Daily Devotional

We just finished celebrating Easter, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the very foundation of our faith! Praise God that He is risen, He is risen indeed! And in light of that momentous event I thought it fitting to reflect on probably the most well known verse in scripture, John 3:16 and the slightly less well known second part, verse 17. For context, these are the words actually spoken by Jesus himself in a back and forth with Nicodemus who was a Pharisee.

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. God loved the world so much that He was willing to sacrifice His own Son in order to reconcile the world to Himself. What an incredible thought, God made man, and gave him everything he needed in the garden, and then man rebelled against God. That act caused sin to enter the world and due to God’s holiness caused a rift or barrier between God and man. But God was not done, He would institute a covenant with Noah, with Abraham, and bring the law through Moses, and over and over again the people would break their side of the covenant and turn to false gods and idols. But God was not done yet. He would send His judges and when the people asked for a king, an earthly king, He gave them that too, and still the people continued to stray. But God was not done yet.

In the fullness of time, in Bethlehem, God sent His Son, who would fulfill the law, eliminate the separation between us and God, He would be the ultimate sacrifice for our sin and our great high priest. And guess what? We would even reject Him, the crowds would cry “WE HAVE NO KING BUT CAESAR!” And then they would crucify Him. And in that moment He took upon Himself ALL of our sins and died in our place so that we rebellious and ungrateful people could be saved. Then rising from the dead on the third day and conquering death He has now made a way of salvation for all of us. FOR FREE! All we need do is believe that Jesus is Lord, that He died for our sins and rose again! That’s it! Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice because He loved us, despite us not loving Him.

After all we had done, God didn’t send His Son down to condemn us all, although that is very much what we deserved, but rather to save us all, in spite of ourselves. He knew we would never be good enough, so He was enough for us. My friends, Romans 10:9 says “that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” God loves you and is waiting for you to come to Him, acknowledge you are a sinner and ask forgiveness that He will readily grant. If you have not yet trusted in Jesus Christ for your salvation, what are you waiting for? God’s free gift of salvation is offered to everyone no matter what you have done, or why you think you are not worthy. Cause guess what? None of us are worthy, that is the point. That is "grace", a free gift that we do not deserve. Reach out to Him today. He did all this FOR YOU! For God so loved the world.

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