Message from Scripture: 11/12/2021

 

Our message from Scripture today is Jas. 2:26; “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.”

 

In this passage of Scripture, James vividly reveals how the kind of faith that saves, that pleases God, is an obedient faith, a faith that responds in submission to the will of God. The one who hasn’t been cleansed of their sins by the blood of Christ is what one might call a spiritual corpse. Life for him is a living death. Even though he is physically alive, walking and breathing, he is dead while he lives. This is not a figure of speech. It doesn’t mean they look dead, or are in danger of death, or are standing on the precipice of death, or even looking death in the eye, but they are really dead spiritually.

 

This isn’t just true of those who haven’t been immersed into Christ, but those who aren’t willing to live by the gospel, as James’ readers had already obeyed the gospel. It’s what Peter describes in 2 Pet. 2:20. “For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.”

 

Living the Christian life is the best life one can live, the only life promised by God that gives us assurance of eternal life in Jesus Christ. But it must be lived to provide these promises to us. To obey the gospel and do nothing, or return to the way of the world of sin, brings only futility in judgment. Why not choose what is best than allow Satan to deceive us into what leads to condemnation?

 

The Hebrew writer reminds us, “But exhort one another daily, while it is called ‘Today,’ lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13). Today, let’s go out to serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, showing the beauty of life Christ offers today, and eternally. God bless.

 

Robert