Topic: How You Can Be Made Right With God [RICK WARREN Devotional 13 May 2023]
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How You Can Be Made Right With God
“If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.”
Romans 10:9-10 (NLT)
The Bible says in Romans 1:17, “The Good News shows how God makes people right with himself” (NCV).
How does God make you right with himself? Through Jesus. Here’s an explanation of what that means:
You can’t make yourself righteous.
Heaven is a perfect place. There’s no sin, sadness, evil, or injustice. But here’s the problem: All people are imperfect, and God can’t let sinful people into heaven because then it would be full of sin too.
Romans 3:20 says, “No one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are” (NLT).
The only people who think they can keep God’s laws are those that don’t know them—because God’s laws are perfect, and none of us are perfect. We cannot be made right on our own, and so God made a plan to rescue us from our sin and bring us into a relationship with him.
God sent Jesus to pay for your sins so you could be declared righteous.
When you break man’s laws, you pay man’s penalty. When you break God’s laws, you pay God’s penalty, which is eternity in hell. Somebody must pay for all the things you’ve done in life that hurt other people, yourself, and God. And so God sent Jesus on a rescue mission. He essentially said, “I’ll send my Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty. He will take your place so you don’t have to go to hell. You can be with me forever.”
Do you understand why the Gospel is called Good News? The Gospel says that everything you’ve ever done or will ever do wrong in life has already been paid for by Jesus Christ on the cross. Through Jesus you can be made right with God. That’s Good News!
The Bible says, “[God] saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:5 NLT).
You need to accept by faith what God did for you.
To be made right with God, you need to believe and accept by faith that Jesus paid for your sins when he died on the cross. The Bible says, “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved” (Romans 10:9-10 NLT).
Hallelujah! We all can be saved no matter who we are, what we’ve done, or how long we’ve done it.
Today is the day to settle this. If you aren’t sure if you’re going to heaven when you die, please pray this prayer: “Dear God, thank you that you made me, that you have a plan and purpose for my life, and that you made me to know you. Thank you for the choice that you’ve given me to accept or reject your offer of salvation. Today I humbly ask you to save me—not based on what I’ve done but based on what Jesus Christ did for me. I don’t understand it all, but as much as I know how, I want to put my trust in your Son. God, I want to get to know you. I want to learn to love you. I want to hunger and thirst for righteousness the rest of my life. I put my trust in your grace and in your forgiveness. I want you to be the Lord of my life. Amen.”
Talk It Over
- If you’ve already accepted Jesus, describe how and when that happened.
- In what ways have you tried to live a righteous life on your own? What were the results of those efforts?
- What does it mean to you to know that everything you’ll ever do wrong has already been paid for by Jesus?
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