Salvation

The following devotional by Clive Bowsher is for Friends of Union. To learn more about becoming a Friend of Union, visit www.uniontheology.org/friends-of-union

Whether our darkness comes from relational breakdown, grief, loneliness, health challenges, the guilt of sins committed, the shame of sins experienced, global trends or deep personal struggle, we must know that our God is a God of hope.

Dear friends, if you’re struggling and suffering this morning, if you feel you’re running out of options, there is somewhere left to turn. There is a hiding place and a safe refuge with Jesus as He gathers around him all of us who are in need. We’re not meant to be the assembly of the shiny, the sorted and the successful. And we’re not impressing God with our brilliance and our strength. No we are together. The bruised reeds, the smothering wicks huddled together around our King Jesus.

If the Old Testament were teaching a way of salvation based on our own merit, would it be useful reading when I want to grow in Christ—the one whose yoke is easy? If the God I meet in the Old Testament were a different God from the one whom I meet in Christ, could I build others up in Christ by reading the two Testaments together? If the God who saves me through the work of Jesus now “saved” quite differently back then, could I delight in the God I meet in the pages of the Old Covenant?

Friends, it’s not incidental to God that he is a kind and loving Father. That’s not a role he’s stepped into or an act that he tries to pull off while inwardly just being transcendent and disinterested in you.When you pray the Lord’s Prayer and call him “Our Father” or “Abba, Father,” you’re not asking him to pretend for a moment he’s less like God and more like Jesus than he actually is. You’re putting your finger on the very essence of God.

Know that in that day, when Christ takes us to himself fully and finally, one moment in heaven will be worth a thousand lifetimes of trial. All of our regrets, failures, worries, will be assigned to oblivion when we enter into the joyful presence of our supremely kind Saviour and Friend, our Lord and Brother, our King and our God.

All who are members of Christ’s body experience, in him, what happened to that body. Our old identity was slaughtered, speared, buried. He is the third-day first fruit of life and righteousness. All his seed that are in him share his fate. Thus, in him, we are given new life, and we share, are covered, by his righteousness. It all makes for an infinitely more nourishing gospel.

Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall backsliding, lack of joy, or coldness towards the Lord? Shall trials? Shall hardship? What about continued failure to overcome that one sin? Crippling depression, mental illness, or moments of utter weakness? Never.

As you look to him, high and lifted up, it is here your burden falls. And tumbles down the hill, to be gone forever.

Christ clothing you with his very self. You are a dressed, adorned “particularly,” specially, providentially gracious participant of Christ’s sacrifice and self-sanctification. Your bridegroom has come, given you the robes of faith, and dressed you in them.