January 7 I Tuesday

Genesis 18-19

Matthew 6:1-18

“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.”  —Colossians 2:13

Some of us are like the “walking dead”—we are living but not fully alive. From the opening verse of this devotion, “dead in your sins” refers to our state of being and status before God when living outside of a relationship with Him.

Paul says, “For as in Adam all die…” (1 Corinthians 15:22). We are all born into a state of spiritual death, inherited from Adam. In Romans 6:23, Paul tells us, “For the wages of sin is death...” This is present tense; not the wages “will be death,” but it “is death.” In the Garden of Eden, God told Adam and Eve they could eat from any tree except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because the day they eat from it, they would surely die. They did eat from it, but God did not find two corpses under the tree the next morning. He found a man and a woman, suddenly aware of their nakedness, hiding behind fig leaves. Their innocence was gone; sin entered their lives and God withdrew His Spirit from them. The death that Adam and Eve experienced was a spiritual death, and this is the condition we are all born into—spiritual death, which is separation from God.

We have one of two options. Firstly, we can remain dead in our sin and continue into eternal separation from God. Or secondly, we can come alive by the reception of the life of God placed within us by the Holy Spirit. This is a gift of God to every person who recognizes their need for a saviour and that saviour is Jesus Christ. The life of Christ is our only means of being at peace with God, and once we are reconciled to God, we receive a life that cannot die.

If we do not believe we need spiritual life, we are left with human resources and wisdom, which are limited, fallible and uncertain. We all face times of crisis and times that put us flat on our backs in which we have no answer, no recourse, no direction and no anchor for our souls. When we are flat on our backs, the only place we look is up, and if we do not believe there is a God, much less one who loves us, we risk nothing by asking God to reveal Himself. Asking Him to lead us into Truth, and in His timing, He will.

We all need saving and we all need an anchor in this incredibly uncertain world. God has given us an astounding opportunity to come alive in Christ, replacing what we are with who He is.

Prayer: Dear God, thank You for giving me the opportunity to be redeemed and reconciled to You through Your precious Son, Jesus Christ. Praise You!