Daily Devotional Details

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The obedience that comes from faith. Romans 1:5 (NIV)

God calls His people to a life of obedience.

Think about the big picture of the Bible story: God created Adam and Eve in His image. They reflected His glory and lived under His blessing. By listening to the Word of God, they walked in fellowship with Him and were kept from all evil.

Then Satan entered the garden, and his great objective was to recruit the man and the woman and all their descendants into his rebellion against God, to destroy every expression of the glory of God. Because the man and woman listened to him and disobeyed God, they unleashed a powerful force that the Bible calls “sin,” which got into them and into us.

Sin is disobedience to God. The essence of sin is that we trust, love, and serve ourselves more than God. Because of this, we obscure God’s glory rather than reflect it: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). This is what we need to be redeemed from.

But God knew what He was doing. A redeemed creation would reflect God’s glory more than an innocent one ever could, and God determined before time that He would redeem sinners through the birth, atoning death, and resurrected life of His Son.

At the end of human history, God’s glory will be displayed by a vast multitude of people who have experienced His grace in ways that even angels have not known, and God’s redeemed shall love Him and rejoice in Him forever. No one there will hate or defy God.

That’s where history is headed. This is what God’s purpose will look like when it is complete in the new heavens and the new earth: “When Christ appears, we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). What God will complete then, He begins now.

Are you pursuing this kind of life now?