Tuesday, September 20, 2011

September 20, 2011 … Fulfilling God’s Law

Passage of the Day: Romans 8: 4 … in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

My Journal for Today: In Ezekiel 11: 19 – 20 God promised that He would place into all believers, His Spirit, Who would allow God’s people to fulfill the Law of God. And through Christ and His New Covenant, that promise has been fulfilled. Through my faith and repentance, God saved me. If you’re reading what I write here today, I pray God has done that for you as well; because through that salvation, we are declared righteous forever.

That is called “positional righteousness;” and because we believers now have God’s Spirit implanted into our hearts forever, we Christians now have the enabling power to turn positional righteousness into “practical righteousness,” …i.e., the everyday ability to live according to God’s Law and to avoid our sin nature. That is the message of today’s highlighted verse from the Apostle Paul to God’s people in Romans 8; and it is God’s message to all Christians of our age as well Paul delivered that truth to believers of the 1st Century. And because of God’s very practical day-to-day enabling grace, I can see God’s fruit (see Gal. 5: 22 – 23 blossom in my life, avoiding the fruit of the flesh (see Gal. 5: 19 – 21) which was so evident in my life before I came to know Christ as my Lord/Savior and surrendered to His Spirit.

Beyond God’s redemption of my soul, it is His purpose for me – and for any believer – to live a life of good works (see Eph. 2: 10 and Titus 2: 14). So, when we, as Christians, choose disobedience, which is still our free-will choice, we quench the enabling grace of God’s Spirit to give us the power to fulfill God’s Law. That is the remaining power of our deceit-ridden hearts (see Jer. 17: 9) to make flesh-driven choices rather than Spirit-led ones. To put it in John MacArthur’s words, “The believer who disobeys, especially one who persists in sin, prevents the Spirit from naturally leading [the Christian] along a path of holiness.”

It is certainly true that I’m still a sinner by nature; however, now I’m a saved and redeemed sinner [i.e., a “Saint”]; and I have God’s Spirit, giving me the power to live like the Saint whom God has made me to become in Christ. And in that truth any Christian – perhaps you – can join me to live to please God, enabled by God’s Spirit to live in righteousness every day.

My Prayer Today: To that end, Lord, all I can say is HALLELUJAH!! Amen

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