Choices Cause Consequences

Daily Reading: Galatians 5-6

Scripture Focus: Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. (Galatians 5.13)

Devotional Thought: When Paul wrote, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5.1), he knew the danger that this truth presented: “Hey!  If I’m free, then I can do anything I want!”  Paul’s response to that?  “Wrong!”

Instead of using our freedom to indulge ourselves, we should be like Christ who used his freedom to serve others.  Christ didn’t do just anything he wanted.  He did the will of the Father.  Christ did not gratify sinful and selfish desires.  He took on the nature of a servant.  Are we to think that somehow we are exempted from obedience?  Has Jesus called us to freedom so that we might be enslaved by the sinful nature?

No!  Through the Spirit we have died both to Law and to Lawlessness.  When living by the Spirit, we will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature, for “they are in conflict with each other.”

We choose the kind of life we live:

·       A life led by the Spirit produces the fruit of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5.22-23).

·       A life led to please the sinful nature produces “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Galatians 5.19-21).

While we are free to choose the life we want, we are not free to choose the consequences; they come with our choices.  If we seek to gratify the sinful nature – if that is our goal – then we “will not inherit the Kingdom of God” (Galatians 5.21).

Prayer: My desire is to be like you, Lord Jesus.  So, I choose to be filled with and led by your Spirit.  May the fruit of my life be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Amen.

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 99.1-9

1 The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!

2 The LORD is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples.

3 Let them praise your great and awesome name! Holy is he!

4 The King in his might loves justice. You have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.

5 Exalt the LORD our God; worship at his footstool! Holy is he!

6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called upon his name. They called to the LORD, and he answered them.

7 In the pillar of the cloud he spoke to them; they kept his testimonies and the statute that he gave them.

8 O LORD our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.

9 Exalt the LORD our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the LORD our God is holy!