Today's Favorite Verse: Romans 9:6
"Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:"
This made me reflect on how just because you are born into a righteous family or into the church it does not mean you are righteous. We don't inherit blessings unless we earn them. Salvation is an individual matter, all are tried and tested and must learn faith in Christ.
Today's Favorite Verse: Romans 8:35, 38-39
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
I pondered on being fully converted to Jesus Christ. This would be the only way, relying on Him, that you could endure all these things and not be separated from him. We can separate ourselves from God by sin. His love for us is always there, but we may have hid it. Enduring to the end is my favorite part of the gospel. It is how we come to know Jesus Christ.
"But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear."
(Isaiah 59:2)
Today's Favorite Verse: Romans 7:2, 4
"For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.
Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God."
Paul is speaking on the law of Moses being fulfilled in Christ. The Mosaic law was a dead law and now they must marry themselves to Jesus Christ, his church and law. It does make me wonder what new laws we will live during the millennium?
“[In Romans 7:1–4, Paul] compares Israel’s allegiance to the law of Moses with that of a wife to her husband. As long as her husband lives, a wife is bound to him, must obey his laws, and if she be with another, she is an adulteress. But when the husband dies, he can no longer direct her actions, and she is free to marry another; she can no longer be subject to him that is dead.
“So with Israel and the law. As long as the law lived, and was therefore in force, Israel was married to it and required to obey its provisions. … But now the law is fulfilled; it no longer lives; it has become dead in Christ; and Israel is married to another, even to Christ, whose gospel law must now be obeyed” (Bruce R. McConkie, "Doctrinal New Testament Commentary", 2:253–54).
(New Testament Student Manual, "Chapter 36: Romans 4-8")
Today's Favorite Verse: Romans 6:4-5
"Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:"
Reading these verses I wondered how any other baptism than through immersion could be accepted? We are buried under the water in likeness of Jesus' death. Then raise from the water in the likeness of his resurrection. Baptism is a rebirth, we are born again and become alive in Christ, taking upon us His name and follow Him.
