The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
(For Char, now Home. Thanks for the cherry preserves, the referrals and subscribers, and most of all, your shared joy in the truth of this essay)
“To Live Is Christ”
“O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:1-3).
“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:6-7).
We must proceed in Christ as we began in Christ. Our Savior no less serves as our hope for a life lived in faith and faithfulness than He did in the moment of grace whereby we came to know God through Him. In response to the Holy Spirit’s working in our hearts, we approached the aptly named “throne of grace” to seek its “mercy” and “help in time of need” in the awareness that the Lord Jesus served as our only hope for forgiveness and newness of life (Hebrews 4:16). Had we come in any other manner, the way - the throne of grace - would have been completely barred to our access. Because we came in the singular means God provides, we now and forever “have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2).
Our spiritual enemies well know this, perhaps better in some ways than do we ourselves. Like the Galatians, they seek to “bewitch” us with distraction from “Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). We can easily succumb if we “neglect so great salvation” by forgetting or disbelieving the Savior, God’s sole means of beginning and continuing our life with Him (Hebrews 2:3). Indeed, legalism is not merely a human construct. It is rather a devilish deception, foisted upon the unwitting believer by spiritual influences seeking to thwart and minimize the blessed and singular grace whereby we “serve ‘God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear.” “To live is Christ” (Hebrews 12:28; Philippians 1:21).
You are the Life of our lives, dear Lord,
the joy of our spirit,
a Voice speaks by Your Word.
We more and more hear it.
To live is Christ, it says, nothing else is,
we kneel to draw near it
to hear and respond, in the truth of Your light,
the grace of Your Spirit…
You are the Life, the Life of our lives.
We will face nothing today without the involved and active Spirit of the Lord Jesus moving upon the living waters His presence imparts to our hearts (Galatians 4:6). Bewitching influences know this. They will seek to distract and deceive us from the only hope we had in the new birth through the Lord Jesus, and the only hope we have for a subsequent life that proceeds from the same glorious fount of grace. Yes, Christ only, Christ always, Christ forever. And, in this day and moment...
“Christ… is our life.”
(Colossians 3:4)
Weekly Memory Verse
For the Lord is good, and His truth endureth to all generations.
(Psalm 100:5
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