The Real Thing

Read Romans 3:21-26

I lived on the East Coast for five years. We were about 10 minutes from the Delaware Bay and 30 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean. Where we lived was just a couple hour drive to New York City, Washington D.C. and Baltimore. I remember a time when we took our chorale to New York and a friend of ours thought he was getting a great deal on a video recorder that he bought off the street. When he opened the box, however, there wasn’t a recorder even in the box. You can walk all over the city and find places where you can buy great products at great prices, but you can also get ripped off.
A Rolex watch is one of the finest timepieces made. Many people would jump at the opportunity to own one. That’s why there are some people who pick up a few of them to give to their children as souvenirs. Souvenirs? Yes. You see, these watches were "knockoffs"—imitations of the real thing easily passed off to tourists at ridiculously cheap prices.
In today’s world, there are few things of value that are inexpensive. Fewer still are free. However, salvation—the most important gift of all—is free. Unlike the imitation Rolex, salvation is of infinite value. Yet it is free because, as one hymn reminds us, "Jesus paid it all." No one can earn salvation (Eph. 2:8-9). There is a price for your salvation, but it was paid by another.
It’s a paradoxical truth that while salvation is free, its cost was great. Oswald Chambers wrote, "Forgiveness, which is so easy for us to accept, cost the agony at Calvary." The word free doesn’t mean you will never have to pay something for it, it means there is nothing you have whereby you could earn it. You see, your salvation will cost you everything. It will cost you your old thoughts, your old attitudes, your old lifestyle, but that is the beauty of the cross – He paid the price for you to get a new life. You just have to exchange it for your old one.
There are too many people settling for “knock-off” salvation. I cannot tell you how to be saved, and your friends cannot tell you how to be saved, nor can your religious leaders tell you how to be saved, but He can tell you how to be saved. His Word very clearly states in John 14:6 where Jesus said, "I am the way..." Instead of trying so hard to get to heaven based on something someome else has taught us, why do we not just get to Jesus and let Him lead the way. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved! Jesus is the real thing - authentic, pwoerful, God manifest in flesh and our ever loving Savior that came to seek and to save that which was lost! I know that most readers of this devotion have already experienced this great exchange, but remember this today, you cannot settle for the “knock-off” life when the real thing is staring you in the mirror.

“Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon: instead of principles, slogans: and, instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas.”
- Eric Bentley