Tagged: Daily Reflection

“Look here! For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree and found none. Cut it down.” –Luke 13:7 Jesus clearly warns that we will suffer tragic ends unless we bear the fruit of holiness (see Gal 5:22) and evangelization (see Lk 13:3, 5, 7). Nevertheless, we cannot bear fruit by our own power. All we need is to live in Jesus as branches that are part of a vine and He will live in us (Jn 15:5). We can do nothing apart from Jesus (Jn 15:5), but in Jesus we will bear abundant...

“Who can free me?” –Romans 7:24 All human beings are conceived and born as prisoners of war. We are created prisoners “of the law of sin” in our members (Rm 7:23). “This means that even though” we “want to do what is right, a law that leads to wrongdoing is always ready at hand” (Rm 7:21). It is wretched to have a war going on inside us, to be prisoners in that war, to not have the power to do the good we desire to do (Rm 7:18), and to repeatedly hurt the very people we want to love. When...

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” –Romans 6:23 A man interviewed for two jobs, was offered both, and now had to make his choice. Both companies offered warm working conditions (Lk 12:49; Mt 5:22). The first company is called Sin, Inc. (Rm 6:12-13, 20). Job responsibilities for the first few years feature variable hours, with lots of “working” from home. Pay for the early part of his career is in the form of a great deal of pleasure. Pay in future years is back-ended lump-sum payments of...

“Thanks be to God, though once you were slaves of sin, you sincerely obeyed that rule of teaching which was imparted to you; freed from your sin, you became slaves of justice.” –Romans 6:17-18 The Lord reveals that every human being is by nature a slave. We may think we’re doing our own thing, but we’re really doing someone else’s. We don’t have a choice about being slaves, but we can choose whose slaves we will be. We can choose “the slavery of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to justice” (Rm 6:16). If we refuse...

“Ears open to obedience…” –Psalm 40:7 Sin is rebellion against an all-holy God. Because God is so great, sin is very evil – so evil that it penetrated and warped human nature. “Through one man sin entered the world and with sin death” (Rm 5:12). The effects of sin were so catastrophic that God became a human being, died on the cross, and gave us the opportunity to be born again into a new nature (see Jn 3:3). As powerful as sin is, Jesus’ obedience is much more powerful. “Just as through one man’s disobedience all became sinners, so through...