THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE RIGHT

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of Him.

1 John 2:29

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Right or wrong?

It’s a question we can apply to every thought, spoken or written word, and action.

How important is this matter of doing right or wrong?

Go back to the earliest years of a child and you will find parents engaged in the practice of correction and this continues until that child reaches adulthood and strikes out on their own.

I remember rather vividly when my first daughter started crawling as well as getting around in a walker. Her new found ability to get from point to point without being carried opened up a world of exploration and as we know, little toddlers will explore everything without the knowledge of potential harm coming to them. This is the very reason why you will find childproof latches on cabinet doors and plastic covers inserted into electrical outlets.

And so parents are ever on the watch as their little one goes around from point to point, experiencing new things along the way and this watching always will seem to involve teaching, especially in regard to what the child should and shouldn’t touch or grab. This definitely constantly happened with my daughter as we tried to teach her right and wrong, what was okay to do and what wasn’t.

As she grew older, this instruction continued. Of course, matters became more and more complex as my daughter matured but regardless of the circumstances, the basic teaching was still the same, a teaching that praised behavior that was proper and right while rebuking and disciplining wrongs with the Bible being the source of reference. Of course, the hope was that she would be equipped with a good base scriptural understanding of right and wrong, or we could even say good and evil or righteousness and sin by the time she left home to start her own life.

Indeed, adults are constantly immersed in a life environment that offers opportunities to exercise judgment on how to live and so it’s critical that they have a means outside of themselves to help ensure they choose what is right and righteous every time. This is because all are sinners and fall short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23) so not one single person can trust and rely on themselves and expect to behave in ways that are pleasing to the Lord.

Given this, we find a lot of value in this closing verse of 1 John, chapter 2:

If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of Him. v.29

Here, in a mere 21 words, we learn that the key to living right and righteous lives in through Jesus, the only person who has ever lived a life of perfect righteousness, the One who proclaimed Himself as the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). We can only live right if we live as He did and this is the essential responsibility of every single Christian believer...to be Christ-like in the way they carry out their lives.

In other words, as Christian believers, others need to see Jesus in everything we do.

Our words need to be words He would have spoken or written and our actions need to be in step with His. Go back to the 1990’s and you may remember people wearing bracelets and other items with four simple letters: WWJD which stood for “What Would Jesus Do”. It’s a shame it stopped because those letters served as a reminder for how Christians are to conduct themselves when it comes to decision making.

Friends, the only way any person can live right and righteously is through a faith and trust in Jesus followed by a staunch, unwavering commitment to live the kind of sin-free life He did. God gave us His Son, not only to save us but to show us how we’re to behave before Him. Through the constant study and application of His Word, aided by the powerful guidance and instruction of the Holy Spirit, we can do just that.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.