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Thursday Devo

Scripture:

2 Corinthians 4:3-6
3 If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from people who are perishing. 4 Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God. 5 You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake.6 For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.  

Commentary:

4:3–5 If our gospel is veiled refers to the hardened heart that causes one to be separated from God’s presence and makes it impossible to recognize Jesus as the Messiah (see 3:12–15). The god of this world refers to Satan. the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. The gospel illumines how Christ’s death on the cross makes it possible for God’s people to be in his presence, having been transformed by God’s presence and not destroyed by it (see 3:18). This gospel is both proclaimed and embodied by Paul (see 1 Cor. 2:1–5). Thus Paul preaches the crucified Christ as Lord (the gospel), and Paul himself lives out the gospel in the service of his hearers—that is, as an embodiment of the gospel in his own Christlike “slavery” to the needs of his people. See further the contrast between Paul’s attitudes and actions and those of his opponents (2 Cor. 11:4).
4:6 Paul uses the provision of light in Gen. 1:3 to picture conversion as the dawning of the new creation amid this fallen world. the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. To know the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4:4) is to encounter the life-transforming glory of God.

Questions:

  • In Acts 16:11-15, we see Paul and his crew searching along a riverbank for believers that might be praying there, and they run into a group of women. One of these women is Lydia. Verse 14 says that as she listened to their message, "the Lord opened her heart, and she accepted what Paul was saying." As is confirmed in 2 Corinthians 3 and elsewhere in scripture, it's God who says "let there be light" in your heart. This is God's work of REGENERATION. That's when the veil over your eyes is removed so that you can see the glory of the gospel. This means that we are saved through absolutely NO effort of our own! It is only by the grace of God who called us out of darkness. Why is it that we tend to drift towards thinking we can earn God's grace? What does it do to your view of God to think that He did this miracle of salvation in you through no effort of your own?

  • The prophet, Ezekiel, also foretold of this act of regeneration in chapter 36, where he says, "A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances." God wants to take our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh... soft, moldable. He does this work through His Spirit that is within us. How soft and moldable is your heart? How sensitive are you to the leading of the Spirit? How do we make sure we stay in tune with the Father in this way? 

Prayer Topics:

  • That you would live with a grateful heart for the grace God has shown you. 
  • That your heart would stay soft and moldable as you are sensitive to the Spirit's leading. 

This Week's City 7:

Try to commit to memory! 

4. Can a person be good enough to go to heaven? No. Because Jesus rose from the dead, proving He is God, I believe a person is saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
(John 1:12, 14:6; Acts 4:12; Romans 4:1-25, 5:1-2, 6-11, 6:23, 10:1-4, 10:9; Galatians 3:26; Ephesians 2:1-9; 1 Timothy 2:5-6; Titus 3:4-7)

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