Tag: Saints

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Ephesians Devotionals

Because we are…

Child of God

Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children… (Ephesians 5:1)

Father, those words just totally jumped off the page.

We desire to be like you, not because of fear.

Not because we feel we have to somehow earn your approval or your love.

But as people already rooted and grounded in your love.

We are already your beloved children. (1)

We are already saints. (3)

We are already light in you. (8)

We don’t have to strive to become these things.

We already are.

And as such, we joyfully seek to bring a smile to your face each day.

Help us to always remember who we are in you.

We love you because you first loved us.

Categories
Acts Devotionals

What God has made clean

“What God has made clean, do not call impure.” (Acts 10:15)

Peter said to them, “You know it’s forbidden for a Jewish man to associate with or visit a foreigner, but God has shown me that I must not call any person impure or unclean. (28)

When God called Israel to be his people, he declared certain foods “unclean” for them.

But those laws were not simply for the benefit of their health. Rather, they were a visual, daily reminder that they were to be a different from the nations around them.

They were not to simply eat things because the other nations ate them.

And in the same way, they were not simply to do immoral acts because the surrounding nations did them.

They were God’s people now and they were to follow him.

So it was a total shock to Peter when God told him to eat a bunch of food that God had declared unclean in his law.

When Peter balked, though, God said, “Hey. I’ve made this food clean. Don’t call what I made clean, unclean.”

But once again, God’s point wasn’t about mere food.

God was showing Peter that his promises to make a great nation out of Abraham were no longer limited to the Jews. Rather, the promises were now extended to even the “unclean” Gentiles.

Anyone who puts their faith in Jesus will be accepted by him.

That means us. We were once outsiders to God’s promises, excluded from God’s kingdom, without hope, and no relationship whatsoever to God.

But we have now been brought near to God by the blood Jesus shed on the cross. We have been made clean, with all our sin and guilt washed away. We are saints. We are God’s children. (Ephesians 2:12-18)

But too many Christians don’t see themselves that way.

Perhaps because of their past sins they’re ashamed of. Or guilt for the sins they struggle with now.

Or perhaps because all their lives, they’ve been told by their parents, their teachers, or others, “You’re not good enough.”

Is that you? Do you still see yourself as dirty.

When you hear God calls you a “saint,” do you feel that it must be some kind of joke?

When you look at yourself in the mirror, do you like what you see? Or does the thought, “I’m not good enough” keep reverberating in their head?

God says to you, “What I have made clean, don’t call impure. I have washed away the dirt of your sin, the guilt of your past. I have accepted you. So stop beating yourself up. You are my child now.”

Categories
Genesis

Saints, but sinners

Genesis

When I was in university, I took a world religions class. When we came to Judaism, one of the things taught was the story of Noah.

And towards the end of the story, my professor noted that in another flood story from another culture, after the flood, the hero went to some island and lived in paradise (or something like that).

“But in the Bible,” he said, “it’s quite different. After the flood, Noah got drunk, and then he died.”

Everyone in the class roared.

Following a question from a student, he then amended the story saying, “Well, he didn’t die right after he got drunk, but…”

Needless to say, my professor wasn’t a Christian, but he did bring up a very important point.

When you look at most of the characters in the Bible that are dealt with at length, no matter how godly they are, you also see them in their doubts, in their weaknesses, and yes, in their sin.

Noah was no exception.

Here was a man that God called blameless in his sight, someone who stood out from the crowd. And yet in this story, he’s lying on the floor drunk and naked.

I take some comfort in that. If I never saw flaws in the godly men the Bible talks about, it could get pretty discouraging, considering how often I have doubts, how many weaknesses I have, and how often I fall into sin.

Yet while God doesn’t hide these things about these men, you don’t generally see God dwell on these things.

Whenever God refers to Noah from that point on, he never brings up that failure again. Instead, he only points out his righteousness.

And that’s how God sees us. It says in Psalm 103,

The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:8–12)

In another place, God says,

I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. (Hebrews 8:12)

I titled this post “Saints, but sinners,” but that’s from a purely human point of view.

In God’s eyes, he doesn’t see us as “saints, but sinners,” but only as “saints.”

And when he writes about you in his book, he may make mention of the times you failed or sinned, but that will only be part of the larger story. A story where Jesus redeemed you and washed away all of your sin.

And a story about how because of the blood Jesus shed on the cross, you have become his beloved saint, holy and blameless in his sight, to the praise of his glorious grace. (Ephesians 1:4–14)