In His Favor Is Life

The angel Gabriel greeted Mary with the words, “Rejoice, highly-favored one… you have found favor with God” (Luke 1:28,30). If we assume Mary found favor not extended to others, we would be wrong. The word “highly-favored,” is used only one other time in our Bible, translated “accepted” … “God has made us ‘accepted’ (highly-favored) in the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Ephesians 1:6,7).

This “highly favored” state is not because of anything we have done, but because of Christ’s perfect sacrifice in our behalf… “Therefore, being now justified by His blood, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace (favor) in which we stand…” (Romans 5:1,2).

Just as God used Mary to bring Christ into the world for us, He desires to use our lives to reveal Christ’s love to others. The Apostle Paul, who called himself the “chief of sinners” until His life was transformed by Christ, wrote these precious words… “God separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might announce His Glad Tidings among the nations…” (Galatians 1:15,16). And Jesus told a former demon-possessed man to, “Go home to your friends and tell them what great things God has done for you, and has had compassion on you” (Mark 5:19).

God’s grace confronts all the sin in our lives with the news that… “where sin abounded, grace has much more abounded.” “The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all mankind,” and to welcome Him into our lives is to “receive abundance of grace and the Gift of righteousness, that we might reign in life” over all the evils this life can throw at us.

Knowing Jesus is where Life – and that more abundantly – begins and never ends.

(Devotional by Lisa Cataford)