A Devotional Study of the Living Word of God

Psalm 119:96 Even when the decree or covenant of man is completed and all known errors are corrected and man has done his best. Even then, the Best is yet to be realized since the Commandment of God by His decree or covenant will; by length and berth, supersede.

Good Morning

By now you must be wondering if I will ever say anything about the the submarine that bounced off the bottom of that Naval vessel near Manama, Bahrain – Do we even know where this place is? Unless you are tied to the Navy in some way, you do not know and maybe you do not even care! But it is none of the above to those affected by this incident. Simply put, human error is the only reasonable conclusion. The decisions of the men on board the submarine fell to the responsibility of one. The Captain of the ship, who no doubt he was relieved of his authority as Captain within twenty four hours. The men involved were not a handful of five, but the whole crew, yet one man became the “scapegoat” for the bunch. For this Captain, his career is over, for the crew, they will be reprimanded, some will receive damaging letters to be placed in their service records and some will be re-assigned to duties of a lesser degree. All but one will be able to re-build a troubled career. The human life is much like this incident, sin has rammed us all into the bottomless pit, we have crashed and trash our world. Yet there is one who stands in the gap, even referred to in the Living Word of God as our “scapegoat”. He is better known to us as the LAMB, the sacrifice, the one for the many. He, however is not like the captain of an ill fated moment in time. He is the Captain of our our eternal salvation as the KJV puts it in Hebrews 2:10. His career did not end at Calvary, HE IS RISEN, HE IS ALIVE and you can follow HIM! For He alone is able to rescue us – one by one from the bottomless pit. Won't you let Him be your Captain?

Romans 2

Romans 2:7-9 What is a good deed, biblically speaking? The world does good for several reasons, for example; the person who is doing good does it so they won't go to jail, another to be a real help to someone and to receive a thank you or compensation. Another, because it is the right thing to do. While all of these reasons can be incorporated into a biblical good deed, the good deed of the saint is “always” taken one step further. Self is removed from the deed and Christ is placed in the work. Thus the deed glorifies God, honors the doer and is placed as a reward in eternity. But those deeds that are self-seeking and fail the test of truth will be considered evil, and the results will not be gratifying.

Romans 2:10-11 We would like to believe that God would show partiality in that our works would stand even though our motives were not totally bringing glory to God. But the works of the flesh and the works of the Spirit are very defined in scripture, Galatians 5:16-26. A good work mixed in with the works of the flesh is SIN, a good work mixed in with the works of the Spirit is BIBLICAL.

Romans 2:12-16 The day is coming when God will judge the secrets of mankind, so how does justification work? There are seasons in time when there were no Laws of God to convict or condemn. Then there was a time when the Laws of God were the stand alone provision for doing and not doing things. So if both the season of no law and the season of law did nothing to justify salvation, then it must be within the conscious of man to decide right from wrong? Yes, but No! There must be a standard, there must be something or someone to look to, or to follow and Romans 2:16 reveals Justification by faith in Christ – alone!