4LB24.   2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23.   “In those days, all the princes of Judah, the priests, and the people added infidelity to infidelity.   Because of their sins, “the anger of Lord against his people was so inflamed that there was no remedy.  All Jerusalem was destroyed and they “were carried captive to Babylon.”  However, the Lord later had Jerusalem rebuilt by inspiring “Cyrus, king of Persia” to restore Jerusalem.  How glorious is the loving mercy of the Lord!

John 3:14-21.    “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  Whoever chooses not to believe in him as the only source of eternal life is condemned to die because they have cut themselves off from the only source of eternal life.  Living in Jesus is living in the light of the truth that all else is death that is not in God.

Ephesians 2:4-10.  “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ.” Being spiritually dead is the state of choosing to live physically without joining ourselves to the life of Christ.  On one level we keep going but on another we are inert, in rigor mortis, a cadaver.  When Paul writes “by grace you have been saved,” he means that God has given us an infusion of his divine life to raise us from a state of spiritual death to life in Christ.  “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that should live in them.” When we have received a share of God’s life-giving love, we live a life doing loving good works.