfect life, one that lived up to his glory in every way, to die in our place and for our sin. That one is Jesus who came to earth as one of us and faced all we face in life and did it without sin. Because of the love of Jesus and his Father you and I can be forgiven and counted as righteous when we face God in judgement.
God has done that which he alone could do. He has acted within the bounds of his righteous nature and has still made it possible for us to have eternal life because we have no sin being counted against us. In Christ we have no condemnation held against us. God made Jesus to be sin for us so that we can be counted righteous in him. This is the grace of God that offers salvation to all mankind in all ages.
Heavenly Father I am so thankful for your love for me. I know that I can never see or know what you have done for me and continue to do every day. As I look back over my life, I realize so many times you carried me through the storms of life and used what seemed to be terrible things to draw me closer to you and to make my faith stronger. Forgive me when I doubt you or fail to live up to your glory. Help me live in a way that leaves an example that others can follow in serving you. Use me and what I have to serve others. I pray in the name of Jesus.
Robert
