Detecting Christmas December 4 Devotional

GALATIANS 3:23-26 | ²³ Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. ²⁴ Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵ But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, ²⁶ for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

One way to build our trust in the future God has for us is to recall his timing in the past. One aspect of this timing has to do with our growing understanding. We are all familiar with the way advances in our knowledge depend on our grasp of previous concepts. We won’t grasp calculus until we understand basic computation and algebra.

In the same way Paul says that Jesus’ revelation of God’s amazing grace had to come after the period of Jewish adherence to the law. We needed to understand God’s will, and to experience our own failure to fulfill it, in order to grasp the wonder of an undeserved grace and the gift of a goodness that does not depend or originate in us. Before we could appreciate God’s gift of righteousness we had to know the struggle to establish our own.

Have you every tried to manage your own holiness?

Gracious God,

Thank you for your law and for the way it prepares us to experience your grace. Amen.