Daily Devotional

I recently had the privilege of attending my dad’s commencement from Re:Gen, which is a Christ-centered discipleship and recovery program designed to help individuals find healing from any kind of life struggle, addiction, or brokenness. And while I’m immensely proud of my dad for having the courage to confront his struggles, and be open about them, it serves as a good reminder that as Christians, we are all broken in some way. Now that’s not a reason to celebrate, but it should cause us to want to help and encourage one another in our brokenness rather than to view it as some great scandal.

Once saved we are not automatically free from our sin nature, in fact we will continue to struggle with our flesh until we are given our new glorified bodies in the resurrection. So this side of Heaven while we may sometimes be referred to as the “saints” we definitely are not saints in the sinless sense. We need to remember that the Church is not a club for perfect people, far from it, it is rather a hospital for sinners. For better or for worse that sin is often very well hidden from anyone but ourselves. To continue with the hospital analogy, some of us have very obvious wounds, sins that everyone can see, but we all have some stage of cancer, which is often far deadlier. The visible sin, while shocking and attention grabbing is often the easiest to treat, it’s known, others know how to come alongside to help address it, and to pray for it. But the cancer that goes unseen, goes untreated, undealt with, and grows unchecked.

It’s very easy to think of sins in levels, like we do with crime. A little lie for instance is nothing compared to sexual immorality or even adultery. This is how we view our criminal system, petty left isn’t seen as a big issue compared to armed robbery or murder. But with God all sin is equally separating from His holiness. God doesn’t see sin in levels, He sees it as sin, pure and simple. You may look really good on the outside, especially compared to someone who’s sin is very obvious, but God knows your heart, your innermost thoughts, and whatever you are struggling with, and you have something, makes you just as wretched a sinner as the one who you see.

That’s why the Gospel is so important, it is the only remedy, it’s nothing we can do, only what Jesus did for us on the cross. His righteousness is credited to us if we only accept His gift of salvation and believe and confess that He is Lord. We can’t clean up our own life, but with Jesus’ help we can strive to be more like Him, and when we fail in our own strength, His free gift of salvation carries us home. Further in James 5:16 it says “Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” So pray for each other that when we stumble, fall, and fail, that we would be lifted up and return to Jesus, the only source of our salvation. 

New King James Version (NKJV)
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.