Daily Devotional

"I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." John 15:5 (ESV)

Growing up, I had a big dream of being someone who could get up on stage to tell people about the defeated sin in my life and how, in my own power, I could save myself. I thought the Christian life was one where, after accepting the gospel, I could then save myself through my own goodness rather than God’s. To me, a moralist more than a Christian, read this verse and thought, if I could just bear enough fruit in my life, that is actually when I will bear more fruit. I thought abiding had to do more with doing good Christian deeds rather than remaining in the hope of the gospel that Jesus died for my sins and resurrected from the grave three days later. When I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I quickly learned how wrong I had been about this verse.

See, I had thought that if I just mustered up enough Christian teaching in my life, then I could be seen as saved rather than trusting in Jesus as my Lord and Savior. This verse has helped me see, in many ways, that the reason I still struggle with certain sins in my life is not that I have not tried to break cycles of sin, but that I am trying to rely on myself to overcome them. I had been abiding in myself rather than in the truth of the gospel that Jesus saved me from my sin, and I could defeat the sin in my life not through my own effort but by remaining in and trusting in Jesus to overcome it. It is only in abiding in Jesus that I have been able to defeat sin in my life.

In abiding in the truths of the gospel is how we change and move past the sin in our lives. The Christian life will be full of us fighting sin, as Galatians 5:16-17 says, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (ESV). The hope of the gospel is that we have been saved from our sin to follow in the direction of following God. Sin, though, is not just the bad behavior we do, but also the motives behind our good behavior. I had been self-righteous before, actually accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior. There is a part of me now that, while writing this, wants to say I made it as a Christian, but I know how, without Jesus, all of this is done in vain, and no life change comes from vanity. Oh, how we need Jesus to make us His and change us by the Holy Spirit.

Daily Prayer: God, only you can save me. Amen.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.