Though we begin our lives without God, we choose whether or not we want to follow Him. This daily devotional looks at what happens when we choose not to follow God.
Nuggets
- Our initial nature is sinful because mankind is born without God.
- Without God, we give in to our sinful nature.
- Because all of us possess that sinful nature within us, we will be judged by God if we don’t ABCD.
Devotions in The Goodness of Grace series
This series that we are starting with this devotion looks like it is going to be a good follow-up to our last installment in the Sunday Morning Bible Study series. We just got done discussing being walking in the Spirit so that we can mortify the sins of the flesh.
The only way we can mortify our sins is through the promptings of the Holy Spirit. He comes to dwell in us upon conversion. We only gain salvation through the grace of God.
For this series, we will be looking at Griffith’s sermon entitled Grace, the Only Source of Goodness. He started out looking at our lives without God.
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Let's Put It into Context
Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.
The Body without God
“Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin” (Rom. 7: 25 NLT)
Our initial nature is sinful because mankind is born without God.
Adam and Eve were created in the image of God. They were given one commandment – obey God.
Glossary
They didn’t do that. Their choice to disobey God brought sin into the world. That made mankind a slave to sin.
Being a slave to sin is the polar opposite of the moral life God for which God made us. Beecher described it this way. He wrote, “Here, then, begins the conflict between man’s physical life and his moral life — the strife of gentleness, purity, joy, peace, and faith, against selfishness, pride, and appetites of various kinds.”
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The question is which is going to win the tug of war over us. Is it going to be Satan? Or is it going to be God?
The answer, hopefully, will be God. For Him to win, we need to return to how we were created.
The way is belief that Jesus is the only way to salvation. Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
Glossary
Since it is a tug of war, whoever is stronger will win. That means we need to grow in our relationship with God to strengthen it.
That is the only way we have a chance to mortify our sin. Mortify means to place a death penalty on our sins.
Glossary
Many like to think that, once we experience conversion and regeneration, the tug of war will end. It won’t
Salvation doesn’t automatically cut the sin out of us. That is what working through our salvation does.
The churchy word for that is sanctification. Sanctification is the transformation of mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration; gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit; and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
- Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
Glossary
That is hard and painful.
But it is worth it.
Appetites, Passions, and Perversities
“When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division” (Gal. 5: 19-20 NLT)
Without God, we give in to our sinful nature.
Griffiths talked about our animal appetites, selfish passions, and mental perversities. He pulled out three of the sins to use as examples of what he was discussing. He highlighted fornication, hatred, and idolatry.
Fornication was the example used for animal appetites. Worldview people would argue that two people in love shouldn’t be a sin. It is because it goes against God’s command.
- “But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband” (I Cor. 7: 2 ESV).
- “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Heb. 13: 4 ESV).
We must have the greatest commandments as the foundation of our faith. If we are loving God and others, we aren’t hating them.
Glossary
Griffith used hatred to explain selfish passions. There is hatred of God and others.
We may say we love God, but if we don’t follow His commandments, we aren’t really loving Him. Neither are we loving Him when we are following Him but wishing we weren’t.
Our hatred of others can come out in a variety of ways. Beveridge listed some as anger, envy, lack of mercy, cruelty, pride, desire of revenge, suspicion, and defiant of authority.
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Griffiths is more than likely defining hatred as selfish passions because we are putting our wants and needs before God and others. When we are our priority, we do sin against God, and it is easier to sin against others.
An idol is an object of worship in any form that is below God that takes from God the worship that is His due and is needy and dependent on its worshipers. It is easy for some to slip into the practice of idolatry.
It should be easy to worship our Creator. He provides daily for our needs.
However, it isn’t. Satan tries to turn our focus from God back to ourselves. He feeds a line that we don’t need to pledge allegiance to anyone or anything.
He is wrong.
Judgment without God
“All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else” (Eph. 2: 3 NLT)
Because all of us possess that sinful nature within us, we will be judged by God if we don’t ABCD.
Disciples once were non-believers. We gave into the same sinful desires.
The difference now is we have ABCDed. We asked Jesus to be our Savior and Redeemer.
God’s grace changed us. No, He isn’t finished yet changing us. We have a long way to go before we are perfect such as He is.
We are made children of God by His mercy and love. He offers us the Plan of Salvation because He does not want us to be found lacking in the final judgment.
If we refuse God’s gift of salvation, we set ourselves up for God’s wrath. It may look like He is not punishing sinners now, but He is. He will give the ultimate judgment on judgment day.
Making the Connections
God offers the Plan of Salvation to each and every person.
Stafford had an interesting sermon. He talked about serving the law of God. He wrote, “For this end the law is written upon his heart, and, therefore, he serves God with his spirit, or with his renewed mind.”
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Think about it, and let’s connect some dots.
- The law is written within us at the heart-level, so that means it has changed our character.
- Our spirit is our renewed mind.
What is one question with which we sometimes struggle? How do we worship God in spirit and truth. Jesus said, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (Jn. 4: 23-24 ESV).
I read that to say we worship in spirit by progressing on the Sanctification Road.
What is the old saying? The highest form of flattery is imitation. We worship by changing to become more like Him.
How Do We Apply This?
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17).
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3).
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16).
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11).
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2).
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11).
- Don’t attempt to cover up our sin – repent and cut it out.
- Don’t compromise with the worldview.
- Realize we can’t be good without Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer.
- Realize and accept we don’t know it all.
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Father God. Lord, You created us knowing that we would disobey You. Because of that – even before You created us – You designed the Plan of Salvation so that our relationship with You could be restored. Change us so that we become more like You. Amen.
What do you think?
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