FRIDAY - Devotional

READ: Ezekiel 36:25

(Answer the question/s below in your app notes)

• What things do you need “clean water” sprinkled on?

If I told you to make a list of all of your sins this week, could you do it? (Don’t.) How many could you list? How would it make you feel to reflect on all the times you’ve messed up this week?

People sometimes approach faith in very different ways: works-based and grace-based. Works-based says, in some iteration, “If you do enough, God will save you from your sins.” “Doing” could refer to going to church, studying the Bible, or praying to God. Grace-based theology, on the other hand, means that no matter what we do, grace will always be the only path to salvation. It is God’s grace that saves us—and only God’s grace.

Let’s return to our initial thought experiment. Let’s pretend you thought of all your sins. You listed them out and felt really awful about yourself. Said mean things to my sister. Didn’t stick up for the weird kid at school. Cheated on my math test. Works-based theology would say that you need to do something to make up the difference for all of that.

Grace-based theology declares that God has done all the work for us and has enough grace to cover even the longest list of sins. So, instead of a list of confessions that read I did this, I did that, grace says, instead: God saved me from this, and God saved me from that! God took care of this mistake, and God’s grace is big enough to forgive every sin we bring to him.

Ezekiel confirms this: “I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.” Remember that God has done the work already. We are invited to accept and respond to his grace.