August 29, 2024

Passage Read: John 5-6
Meditation Verses: 6:63-65

Thought

The Spirit gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The Spirit alone calls and transforms men, so true salvation is indeed a miracle of God. There are many who admire Jesus or admire His teachings, and they are drawn to Him, but it is only the flesh, and that has no value. Eventually, the fleshly man will become offended and turn back from following Jesus. The flesh does not save, and a fleshly admiration is no salvation. Unless the Spirit does a miracle in a man, he is not saved. It also means that a mark of the truly saved is to hold fast to Jesus, no matter what He says or does. So the man who becomes dissatisfied with Jesus or upset at something He or His Father says or does, this man was never truly saved.

Application

I need to be discerning. Not everyone who claims to believe and love Jesus actually is regenerated. Many of them are merely drawn by the flesh, not by the Father. When God does a miracle in a man's heart and he comes to Jesus, he will not let Him go, no matter how hard Jesus's teachings are, no matter how hard God's actions are to accept. When the Spirit converts a man, there should be clear change, a desire to know and learn and put into practice the Word of God, and victory in so doing. The greatest confirmation of a man's salvation, even my own, is that he holds firmly to the end the confidence he had at first, and that confidence is revealed by his priorities, choices, actions and words. And it doesn't require knowing the end of his life, but whether he holds firmly today that original confidence. If he or I hold that confidence today, we should have assurance that we will hold it to the end.