Reasons for a Glad Thanksgiving

Martin Luther said that we have everything we need — except the ability to believe it! In today’s devotional, Chambers says almost the same thing — our great need is not to do things, but to believe things. He uses this passage and I underlined what I believe regarding what God has done for me.

“Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.” (Romans 6:13–22)

Redemption is done. I have it. This is all the sovereign work of God. He has made a perfect Atonement. Redemption is the great act of God which He has performed through Christ. I’m not to build or base my faith upon my experience or fix my eyes on my own purity (or lack thereof). I’m to focus and build on the reality of what God has already done. I’m to remember and think about this reality, and let it work out in practical ways in my life.

As Chambers says, “Every time I obey, absolute Deity is on my side, so that the grace of God and natural obedience coincide. Obedience means that I have banked everything on the Atonement, and my obedience is met immediately by the delight of the supernatural grace of God.”

True piety, true spirituality means knowing what God has done and living accordingly. This is the greatest freedom and the greatest joy there is — and it happens because of what Jesus accomplished to set me free from the vicious law of sin and death. Praise His Name! This is a very joyous Thanksgiving.