​Day 305 – November 1, 2021

​Day 305 – November 1, 2021
Scriptures: Ezekiel 16, Galatians 6
 
Ezekiel 16:47 (ESV) 
47 Not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. 
 
Ezekiel 16:60 (ESV) 
60 yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant. 
Ezekiel 16:62–63 (ESV) 
62 I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, 63 that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God.” 
 
Galatians 6:15–16 (ESV) 
15 For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. 16 And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. 
 
The reading today reminds us of Israel’s troubled past. They have been adorned by God as His beloved, and they have completely rejected him. We see how God loves Israel by the use of intimate terms of God’s affection, adorning them as His beloved and beautiful bride. Yet Israel has prostituted themselves using the very beauty that God gave them, against him.
God’s benevolent kindness and patience is shared at the end of the chapter though. He will remember his covenant with them and atone for their sins.
 
A consistent message echoes throughout the book of Galatians, Christ is that atoning sacrifice who gives life through the cross. It goes something like: Christ is our righteousness. Christ is our forgiveness! Christ is our mercy! Christ is everything!
The challenge of Ezekiel is a challenge also there in Galatians. Will we use this new life, the beauty we are adorned with to walk by the Spirit, or to walk in the flesh? Will we use new life to do new life things, or will we return to our ways of old?
 
Let us choose today the way of new life!
 
Jordan