During Holy Week I shared some short devotionals with our church on some of the truths of what the death & resurrection of Jesus accomplish for those who trust in Him. As they are always relevant I thought I’d share them with you this week. All the prayers are taken from Fount of Heaven.

Monday: Forgiveness for sins
Tuesday: Freedom from sin
Wednesday: Peace with God
Thursday: Living Hope
Friday: No condemnation & one who intercedes
Saturday: Set your minds on Christ
Sunday: We belong to Jesus

The grave is empty. He was not there for He had risen. Jesus is alive. As the church historian Jaroslav Pelikan has said that, “if Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.” Hallelujah!!

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

Romans 7:4–6

I love this truth. As Paul says, faith in the risen Christ is powerful. If “you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). So now I belong to Jesus, I am bought with a precious price, and He will keep me and one day raise me up. Not even death can separate us from the love of God. This is an incredible future hope. So I am forgiven from the penalty of sin, the power of sin and one day the presence of sin!!

But in the meantime because I BELONG TO JESUS, we get to bear fruit for God. We get to live with Him, for Him, to delight in Him and know His delight in us. So set your minds on Christ, risen, glorified, ascended – for He wants His life to flow through you today, to walk in newness of life!

Prayer

When you saw our trouble, you became on of us, to rescue us. You were willing not only to be born with a body, but you became flesh, enduring to be born and to die. You endure funeral rites – you, the author of life and framer of the world! You enter the path of death, in giving the aid of salvation. The gloomy chains of the hellish law yielded, and chaos feared to be pressed by the presence of light. Darkness perishes, put to flight by your brightness. The thick blanket of eternal night falls away! – Amen! 

Venantius

Song