day no. 13,104: the Christian life can be summarized succinctly as "looking to Christ"‏

Isaiah 45:22

 

Look* to Me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth.
For I am God,
and there is no other.

Salvation begins with looking to God.

We look UP to Him.

We acknowledge that we are below and honor Him as above.

We look to Him.

We look to Him alone.

We recognize Him as our only hope and we look to Him.

 

Hebrews 12:1-2

Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, ² keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne.

Salvation continues by looking to Him.

We fix our eyes on Him.

We don’t look away from Him now that we are running the race.

We seek Him as the source of our salvation daily.

We trust in His perfect provision on our behalf.

We chase after His perfection in orienting our lives around His perfect commands.

We endure.

We press on.

Because we keep our eyes looking toward Him.

 

1 John 3:2

Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been

revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will

see Him as He is.

Salvation ends in seeing Him.

We look at Him face to face.

We look and our eyes transfer from faith to sight.

We end in looking at Him forever.

The whole Christian life is one of looking to Jesus.

We look to Him to save us.

We look to Him to sanctify us.

We look to Him to seal us.

At no point are we ever to look away.

It begins with Him.

It continues with Him.

It ends with Him.

The Christian life is first and foremost about looking to Christ.

 

*(KJV “Look,” HCSB “Turn”)

day no. 13,101: what are people hearing you talk about?

Romans 10:17

So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about Christ.

You can’t control who believes, but you can control what you say. 

If you don’t tell anyone about Jesus, no one will hear.

If no one knows, they won’t believe. 

That’s easy enough math: 0 + 0 = 0

If you open your mouth and tell people what God has done and why He’s done it, some may just believe and be saved.

day no. 13,100: the good confession

Romans 10:9

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

Confessing Jesus as Lord is like confessing to the police a crime you’ve committed. 

You must first lay yourself bare understanding the weight of what you’ve done. 

Confessing that Jesus is Lord is a confession of falling short in some respects. 

It admits that you can’t do it. 

But it isn’t only a confession of your falling short.

It also confesses, proclaims and believes wholeheartedly in the next breath that Jesus CAN DO IT and DID DO IT once for all.

It’s not only confessing your sins, but confessing His righteousness that saves.

In confessing as much you, acknowledge the trade that took place at His death.

You also confess that His resurrection is your hope that your sin will stay forever dead so that you may stay forever alive.

day no. 13,099: generous righteousness

Romans 10:3-4

³ Because they disregarded the righteousness from God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves to God’s righteousness. ⁴ For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

You are not a good person.

The Holy Spirit has been clear about that if you’ve been following along in Romans.

But fear not.

God is good and He’s willing to share.

Submit yourself to God’s righteousness provided by grace through faith in Jesus alone.

day no. 13,098: made perfect and righteous by confessing we are neither

Romans 9:30-32

³⁰ What should we say then? Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained righteousness—namely the righteousness that comes from faith. ³¹ But Israel, pursuing the law for righteousness, has not achieved the righteousness of the law. ³² Why is that? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone.

The law of God is perfect and righteous, but it cannot save and it cannot make you perfect or righteous.

We are made righteous and perfect by faith in the perfectly completed righteous work of Jesus Christ on our behalf.

Righteousness is not obtained by human will or effort, but by grace through faith in Christ alone.

day no. 13,097 continued... labor daybor

Happy Labor Daybor neighbor.

Thanks for reading (even this.)

day no. 13,097: wishing and wanting will not acquit

Romans 7:18

For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it.

We cannnot consistently do the good we want to do. We want to stop swearing, stop being defensive, stop lying, stop being shy, stop overeating, start being more confident, start tithing, start serving, start loving more and we don't. We wish a lot of things about ourselves that remain merely wishes.

Romans 7:24-25

²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this dying body? ²⁵ I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh, to the law of sin.

If it weren't for Jesus, the dilemma of wishing and wanting more for ourselves would be the death of us. We would be witnesses against ourselves in the court of goodness. We would testify that we fall short.

And there would be no solution or situation under which justice could let us go in clean conscience.

But because of Jesus Christ, justice has been fulfilled and we can go free in grace and truth before God and man.