|
|
". . . All my springs are in you" Psalm 87:7
Our Lord never “patches up” our natural virtues, that is, our natural traits,
qualities, or characteristics. He completely remakes a person on the inside— “.
. . put on the new man . . .” (Ephesians 4:24). In other words, see that your
natural human life is putting on all that is in keeping with the new life. The
life God places within us develops its own new virtues, not the virtues of the
seed of Adam, but of Jesus Christ. Once God has begun the process of
sanctification in your life, watch and see how God causes your confidence in
your own natural virtues and power to wither away. He will continue until you
learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus.
Thank God if you are going through this drying-up experience!
The sign that God is at work in us is that He is destroying our confidence in
the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be,
but only a wasted reminder of what God created man to be. We want to cling to
our natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us in contact with
the life of Jesus Christ— a life that can never be described in terms of natural
virtues. It is the saddest thing to see people who are trying to serve God
depending on that which the grace of God never gave them. They are depending
solely on what they have by virtue of heredity. God does not take our natural
virtues and transform them, because our natural virtues could never even come
close to what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no
natural purity can ever come up to His demands. But as we bring every part of
our natural bodily life into harmony with the new life God has placed within us,
He will exhibit in us the virtues that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus.
And every virtue we possess Is His alone.
Yesterday | Daily Devotional Archives | Next
See Also:
Daily Devotional with Oswald Chambers Archives
Weekly Devotionals | Sermons | Essays | Articles | Bible Study | Library - Home | Baselios Church Home
-------
Malankara World
A service of St. Basil's Syriac Orthodox
Church, Ohio
Copyright © 2009-2020 - ICBS Group. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer
Website designed, built, and hosted by
International Cyber Business Services, Inc., Hudson, Ohio
