July 11: Romans 8 1-8

Key Verse: Romans 8 3
For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh

Devotion:
I got a bit bored waiting for computers to update and upgrade yesterday and started flipping through the various news channels from around the world; it really is amazing to see how many problems there are all around the world despite so many countries saying they have all the right laws in all the right places! Well, they are only as good as the corrupt people in charge of those laws!

The same can be said of the church and of God’s children too. The laws may be perfect or well meaning, but if they are being upheld by people who are always willing to bend the rules, then those rules look as bad as the people in charge. Now, we may not all have very corrupt governments, but there is corruption in every government I was hearing about on the news, and that covered much of our world! If we have church leaders who fall into the same bracket as those corrupt governors, then we are in for a rough time!

Even though we may well be corrupt and we may well have a long string of things we have done wrong, God is not going to hold them against us if we have asked Jesus to forgive us of those sins. Christ came to make sure we are forgiven and we have a clean slate to be presented to God. He has taken our debt and paid it in full – giving us the chance to start afresh. This is where our task comes in… we do need to do something about this sin we have been living with/in.

Jesus tells us our sins will be forgiven if we ask for them to be forgiven, but He also expects us to do something about it to show our sincerity. By going back and doing the same things wrong we beg for forgiveness for, we are showing we don’t quite mean what we said. But if we are willing to try our best to not go back into that sinful life, then we are going to have a faithful Saviour who continues to be there on our behalf – no matter what happened in the past!

Points to Ponder:
Do you continue doing things wrong after admitting to them?

Will you ask God to guide you away from your past sins?