Morning By Morning #313

As you received Christ Jesus the Lord…

Colossians 2:6 ESV

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

The life of faith is described here as receiving, which implies the exact opposite of things such as merit or works. Faith is simply the acceptance of a gift. Just as the earth drinks in the rain, the sea receives the streams, and night accepts light from the stars, we, without doing or giving anything, freely partake of the grace of God. By nature God’s saints are neither flowing wells nor streams, but are cisterns into which the “living water” (John 4:10) flows; we are empty vessels into which God pours His salvation. The idea of receiving implies a sense of the realization of what the Lord has done. Someone cannot very well receive a shadow but must receive something substantial. And so it is in the life of faith—Christ becomes real to us—a reality. Before we have faith, Jesus is merely a name—a person who lived a long time ago—so long ago that His life is only history to us! But through an act of faith, Jesus becomes a real person in the consciousness of our heart.

Yet receiving also means “to take hold of” or to “gain possession of.” Thus, what I receive becomes my own; whatever has been given to me I appropriate for myself. When I receive Jesus, He becomes my Savior—so much mine “that neither death nor life…will be able to separate” (Rom. 8:38 – 39) Him from me. All this is what it means to receive Christ—to take Him as God’s free gift, to realize He is in my heart, and to appropriate Him as my own.

Salvation has been described as the blind receiving sight, the deaf receiving hearing, and the dead receiving life, but we not only have received these blessings we also have received Christ Jesus Himself. It is true He has given us life from the dead, has pardoned us from sin, and has imputed His righteousness to us. While these are all precious gifts, we should not be content with them alone, for we have received Christ Himself. The Son of God has been poured into us, we have received Him, and we have appropriated Him as ours.

How our hearts must be filled, for heaven itself cannot contain Him!

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

Spurgeon ends today’s devotion by pointing us to the infinite nature of Christ. We are told that “by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth…all things were created by him and for him” (Col. 1:16). Thus, it only stands to reason that if He created everything, He must be greater than His creation.

How amazing is it that the Creator of the universe has poured His very life into us and desires fellowship with us! May the following be our prayer to Him this morning:

“O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens…When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet…O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Ps. 8:1, 3 – 6, 9).