Psalm 119:89-96 MSG

What you say goes, GOD, and stays, as permanent as the heavens. Your truth never goes out of fashion; it’s as up-to-date as the earth when the sun comes up. Your Word and truth are dependable as ever; that’s what you ordered—you set the earth going. If your revelation hadn’t delighted me so, I would have given up when the hard times came. But I’ll never forget the advice you gave me; you saved my life with those wise words. Save me! I’m all yours. I look high and low for your words of wisdom. The wicked lie in ambush to destroy me, but I’m only concerned with your plans for me. I see the limits to everything human, but the horizons can’t contain your commands! (Psalm 119:89-96 MSG)

Colossians 2:11-15 MSG

Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. It’s not a matter of being circumcised or keeping a long list of laws. No, you’re already in —insiders—not through some secretive initiation rite but rather through what Christ has already gone through for you, destroying the power of sin. If it’s an initiation ritual you’re after, you’ve already been through it by submitting to baptism. Going under the water was a burial of your old life; coming up out of it was a resurrection, God raising you from the dead as he did Christ. When you were stuck in your old sin-dead life, you were incapable of responding to God. God brought you alive—right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross. He stripped all the spiritual tyrants in the universe of their sham authority at the Cross and marched them naked through the streets. (Colossians 2:11-15 MSG)

Kingdom Territory

From today's devotional

The “it” Paul’s words in our text refer to is the cross. The cross of Christ is the sole instrument for humanity’s salvation and deliverance and the sole power for breaking hell’s works and operations. First Corinthians 2:7, 8 confirms this truth, showing how God’s wisdom through the blood and death of His Son completely confounded the strategies of hell. They have never recovered, nor will they ever recover! 

These words are such a holy and healthy reminder to all of us who want and welcome the fullness of the Holy Spirit to make Christ’s kingdom power effective in and through our lives today. They point to the place from which “all power” flows. For just as Jesus is the Person to whom, through whom and from whom all God’s power flows, so His cross is the place—the foundational accomplishment which releases all power to all mankind. 

This is holy territory. It’s where salvation’s price was paid and where sin’s penalty was broken. The cross is also where hell was “made a spectacle of,” and “it”—the cross—has become the sign by which we conquer. As the old hymn asks, “Are you living in the shadow of the Cross." Let’s answer, “Amen!”