Jesus does it all!

Today’s reading has me back in Psalm 106:5, but this verse needs to be considered in context. The psalmist is asking God to think of him so that he might experience the pluses of being one of God’s people.

Psalm 106:4-5 says, “Remember me, O Lord, with the favor You have toward Your people. Oh, visit me with Your salvation, that I may see the benefit of Your chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the gladness of Your nation, that I may glory with Your inheritance.”

An inheritance is money, property or a title left to someone at the death of the original owner. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 is about redemption, but these verses also add identification to this inheritance of God mentioned by the psalmist. It says, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price. . . .”

I’m trying to wrap my mind around the ideas in these two verses. This is the best I can do: I used to belong to the enemy of God, even though I thought I was my own person. Jesus died on the cross to purchase me, to pay the price for my redemption. By His blood, my life belongs to Him. An inheritance requires a death, so when He died, I was presented to God as His inheritance.

That means Psalm 106:5 actually means that when God visits me with salvation, then I am able to glory in God with the people of His inheritance. All those bought with the same price, the blood of Christ, can glory together in what God has done.

We don’t glory in ourselves though. Jeremiah 9:23-24 says, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me.”

Paul wrote that salvation is by grace through faith, “the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Galatians 6:14 says, “God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Our glory is in the one who has bought us to be His own. He alone is worthy “to receive glory and honor and power” (Revelation 4:11).

The devotional reading reminds me that no one can truly glory in the Lord until they are brought to the end of self-glory. I need to see myself always as God sees me, not with an inflated, ego-stroking view, but with His eyes. Even though I am created in His image, that image was marred by sin and I have in me “no good thing” that merits His favor or grace. With Isaiah I say, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5).

Yet Isaiah also said, “For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” It is in seeing Jesus, in experiencing that visit from God spoken of by the psalmist, that I know who I am. I see myself in light of the Holy, Almighty God that I serve. This undoes me, yet He lifts me up and enables me to glorify Him by first bringing me to the reality of my own need and lowly state so that I am in a position to be honored by His saving power. By that, and along with God’s inheritance, I am able to glory in the One who does it all.