Daily Devotional for Thursday, January 9

The Spirit of God Assures of the Promise

And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise," Galatians 3:29.

In high school, I was a member of several clubs and organizations. One day a year, a photographer came to take the club pictures for the yearbook. Teachers could not teach anything on this day because the office was constantly calling over the intercom system for the next group of students to make their way to the gym for pictures. Each of the different organizations had its own T-shirts, and we were supposed to wear that T-shirt in the group photo to look unified. Seeing as I was in almost every club on campus, I came to school on those days with a bag full of shirts, stay in the gym most of the day and just change shirts for each picture. Every time I switched shirts, I was identifying with that club. In the group picture, we were all the same, and you could not differentiate the first-year members from the fourth-year members. Everyone who was wearing the T-shirt appeared in the photo equally.

My illustration above may be a simple one, but so is the grace of God. Paul said in Galatians 3:27 that all who had died to sin and were raised to new life by placing their faith in Jesus had "put on Christ," just as I put on my club shirts. There is no distinction between our backgrounds, cultures, gender or social status as it pertains to the inheritance of Heaven. When God looks at us, we are all sons and daughters because all He sees is His Son Jesus; therefore, we are all heirs of the same promise of Abraham. This does not diminish our individuality when it comes to spiritual gifts and talents as we are all different parts of the body of Christ in our local churches, but it does completely shatter any type of bias we could possibly create.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

There are no levels of holiness for we are all one in Christ.

Ashley Ridings