TUESDAY November 28th
Romans 1:16
‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.’
Why is the gospel so important and why was Paul determined to unashamedly proclaim or preach it? Well, we answer first by saying what Paul has said in this text, because it is the power of God for salvation, but we add to this, that it is the only way for salvation. There is no other gospel and there is no other way by which a man and woman can be saved from sin and saved for eternity.
In the UK we live in what has become a multi-cultural and a multi-faith society, but what is important is that we do not allow those around us to come to the conclusion that we live in a society where we can pick and mix what we want to believe either from one faith or a mixture of faiths and then think that we are okay for whatever there is in the afterlife.
Paul says that the gospel that he is not ashamed of is for both the Jew and the Gentile, that is it is for all of mankind, we saw previously that he wrote that there is no other gospel, (Galatians 1) and from Acts 4, I quote again that salvation is not found in nor through any other name except through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I remember many years ago hearing the thought for the day on radio 4 and the person speaking said that the various religions or faiths are like blind-folded individuals trying to describe what an elephant is like according to where they are touching it, but at the end of the day despite all the descriptions they came up with, they were all describing the one and the same elephant but in different ways. She then went on to say that the different faiths or religions are the same, it is different ways of describing the one God and therefore all lead to a discovery of God.
We cannot accept this, all the various religions and faiths are not describing the same God, and do not lead to eternal life. For there is only the One true and living God who has made himself known to mankind through the Lord Jesus Christ. He hasn’t revealed himself through anyone else, be it the multiple number of gods in some of the other religions, nor through the false prophets of other religions. Hebrews 1 tells us that in these last days God has revealed himself or spoken to us through his Son who it continues to say that after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.
Jesus himself said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’ It is only through Jesus that we can be saved, then Jesus continued ‘No one comes to the Father except through me’. There is only one access into heaven and it not through the gods of the other religions nor the prophets of other religions it is only through the message of the Cross, though Jesus the founder and the perfecter of the Christian faith.
Last night (a week or two ago by the time you read this devotion) I went to a Christian Institute event in Newcastle and we sang the hymn, ‘Great God of wonders! All thy ways display the attributes divine’, and the final lines in each verse say this ‘Who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich and free?’
There is no other pardoning god, only the true and living God and this pardon comes to us only when we come to believe and accept his Son Jesus as our Saviour and Lord, for he alone has made purification for sin at the place called Calvary.
Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in his grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?