1 Peter 2:9-10
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
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You and I my fellow saints, believers in the Lord our God, were born—actually conceived—in sin just as David wrote. {Ps.51:5} And we came into this world with no way to fix that problem, a terminal disease. You and I could not go to church enough, give enough money in offerings, sing enough hymns, dress well enough or do any good deed that would open the doors of heaven to us. We were lost and as the Word of God says, no flesh will be justified, made right, by works. Whew! {Rom.3:20}
But the Lord God in His love made a way and did for us what we could never do for ourselves: He gave His own Son, Jesus the Messiah, to pay the price and atone for our sins on the cross. The Father was pleased to crush Jesus {Is.53:10} in order to justify us and bring about the mercy that the apostle Peter wrote about in today's Scripture verse!
Jesus would then say, “From whom much has been given, much is required” {Lk.12:48} We have been given the gift of salvation—as much as could possibly ever be given—“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” {Eph.2:8-9}
While works do not result in our salvation, our salvation should result in our doing works! As Paul continued on to say in his letter to the Ephesians, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” {Eph.2:10} Every true believer has been called to live and walk in the triumph in Christ and to manifest the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. {2Cor.2:14}
“Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.” {Mat.7:21} And now we are responsible to use our time wisely—redeeming the time in these days for the Lord. {Eph.5:16} Our work is to believe in Him proclaiming the excellencies of the Lord who called us out of the world’s darkness and into His marvelous light to a lost and dying world!
Jesus said to His disciples (and us) that the work of God is for us to believe in Him who the Father had sent {Jhn.6:29}—faith! And of course we know that faith without works is dead. {Jas.2:26} Let us leave today hearing the command of the Lord:
“What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops.” (Matthew 10:27)
DO THE WORK AND THE WILL OF GOD |