DAILY DEVOTIONAL – November 20, 2020

“A Ransom Letter”

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, we thank You that we can call you Father.  In our sinfulness we have given You every reason not to receive us or hear us or save us, but as Your Word reveals You are a God of love; You are love.  Thank You for not judging us according to what we have deserved but instead according to what Christ earned and did in our place on the cross.  In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Scripture: Matthew 20:28

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Devotion – “A Ransom Letter”

Could you imagine if God were to evaluate our lives, or our worth, or the value of our worship and gifts with a sliding scale?  What if God were to send us a letter saying, “Hi Eric, I appreciate your effort in trying to be faithful to me and you certainly have a desire to be saved and go to heaven, but I gotta be honest, what you have to offer me isn’t quite amounting to enough.  After all, I brought you into existence and I gave you this wonderful planet to enjoy and food to eat and a family and friends and the list goes on…and let us not forget that I gave you my One and Only Son who suffered and died for you.  Help me help you here Eric.  If you want to get into heaven I would suggest an adjustment to the gifts you have been offering me.  A few more good works would certainly help, and no doubt an extra 5%-7% in your tithing each month would go a long way in making me feel like you love me enough.”

God would be completely justified if He were to send any of us a letter like the one I imagined.

Everything good we have comes from God.  We live and have a life to enjoy only because of His creative love.  God had no reason other than His love to bring us into being, and we certainly have given Him no reason to continue to love us.  Each of us have become corrupt in our sinfulness.  On our own, we have nothing to offer God that would in the very least convince Him that we are worth saving.  What gift could we ever give to the God and Creator of all things?  What do we have that He doesn’t, or that He needs?  Nothing.  We have nothing to offer God.  Not even a life time of our best works could ever repay Him.

And it is precisely because of this fact that we call God’s love and grace, amazing.  It is because we have nothing in ourselves to offer God that we stand amazed in awe and wonder by the fact that God instead wrote us a letter that says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  In fact, rather than sending us a letter demanding we pay God the debt we owe Him, the debt of righteousness we owe Him because of our sin and rebellion, God wrote a letter saying that He has already sent His Son Jesus to settle our debt.  Jesus Christ was perfectly righteous.  We were made perfectly, and even warned that sin would bring death.  We have all sinned and brought death to what God made to live.  We owe God a life, our life, and God would have been completely justified in collecting that debt from us personally.  But God so loves us, that He sent Christ to give His perfectly righteous life in place of ours.  As Jesus Himself said in our verse for today, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Christ paid our ransom, our debt to God, and by faith in Christ as our only Savior and Redeemer, not only are we given eternal life but God now sees us as righteous in His eyes for the sake of His Son.

We could never give God the gifts He deserves or offer Him anything of value, and yet, because of His Son Jesus and through faith in Christ as our worthy sacrifice, God hears our prayers and receives our worship and only asks that we trust Him and love Him for the wonderful things He has done for us.  God is pleased with us when we rely on Jesus our Lord to offer God all that He deserves and when we live our life in faith toward Him and in love toward one another.

God bless you my friends, and remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow.  Amen.