Grateful for that One Day
Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. 4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another (Romans 7:1-4a)
My father was an angry and abusive man. I went to bed each night hoping not to do anything the next day that would anger him. If he wasn’t hurting my brother, sister, and me physically, he was hurting us emotionally.
When I was 15, it was late at night. I lay in bed trying to sleep when the doorbell rang. I heard my mother cry out when she saw who it was. It was Ira, my father’s emergency contact.
Ira came into my room and told me, “You’re going to need to be grown up for this, Mike. Your father has died.” I almost cried out “Really??” I was so happy, but I couldn’t show it. It would have hurt my mother who was unaware of the worst of the abuse. That one day changed my life. All the rules, all the threats, all the failures were gone. Because of one event, one day, I was free.
Even though my father was the way he was, I learned a lot from him that helped me through life: my work ethic, the drive of a father to provide for his family, those sorts of things. God’s Law was instructive as well. It showed the ancient Jews how to live, how to please God, and that they could not do it by just works of righteousness.
God’s Law is holy. I need to make that point before I continue. It was man that failed to keep the Law because man is imperfect. Our flesh stood in the way. Like my father’s rules, the Law came with rules impossible to obey perfectly. It was frustrating and painful for the Jews who were under the Law just as it was for me.
The passage above speaks of how one event would change her life, the day the woman’s husband died and set her free from the law that kept her from marrying again. Paul uses this excellent example to show how in one day, Jesus’ death set God’s people free from the law of sin and death:
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:2-4)
What a wonderful day that was for us. On another single day, October 16th, 1975, I gave my life to Christ and was set free once more. It was a much greater freedom, freedom from the law of sin and death.
We’re all under the Law if we don’t surrender to Christ. There’s no getting out of it. Either we must live a sinless life to satisfy God, or accept the free gift of eternal life through Christ. God requires one or the other.
I often tell my friends I’m not a Christian for the reward at the end of this life. Heaven is a wonderful benefit, but I would be a Christian even if the reward wasn’t there. I’m a Christian because of this life God has forgiven me. I’m grateful for those two days, the day 2,000 years ago when Jesus died for me and the day 46 years ago when I took advantage of His free offer of eternal life. Those two days gave me a life filled with joy and blessings, family and friends that mean the world to me, but most of all a relationship with the very One Who set me free.
Why is this important?
If you’re a child of God, there was that one day when everything changed for you, too. It’s a day for which you will be forever grateful. Sadly, I sometimes forget that. When I catch myself dwelling in self-pity, I recount the sins in my past and present remembering that God has forgiven, and I’m grateful once again.
“Gratitude” should be at the center of our Christian life. Talk show host and author, Dennis Prager has said gratitude is the key to happiness. I think he’s right. If we want to be happy, we must be grateful for that one day that changed our world and on the One Who died to give us life .
28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, (Heb. 12:28)
Believers Armed and Dangerous 