#DailyDevotion The Divine Work Of Jesus Alone Saves Eternally
1 Cor. 130He gave you your life in Christ Jesus, Whom God made our wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and ransom from sin, 31so that it may be as the Bible says: “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
Here is one of the most beautiful divine monergistic statements in the Bible. “Divine monergistic” you ask? Ah, well that’s fancy smancy for whatever is required for you to be saved and persevere in the faith God in Christ Jesus must do it. It means divine one work(er). He is God. Christ Jesus is God. God gave you your life, not speaking here of your animal life, i.e. your creation, breathing and the like, but your eternal life in Christ Jesus. Eternal life is to be found only in Christ Jesus. Eternal life is only given through faith (which is created by God, by the Holy Spirit, through the good news of Jesus) in Christ Jesus. (John 6, Eph. 2 and Rom. 10.) Eternal life is not given and cannot be merited, earned or by anything else you may do. It is simply a gift, a free gift of God the Father. Thanks be to God.
Christ Jesus has been made our wisdom. It is only through Jesus Christ that we can rightly understand God the Father and his ways and his thoughts (which are higher than ours). In God’s wisdom he takes his only begotten son and sends him to become one of us. In his flesh, by his obedience, by his suffering and death, by his burial and resurrection, by his ascension to the right hand of God, we are reconciled to God the Father. By these things he takes sinners, the ungodly, the weak and his enemies and makes them his friends and children: people who deserve only his eternal wrath and punishment.
Jesus is made our righteousness. “This is the name that He will be called: The-LORD-Our-Righteousness.” (Jer. 23:6) Jesus believe the Father and trusted in him. The Father credits faith as righteousness. Jesus also actively obeyed the Father according to the spirit and letter of the Law of Moses. He earned righteousness. According to his divine nature he also is righteous. God the Father made Jesus righteousness. When we believe the work God did in and through Jesus on our behalf, he credits that faith as righteousness, the righteousness of Jesus, the righteousness of God.
Jesus is our holiness. We cannot stand before God in our unrighteous and unholy state. The Father set apart his son, Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world to the sacrifice for sin. To be set apart for God is to be holy. In baptism into Jesus, God joins us to Jesus. We are made holy, set apart for God’s use in that act by the Father. Jesus’ holiness becomes our own holiness. We are clothed in Jesus and his holiness being joined to his body in baptism.
Jesus is our ransom. The blood shed by Jesus on the cross is our ransom price. His life offered up for ours is the ransom from sin and death: a sin and death that is rightly ours. If Jesus did not provide his life blood as a ransom for us, death and the grave which are cast into the Lake of Fire would be our lot. The Father by his gracious hand gave us Jesus instead.
So the only boast is in Jesus Christ, the divine worker of our salvation.
O loving God and Father, you made Jesus our salvation. Grant us faith to boast only his work for our salvation. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.