Orange Moon Monday, September 21, 2026 “Achieve Or Receive” Part 2 - Birth and Life

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

    

“Achieve Or Receive”

 

Part 2 - Birth and Life

    

      

     Living the Christian life requires the same gift of grace in the Lord Jesus Christ that began our Christian life.  We must receive in order to achieve.

     “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him… Let us have grace, that we may serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear” (Colossians 2:6; Hebrews 12:28).

    We entered into relationship with God through the reception of the freest gift ever given, purchased by the highest cost ever remitted.  We experience relationship with Him by the same freely granted favor.  The former speaks of birth, namely spiritual conception and entrance into life, the indwelling life of Christ Himself.  The latter speaks of how we think, believe, speak, act, and relate to God and people through the dynamic and active presence of the Holy Spirit.  Both speak of a perfectly faithful God who fulfills His promise of life in all who believe, whether in our beginning or our continuing.  “Rooted and built up in Him” (Colossians 2:7).

   God does not call His people to make bricks without straw.  Whatever He would have us do this day of thought, belief, word, deed, or relating to Himself or others, “exceeding, great and precious promises” of grace await our determination to avail ourselves of the gift no less freely bestowed than was our new birth.  “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (II Peter 1:4; Romans 8:32).  Indeed, consider that martyr of the Lord Jesus who awaited his execution through a long night in a dark and dank cell.  He would give his life for his Lord when the sun arose.  Before that, he would seek his Lord’s grace, that his death might honor Him, and that God would be the “very present help in trouble” He promises to be (Psalm 46:1).  Our brother found his Savior perfectly faithful amid the flame, at the sword, or by whatever means the world and its devil found to serve as the means for the Lord Jesus to reveal the same grace in His servant’s death He imparted in the moment of His servant's spiritual birth.   Indeed, if we could ask our brother of the faithfulness that resulted in his death for the Lord, he would instantly respond, “Oh yes, He was so very faithful in the hour of my passage from the world!  Never could I have made the sacrifice, save in the light and glory of His sacrifice that made all grace available, possible, and actual in my life, and yes, in my death.  All glory - all glory! - to the name of the Lord Jesus alone.”

   Whatever the mode or measure of the sacrificial life to which our Heavenly Father calls us in this day, He has provided abundantly adequate straw for the bricks.  “His divine power that given unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue” (II Peter 1:3).  We live and die far more from Him than for Him.  Our sacrifices are real.  They hurt and they cost us.  Moreover, our Father regards them with affirmation and compassion, and will one day reward us for them.  However, in that day, we will reverently, respectfully, and gratefully cast any crowns we receive at the nail-pierced feet of the only hope we ever had for salvation and the life that bore “the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:11).  Let us then have grace indeed, in this moment, in this day, and in this heart of ours wherein the Spirit of the Lord Jesus lives to supply His gift for living, as He did for our birthing.

“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.”

(II Corinthians 9:8)

“But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”

(I Corinthians 15:10)

Weekly Memory Verse

    And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.

(II Corinthians 9:8)

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Orange Moon Saturday, September 19, 2026 "Achieve Or Receive?"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

    

“Achieve Or Receive”

    

      

     Nothing is more important for the human heart than to be right - righteous - in God’s sight.  Thankfully, He has made the matter breathtakingly simple in the conceptual sense.  We either attempt to achieve righteousness by our own efforts.  Or we receive righteousness through the efforts and merits of Another.  The former results in utter futility.  The latter provides acceptance with God both now and forevermore.

   “All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).

   “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life” (Romans 5:18). 

    The standard of God perhaps the most definitive reason for both the assurance of grace and the despair of human attempts to make ourselves righteous.

      “As for God, His way is perfect” (II Samuel 22:31).  

    In order to be acceptable with the Lord by our own merits and works - to achieve - we must perfectly fulfill His will from the moment of conception and forevermore.  No son or daughter born of Adam’s race has even the slightest hope of fulfilling such a spiritual and moral standard.  “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God… In Adam all die” (Romans 3:23; I Corinthians 15:22).  Even the slightest deviation from His will must, by definition, eliminate even the most seemingly accomplished among us from the slightest hope from righteous acceptability with God (James 2:10).  Either perfect and acceptable to the One whose “way is perfect.”  Or imperfect and necessarily rejected in order for the Lord to maintain the eternally holy paradigm of His character, nature, and way.  “The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works” (Psalm 145:17).

    Conversely, God perfectly and assuredly receives all who come by way of faith in the freest gift ever given, purchased by the highest cost ever remitted.  Our Heavenly Father imputes the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ to all who freely receive His grace.

    “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us… righteousness” (I Corinthians 1:30).

      “Accepted the Beloved” exulted the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians (Ephesians 1:6).  Our Father sees all who receive His grace in the Lord Jesus through the lens of Christ.  He views us as “in Christ,” and thus enrobed in the righteousness of His beloved Son.  The hymn writer Isaac Watts beautifully depicted the breathtaking splendor of this wonder in his hymn, “Awake My Heart, Arise My Tongue.”

    “And lest the shadow of a spot should on my soul be found, He took the robe the Savior wrought and cast it all around!”

   In relationship and standing with God, the robe has been freely and forever cast all around.  The better we know the nature and extent of the gift, the more we will also “be filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:11).  “The root of the righteous shall not be moved… the root of the righteous yieldeth fruit… rooted and built up in Him” (Proverbs 12:3; 12; Colossians 2:7).  We must see ourselves as God sees us, spiritually united to His Son whom He perfectly receives by a merit and achievement so perfectly satisfactory it can be freely applied to all who receive its eternal benefit.  "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).

    Achieve righteousness?  Impossible.  Receive righteousness?  Possible and actual in all who realize the breathtaking simplicity of a grace that comes to us by way of more sorrow, suffering, forsakenness, and death than we will ever know.  Paul stated the matter in the most stark terms and the most sublime proclamation of a grace whereby we receive righteousness in the only way any human being can ever know it…

“He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”

(II Corinthians 5:21)

“Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name?  And in Thy name have cast out devils?  And in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.”

(Matthew 7:22-23)

“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.”

(Romans 5:8-19)

Weekly Memory Verse

    God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

(Revelation 21:4)

  

    

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