DAILY DEVOTIONAL – September 3, 2020
“Covenants and Contracts”
Prayer: God, You are 100% faithful to Your promise even when we fail and sin and prove unfaithful. Thank You Lord for Your faithfulness, even to the point of death on a cross, so that our faithlessness could be forgiven. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Scripture: Romans 8:1-4
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled.”
Devotion – “Covenants and Contracts”
The term Testament as in Old and New Testament or Old and New Covenant could be properly understood in our modern English as the Old and New “Contract”. However, a proper understanding and study of the actual covenant that God gave to man, both the Old Covenant and the New, reveals that all of the fine print was about what God was agreeing to, and what He was promising to do by the authority of His own Name. In fact, the Old Covenant and New Covenant that God has established and given have nowhere for us to sign. It is a completely one-sided agreement on God’s part.
God promised since Adam and Eve’s first sin that He would take responsibility for our debt of sin…that He would send a seed of a woman, His Son Jesus born of the Virgin Mary…and that He Himself would uphold the Law of God that we broke. And that is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus signed His name in our place with His own blood. Though you and I have sinned against God, broken our promises to Him and have proven unfaithful to Him, God always has and always will be faithful to His Promise and the contract He signed in His own blood. With that contract, Christ paid our debt and purchased the eternal life and salvation we could never afford.
The only agreement we have to make, is to agree to receive God’s free gift in Jesus; and we receive that gift by believing Jesus is the Son of God who died for sins. We receive that gift by thanking Him and worshiping Him and trusting Him. The Law of God with all of its legal demands has been fulfilled on our behalf in Christ’s blood. As Paul said in our text from Romans 8:1-4, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled.”
For any person to be saved, we must come to God on His terms and on His conditions. The Good News of the Gospel my friends, is that because of Christ’s sacrifice to pay our debts, God’s only condition is to believe, to put our faith and hope in Christ alone, and receive God’s free gift of love and forgiveness in His Son Jesus.
God bless you my friends, and remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
