Prison Ministries

Read Mark 7:6-8, Isaiah 57:8-13
No Substitutions!

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” Proverbs 16:25

Many restaurants have specials that allow no substitutions. Car makers offer a package of options only available as a package with no substitutions. If even restaurants and car makers can establish this rule, does it make any sense at all to think that God allows substitutions?

We all have a free will to receive or reject God’s grace, mercy, and new life in Christ. The problem is that we often want to exercise our free will and our intellect in substituting our perceptions for God’s truth.

We want to receive assurance of eternal life, but we don’t want to choose obedience to the new manager of our new life in Christ.

Many have the tendency to choose and believe that God wants everyone to be prosperous and healthy in spite of the fact that most of the disciples were neither. (If the apostle Paul’s prayers for healing were not granted, what makes us think that all of ours will be?)

Many seem to have the mistaken idea that sincerity can be substituted for obedience, that love can be substituted for truth, and that what belongs to us is more important than to whom we belong.

When we try to substitute tolerance, respectability, and enlightenment for what God calls sin, we become grace “junkies” who turn the commandments into suggestions and become carnal Christians.

We need to know that God hates sin but loves sinners, and we are called to do the same. As sinners saved by grace, we need to renounce sin and flee from it. We are to live lives fully pleasing to God and fruitful in every good work.

The only substitutes God has ever allowed was the lamb provided as a substitute for Abraham’s son and Jesus as the substitute atonement for our sins.

Father, help me know that You are the God who says what He means and means what He says and live accordingly. In Jesus’ name, Amen