Hi Brian!

This week I want to share this devotion from Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost For His Highest".

The Bias Of Degeneration

Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. — Romans 5:12

The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin; but that the disposition of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Hebrews 9:26) — an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization — I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. When Our Lord faced men with all the forces of evil in them, and men who were clean living and moral and up right, He did not pay any attention to the moral degradation of the one or to the moral attainment of the other; He looked at something we do not see, viz., the disposition.

Sin is a thing I am born with and I cannot touch it; God touches sin in Redemption. In the Cross of Jesus Christ God redeemed the whole human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a man responsible for having the heredity of sin. The condemnation is not that I am born with a heredity of sin, but if when I realize Jesus Christ came to deliver me from it, I refuse to let Him do so, from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “And this is the judgment” (the critical moment) “that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light.”

I love reading and meditating on these because he spoke from a different time period, so it means taking extra time to get what he is actually saying. So many people that I have spoken to over the years have the mind set that God is taking account of our evil deeds and that these are why some people will end up in hell. That is NOT the case at all. It isn't the evil deeds and wrong doing that sentence people to hell, but the refusal to realize that we are (all) sinners by virtue of the first sin, and we NEED a Savior! Nothing less than perfection is acceptable for the Heaven of the Bible! The ONLY WAY to attain to that perfection is to identify with the ONE Who BECAME sin with OUR sin, taking upon Himself the price to be paid for sin. Because He DID this when He was completely innocent, His innocence is applied to OUR account, IF we receive HIM. That's why the Gospel message is such GOOD NEWS! We do NOT have to 'confess all of our sins' in order to receive JESUS, but we DO need to confess (acknowledge) that we ARE sinners. People have really complicated the message when it is really SO simple! I am, by being human, a sinner, and I NEED a Savior! His Name is JESUS and all I have to do is BELIEVE that He IS Who HE says He is, and RECEIVE all that He has done for ME! Everything good about me now comes from HIM! HE gets all of the credit and I get HEAVEN in the future, and all of it's resources now! What a blessed life we have here while we are waiting to be there! Here is one of my favorite songs from Hillsong Kids called "My Best Friend":

Love and Shalom from the Swoveys!