Friday 8 Feb 2013

Friday Reading: James 2:8-10

Key Verse: James 2:10
10  For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

Devotion:
I always think of the chain theory when I read this verse – our safety in the law being like safety in a chain, if any single link breaks, our safety in that chain is broken totally. But sin in our lives are so much more than just a chain that we depend on. As humans we look at keeping the law as being of various stages in that we can be very strict and keep it exactly to the letter or we can follow it in spirit and bend a few of the laws along the way. God gave us the laws so that we would understand that we are sinners because we do break them; it does not matter by how much or which laws we break. Once we break a law we have broken God’s law and are guilty. If we are guilty then we are guilty and that is it!

We like to think that we can love our neighbours and hence we can stick to the law that Christ gave us when He walked amongst men as a human being; but that is simply not good enough to get us a get-out-of-jail-free card! If we are found guilty then we are destined for the place where sinners are condemned to – hell.

The problem with us is that we tend to look at people and judge them according to how we see them or what we think of them. We make up our minds pretty quickly and whoever is on the wrong side of the fence will get judged accordingly even before we have had a chance to get to the truth. As soon as we judge someone we become guilty of the law and that means we are guilty, as good as being guilty of everything!

Our saving grace is grace indeed! It is only because of the grace of our God that we can be forgiven for our sins without having to pay that ultimate price for our sin. We know that the penalty for sin is death, but we also know that God has given us the gift of life through His Son Jesus Christ. We may find it very easy to break God’s laws, or at least some of them, and we may find it very hard to keep some of those laws. But we know that Christ will forgive all of us who call on His name for forgiveness and that that forgiveness is absolute and permanent. So just because we have no hope when we see how easily we break God’s laws, we also have absolute hope through Christ’s precious gift to us.

Points to Ponder:
Do you seek God’s forgiveness?

Do you know God’s grace is free for us all?