We only have the choice whether we will continue to be separated from God or have our relationships restored because Jesus accomplished the Plan of Salvation. This daily devotional reviews Who Jesus is and our relationship with Him.
Devotions in the Self-Discipline Review series
All year, we’ve been looking at self-discipline. We looked at self-discipline as the operational plan for self-control because it talked about improvement.
We are reviewing everything and hopefully putting all of the building blocks together. What I am doing is going through all of the devotions for the year and pulling out the nuggets.
I am formatting this as a glossary page. If I already have one, I will combine them later.
The Plan of Salvation was dependent on one Man: Jesus. If Jesus would not have agreed to be the Sacrifice, our relationships with God would not have been able to be restored.
But Jesus became the Sacrifice. He lived, died, and rose again so all of mankind could be reconciled to God.
Who Is Jesus?
- We know Jesus because what has been written about Him has survived. Through that, we see God (Why Jesus Became a Man).
- Just following the rules isn’t it. It isn’t about us and what we can do. It is about God and what He has done through Jesus’ sacrifice (What Is Self-Discipline?).
- God is all powerful. I mean, He did create the universe, didn’t He? He raised Jesus from the grave, didn’t He? (Characteristics of Disciples’ Lives).
- Jesus knows our works. He also knows our innermost being. So He can evaluate whether what we are doing is up to snuff (How Do We Lose Our First Love?).
- Jesus established a new covenant when He died to pay the penalty for our sins (How Do We Benefit from Being God’s People?).
- We can’t change a sin from being a sin to not being a sin. Nor was that Jesus’ intent (What Is Sin?).
- Jesus showed anger when He cleaned out the Temple (Mt. 21: 12-17). He had a right to be angry when His Father’s house was defiled. We tend to forget Jesus was angry at the Pharisees when they thought He shouldn’t heal in the Sabbath (Mark 3:5) (What Are Moral Sins?).
- Jesus came as a human but still as God. He also came as an example of the obedience for which God was looking. We needed Someone to model our relationship with God (One God and the Trinity).
- We can do nothing to save ourselves. If we do not have Jesus in our lives, we are dead in our sins (Are Disciples to be Docile?).
- Jesus was always going to be our Savior because sin was always going to enter the world (What Happens in the Middle of the Tribulation?).
- This world and what happens in it, however, is not priority with God and Jesus. They were and are all about the spiritual (How Do Disciples Mourn?).
- There is nothing that we could do to earn our salvation. We don’t work for salvation. Jesus was the only One Who could secure it for us. The opportunity for our salvation was only was only available when Jesus shed His blood for us (What Is Righteousness?).
- Jesus was always more interested in our relationships with God than religion.
- But He taught character — imitation of God’s character to be exact. That takes into considering motivation and spirit (Disciples and Charitableness).
- Jesus always obeyed God, just as we are called to do (What Is the Relationship between Righteousness and Obedience?).
- God was ready for the disobedience. He could have squashed that bug real fast. But He didn’t. He let it play out because He had the plan of salvation set in stone. He was always going to have Jesus redeem us (What Is the Relationship between Righteousness and Obedience?).
- God’s call for us to accept Jesus in our lives eliminates the separation that occurred as a consequence of the original sin. As much as we may wonder how He can pardon us from our sins and restore our relationships with Him, He can and does — He wants to do just that (What Is the Relationship between Righteousness and Wisdom?).
- Jesus is our wisdom. Because we know Jesus, we have wisdom about the Father (What Is the Relationship between Righteousness and Wisdom?).
- As we dig deeper and deeper into His Word, we begin to see how much worse off we were than we thought. There is no way man — on his own — could dig out of that pit. Only Jesus can lift us out (What Is the Relationship between Righteousness and Wisdom?).
- If Adam and Eve would have obeyed God, yada yada yada wouldn’t be in the world today. We can say that there is this connection because of what Jesus said when the friends brought the paralytic for healing in Luke 5: 17-26 (Is Peace an Attitude?).
- Why would Jesus’ blood pay the price for our sins? Well, because that is what God would accept. Jesus was the Perfect sacrifice (How the Righteousness of God Filters to Us).
- If Jesus emptied Himself, how was He still 100% God? The “… gave up his divine privileges …” (Phil. 2: 7 NLT) makes it more understandable. But what does that mean? It means that the divine attributes of everlasting, sovereign, all powerful, good, holy and righteous, and love, etc. were removed from His being. Oh, yes. Jesus was still holy, righteous, and loving. It was not at divine level. Instead, Jesus was like any other newborn babies. The wisdom wasn’t there. The self-sufficiency wasn’t there. The majesty wasn’t there (Why Jesus Became a Man).
- Jesus is more concerned about our spiritual health than our physical health (Why Jesus Became a Man).
- God did not force Jesus to be our Savior. He gave his life willingly. Jesus is the only One who could restore our relationship with God (Why Jesus Became a Man).
- God picked Jesus as the substitute because He wasn’t leaving anything to chance. He didn’t want there to be any possibility that He could not accept the sacrifice. He knew Jesus was worthy to be the sacrifice (Did Jesus or His Blood Redeem Us?).
- Jesus never balked at being the substitute. He was always up for it. He was invested in the plan even before He met us e (Did Jesus or His Blood Redeem Us?).
- Jesus was put up on the cross — so everyone could see the sacrifice that would pay the price for our sins. Because Jesus did that, God isn’t punishing us as we deserve – our sins are unavenged. That is where God’s mercy comes into play (Did Jesus or His Blood Redeem Us?).
- God wanted our relationships restored. But He had to patiently wait until the time was right to send Jesus to be the Sacrifice (Did Jesus or His Blood Redeem Us?).
- Jesus wasn’t punishing the wrongdoer — at least not yet. He really was pardoning us. We were absolved of the consequences of our sin — when we ABCD (Did Jesus or His Blood Redeem Us?).
- Jesus’s blood covers everyone from Adam to the last baby that was born — as long as they ABCD (Did Jesus or His Blood Redeem Us?).
- If we could do live a life doing all the do’s and not doing any of the don’ts, than Jesus would not have had to die for us. But we can’t do that. We need a Savior (How Do We Profit from Scriptures?).
- Jesus is standing in the gap between us and God. He is the One Who has provided salvation for our sins, so it is He who can forgive those sins (How Do We Believe in Jesus?). God wants everyone to be saved, and He sent Jesus to die while we were still sinners (Can God See Us If We Are Sinners?).
- Jesus was okay with healing the physical — but He never fixed the world. There was poor people when He came — and when He ascended to heaven. He wasn’t a Social Savior. Jesus’ mission, though, was healing the spiritual ills (Who Is Jesus?).
- Jesus wants to call us brothers and sister. We mean that much to Him (Who Is Jesus?).
- God gave Jesus power as King. He gave Him rule over all things (Ps. 8: 6; I Cor. 15: 27; Eph. 1: 22) (Who Is Jesus as God?).
Relationship versus Religion
- Jesus was more about relationship than religion (What Does It Mean to Walk in the Spirit?).
- Being a good person does not make us closer to God — unless we have made the decision to accept Jesus as our Savior and God as our Sovereign God. It isn’t about obedience. It is about a relationship (What Is Self-Discipline?).
- The worldview notion is that we have to fight for our success. God’s notion is that purity comes from the heart. It is more who we are — our character — than what we do. It is where Jesus and the Holy Spirit live within us (How Are Disciples Pure in Heart?).
- We can boldly approach God because Jesus paid the price for our sins. We can only approach Him through Jesus (How Does Boldness Help Consistency?).
- Sometimes, I think we believe there was this huge tug of war going on within Jesus — His physical nature against His divine nature. Well, there was. That is happening in us, too. It is so easy for us to say, “Oh, but Jesus didn’t sin because He could withstand because He was divine.” Didn’t work that way. If Jesus was supposed to be us, He couldn’t have His divineness on which to “fall back.” He had to be us so we could see us could do it (Why Jesus Became a Man).
- If Jesus came so that we could see God, He came to show us how God wanted us to live. He came to be an example. We are supposed to imitate Jesus (Why Jesus Became a Man).
- Jesus comes to us individually (Who Is Jesus?).
- The law pointed to Jesus, showing us our need for a Savior because we can’t do all the do’s and not do all the don’ts (Who Is Jesus?).
- Yes, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, is going to be concerned enough with us individually to ask God for what we need (Who Is Jesus?).
- Right now, Jesus is at the right hand of God interceding for us (Who Is Jesus?).
- Remember, Jesus called the crowd out for coming to hear Him just because they wanted to be fed (Jn. 6: 22-59) (Who Is Jesus?).
- Jesus was Master and Teacher to the disciples. He was also Friend to them (Who Is Jesus as God?).
- everything was placed under Jesus’ authority for the benefit of the church (Who Is Jesus as God?).
- It is still mind boggling at times that Jesus knew He was coming to die this horrific death — and He came and died anyway. We meant that much to Him (Jesus, the Good Shepherd).
Father God. Thank You that Jesus loved us enough to be the Sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sins. We would never be able to save ourselves; so, without Jesus as the sacrifice, we would have still been lost. Help us to imitate Him because He imitates You. Amen.
What do you think?
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