Day 1
Topic :The call to new life
Title: A brand new start - Forgiven
Truth Verse: 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:
The old has gone, the new is here!
Truth Story: Today’s laundry market abounds with manufacturer’s claims, how their particular brand of powders, liquids, gels and tablets can clean clothes and eradicate stains. When mixed with water, even at low temperatures, they can even remove the most stubborn ground in dirt and grime – it vanishes in a flash! Not solong ago this was known in adverts as a ‘blue whitener.’
Truth Unpacked: Over the next month we intend to explore how through ‘the washing of the water of God’s word,’ we can live lives that are alive and pleasing to God. My prayer is that you will have a fresh awakening to the power of God’s Spirit, encountering Jesus and the abundant life He gives. Although ‘I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me’ the good news is that we don’t have to stay in that sin-filled condition. Christ’s ‘became sin for us’ securing for us ‘peace through his blood, shed on the cross’. What I like to call our ‘red-whitener!’
When we receive the grace of God by faith we encounter a divine exchange. Old-life garments are replaced with God’s new-life garments of the heart. What an incomparable trade-off! Isaiah speaks of these; firstly, the garment of salvation - meaning “rescued”- rescued from the old nature! Yes, thanks to the blood of Jesus we are covered and cleansed from all sin. This is understood best in the story of the whipping boy. A whipping boy, in the 17th and 18th centuries, was a young boy who was assigned to a young prince. He was punished when the prince misbehaved or fell behind in his schooling. These ‘substitutes’ were created because the idea of the divine right of kings, which stated that kings were appointed by God, and implied that no one but the king was worthy of punishing the king’s son. So it is with the King of Kings, Jesus - He became sin for us, who knew no sin that we might be the righteousness of God in Him.
Secondly, the garment of righteousness. Thanks to the mercy and loving-kindness of God, not only is our old past and sinful nature forgiven, but ‘our robes are made white in the blood of the Lamb (Jesus)’. Just as if we have never sinned. Wow ...what a friend we have in Jesus...our ‘red-whitener’
Pray: Think about the great price Jesus has paid to forgive us, in order that we may have eternal life. Ponder the torture he suffered on the cross for us and express in words your personal thanks.
