Daily Bible Verses for 5/5/2017
Daily Verse(s)
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Reading Notes
This is one of the most important passages in all of the Bible, if we can understand this we will have a joy filled life of love for God and love for Christ Jesus our Lord. We are saved by grace through faith which is not of any type of works. Dear believer, this is so very important for us to thoroughly understand. This is the difference between Christianity and all other religions, the difference between Christianity and everything else in the world. God saved us by His grace, which means by His great love He gave us something we did not deserve to have. And the grace of God works through our faith in Jesus Christ with no consideration given by God for our good deeds. Secular atheist and every other religion will tell you it’s all about you. Why is that? Because that is Satan’s message spread into the world, and delivered back through the world and every other religion. That somehow your salvation and good standing before God is up to you and the things you do or don’t do. They will give you their list of deeds whereby they say you will earn heaven or happiness. A list of things to say and do, whereby you can make God accept you into Heaven. Why?
Because it appeals to our pride, it appeals to our ego, we feel it gives us just cause to be prideful and place ourselves above others. It feeds our pride to be able to point to something we did and boast about our own righteousness and religiosity. However, while that feeds our sin nature, it doesn’t get us any closer to Heaven, nor closer to God. Moreover, it’s not what God said in His word. He said we are saved by grace, which is free, by faith in Jesus, which means we believe God, and we believe in Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior. There is nothing more we can add to that great gift. So what good are the works you say you do? Works are dead, we instead care for others out of love. When you love someone dearly you do good things for them, not because you have to, but because you love them. Because we love Jesus so deeply we do things for Him, which means we help those in need, not because we have to, not because we expect anything from it. We do so because of our deep love for Christ who helped us when we were His enemies. And because of the supernatural love, given to us as one of the many gifts of our salvation. A love which defies worldly understanding. Therefore, because of the joy and love we have as children of God, we help others sharing the love Jesus showed us. A love so great that He died for us when we hated Him, that through Him we may live forever with Him in Heaven.