PT-1 "Inheritance" (Col. 1:12)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/7/2017 9:56 PM

My Worship Time                                                                                Focus: PT-1 “Inheritance”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Colossians 1:12

            Message of the verses:  “12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light.”

            In our last SD, which was the last part of the introduction to Colossians 1:12-14 we quoted John MacArthur who wrote “Paul sums up the doctrine of salvation in three great truths:  inheritance, deliverance, and transference.  They are both a description of salvation and a cause for thanksgiving.  He unfolds the specifics of his gratitude in those verses.”

            I may have mentioned in the SD’s on Colossians or perhaps on the ones from my study of John that I am reading a devotional Bible from John MacArthur who writes a small devotion before each days Bible reading, I mostly listen to the Bible on DVD and not read it, but at any rate today’s devotional for Jan. 7 had some things to say about salvation which is what we are focusing in on as we look at verses 12-14 of Colossians chapter one.  In today’s devotional study MacArthur talks about an identity crisis and mentions that believers have no need to have an identity crisis for we belong to Jesus Christ.  “Despite that bleak picture, a true sense of identity is available to every Christian.  It comes from knowing that God himself personally selected you to be his child.  Before the world began, God set his love upon you; it was according to His plan that Christ died for you (1 Peter 1:20).  That’s why you responded in faith to the gospel (2 Thess. 2:13).  Also that’s why you can never lose your salvation.  The same God who drew you to Himself will hold you there securely (John 10:29).”

            Now we will begin to look at our verse from Colossians as we continue today’s SD.  When we were unbelievers God was our Judge, but now since we are one of His children we can call Him our Father, remembering the Lord’s Prayer beginning. 

            We are not only adopted into His family but as our verse tells us He has also “qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.”  John MacArthur writes “Qualified’ is from hikanoo, a word used here and in 2 Corinthians 3:6 in the New Testament.  It means ‘to make sufficient, to empower, to authorize, to make fit.’  We are not qualified through our own efforts.  God has qualified us through the finished work of Christ.”

            Now since we as believers are qualified because of what Christ has done for us, that means that before we were believers we were truly unqualified for our inheritance.  We will look at a few verses from the book of Ephesians which helps us understand this unqualified position we have before we became believers. 

“1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest (Eph. 2:1-3).”

            “12 Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (Eph. 1:12).”

            “17 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; 19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness (Eph. 4:17-19).”

I have written inside an older Bible that I have the following:  “Total Depravity:  Not that we are as bad as we could be, but we are as bad off as we can be.”  This is what we were before we became believers in Jesus Christ and if someone who is reading this has not accepted the free gift of salvation that Jesus offers that is where you are now, but the good news is that can all be changed by understanding that you are a sinner which you then agree with God that you are and then trust that the Lord Jesus Christ has paid for your sins on the cross and invite Him into you life to save you.

Those of us who are believers can remember the time when we were not a believer how we were dominated by the evil world system; it’s wicked ruler, Satan; and our own fallen, sinful, human natures.  I have no problem in remembering this because I was very near 27 years old when the Lord saved me almost 42 years ago this month on the 26^th of Jan. 1974.  I am so very thankful to the Lord for His indescribable gift of salvation through Jesus Christ my Lord.

1/7/2017 10:30 PM