No Longer Yourself

Hey, welcome to the Saturday edition of Our Daily Bread.

The devotional writer for today is Glenn Pacchium, and the reading is titled No Longer Yourself. In the summer of 1859, Charles Blandin became the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope, something he would go on to do hundreds of times. Once, he did it with his manager Harry Colcord on his back.

Blandin gave Colcord these instructions, Look up, Harry, you are no longer Colcord, you are Blandin. If I sway, sway with me. Do not attempt to do any balancing yourself. If you do, we will both go to our death. Paul, in essence, said to the Galatian believers, You can't walk the line of living a life that is pleasing to God apart from faith in Christ.

But here's the good news, you don't have to. No amount of attempting to earn our way to God will ever cut it. So, are we passive in our salvation? No, our invitation is to cling to Christ. Clinging to Jesus means putting to death an old, independent way of living. It's as if we ourselves have died. Yet, we go on living. But as Paul says in Galatians 2-20, the life we now live in the body, we live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us. Where are we trying to walk the tightrope today? God hasn't called us to walk on the rope to him.

He's called us to cling to him and walk this life with him. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is taken from Galatians 2 verses 14-21. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the Gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. So, we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. But if, in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves also among the sinners, doesn't that mean that Christ promotes sin?

Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker. For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing. Now let's pray. Dear Jesus, thank you for doing what we could never do for ourselves. Help us to turn away right now from trying to please you on our own and to remember that your love is unconditional and your desire is that we would trust you completely with our life and with eternity. It's in your gracious name that we pray. Amen.