Today's Worship: Repentance.

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him in James 1:21,

 

"Get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you."

 

We all have a choice to make. We can continue to live in sin or we can turn and "humbly accept the word planted in you..." This word planted that James speaks of refers back to verse 18, "the word of truth", the message that can save us, the gospel. God offers us an invitation to his family, a family whose head has a different nature than ours. As such we must take on the characteristics of the family.

 

James is not telling us we have to stop sinning in order to be saved, in order to be born into God's family. That is the mindset the Jews of his day were caught up in and which we still see plenty of today within the church. We cannot work our way into heaven by being good enough. Only One was good enough and Jesus Christ's right-standing with our Heavenly Father is what he shares with us when we embrace him in faith.

 

In order to have any success over the sin in our lives, we need to receive those things from God that are only available to us as members of his family. The indwelling Holy Spirit provides us what we need for battle with that sinful nature we all struggle with. Only when we become a part of God's family do we receive the Holy Spirit and become enabled to succeed over the sin that is so prevalent in our lives.

 

This is why James tells us to turn from "all the moral filth and evil that is so prevalent" and respond to the gospel message. Turning to God, responding to the gospel, "the word of truth" is a turn from sin and evil. Responding to the gospel is the first step in turning from sin. It brings us into the family of God and provides us the tools for a new life with a new nature.

 

Here is how Jesus described the choice we are all confronted with, "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."

 

The choice of continuing in sin is a rejection of the gospel and a manifestation of not having been born into God's family. However, God has provided us a way through his Son, Jesus Christ. He invites us to his family, and if we are willing to turn from our old nature to embrace him and trust him, he opens his loving arms and embraces us as his very own!

 

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share your thoughts of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We'd love to hear from you!

Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com