DAILY PRAYER (BY SPURGEON)
Lord, we do confess that our nature is at enmity with you. The fallen corrupt nature of Adam has revolted and gone aside from God; and though we hope that by your free grace you have renewed us, yet the old rebellions come up at times, and the evil nature urges us still to oppose you.
Therefore our prayer this morning is that we may not only extol you with our words, as we do now, but by the entire submission of our hearts in loyal reverence to you, we may pay you the truest homage. But, Lord, lest we should not have done this, or thinking that we have done so, should still have failed, we will make this the burden of our morning prayer.
Amen.
VERSE OF THE DAY (COMMENTARY BY SPURGEON)
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:23–24)
The sense of the term justified is, in this place and in most others, to declare a person to be righteous. A person is put on trial and brought before the judge. One of two things will happen: either he will be acquitted, or else he will be condemned. We all essentially stand before the judge, and we are at any given moment either acquitted or condemned. It is not possible that any one of us should be acquitted on the grounds of our not being guilty, for we must all confess that we have broken the law of God thousands of times. The Lord has provided a way by which he can be righteous and yet declare the guilty to be righteous. Simply stated, this is the way of substitution and imputation. Our sins are taken off of us and laid on Christ Jesus, the innocent substitute.
This verse and commentary were taken from the Spurgeon Study Bible. This month only, you can get the Spurgeon Study Bible for 50% off — use promo code SPURGEONBOOKS. Click here to learn more.*
RECOMMENDED RESOURCE
Followers of Christ speak about Christ
Maybe the reason so many Christians don’t do the work of evangelism is because they don’t understand it. Evangelism isn’t meant to be an unnatural, guilt-motivated task that Christians carry out with dread and fear — it’s meant to be a natural overflow of our life in Christ.
Marks of the Messenger by Mack Stiles is a short book on evangelism that has the power to transform your life. In the book, Stiles shows that evangelism isn’t motivated by fear, guilt, or pragmatism, it’s simply to be motivated by who Christ is and our faith in him.
This summer, as many places and events re-open after a season of quarantine, will be full of opportunities for evangelism. God wants to do a work through you this summer — get prepared and motivated by reading Marks of the Messenger.