Category Archives: Gospel

The Power Of The Cross – Brought Near By The Blood

Gospel, , , ,

THE POWER OF THE CROSS

BROUGHT NEAR BY THE BLOOD

. . . At one time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world.  But now, in Christ Jesus you who were once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Eph. 2: 12-13)

What is Paul saying? Does he mean that all Jews are “in” and all Gentiles are “out”? Not at all. In his letters to the Romans and Galatians, he stated quite clearly that not all Israelites are true Israelites. Only those who are the children of Abraham by faith in Jesus are the true Israel. They have completed the process which He began when He called Abraham to be the father of His people, by recognising and receiving Jesus as God’s promised Messiah and His gift of righteousness to which the old covenant pointed.

However, Gentiles were not even in line to be a part of the Old Covenant because God had called only the natural children of Abraham to be His special people. They received God’s Torah, His instructions for living and His promises, so that they could show the pagan nations around them the nature of the true God. It was through them that the Messiah would come, and they were to live in anticipation of His coming – prophesied over many centuries in uncanny detail so that they would recognise Him when He came.

According to the prophetic fingerprint in their sacred writings, He would come as both Suffering Servant and King, but their exile and repeated occupation by enemy forces because of their unfaithfulness to the covenant, aroused in them a longing to be free from their enemies and to rule their own country without interference from outside. The other side of Messiah’s purpose to recuse them from sin was either forgotten or ignored in favour of a king who would rule over them in justice and peace, as did their great ancestor, David.

When Jesus came, the Jews did not recognise Him because He did not fit their expectation of a political deliverer. What was even worse for them was that those who followed Jesus and preached that He was indeed their Messiah, had opened the door of faith to the Gentles. Their hatred for and prejudice against the Gentiles was so strong that the followers of Jesus were to be exterminated for daring to preach that their God was the God of the Gentiles as well.

In spite of the message of their prophets that God would call the whole world to obedience to Him, they resented the intrusion of Gentiles into their exclusive right to worship God. There were many “God-fearers” scattered across the Roman Empire in Paul’s day, Gentiles who worshiped the true God without actually embracing Judaism with its tedious rules and ritual. It was this group that were more ready to receive the good news about the Messiah than God’s own people.

In his letter to the Ephesian church, and the other churches in Asia Minor which also read his letter, Paul reminded them that, without the message of Jesus which they had heard and embraced, the Gentiles had not hope of reconciliation to God or participation in the promises of the old covenant made to Abraham and his descendants.

It was through Abraham that the whole world would be blessed. His descendants would receive and were to preserve the revelation of God given to them through His covenant with Abraham and expanded in the covenant He made with them at Mount Sinai when He espoused them to Himself as His bride. In the Abrahamic covenant was the promise that they would be a blessing to all nations.

The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’ (Gen. 12: 1-3)

Through Jesus, God fulfilled His promise, opening the door to the Gentile world to embrace everything that He had promised His own people in His covenant. It was through Him that they were “brought near”, giving them access to the Father through the forgiveness He made possible, and allowing them to be a part of the promises that guaranteed their acceptance with Him and everything that the death of Jesus made possible.

Through faith in Jesus everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, becomes a part of God’s new race, no longer categorised as “Jew” and “Gentile” but by their new status as sons and daughters of the Father.

For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of His household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. (Eph. 2: 18-22)

When we consider how strong and how damaging the issue of racism is in our world, and no amount of external pressure can cure, we can only marvel at the miracle of reconciliation which Jesus made possible by His death.

This is the power of the cross.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

 

 

 

The Power Of The Cross – The Atoning Sacrifice For Our Sins

Gospel, , ,

THE ATONING SACRIFICE FOR OUR SINS

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement (propitiation), through the shedding of His blood – to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – He did this to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Rom. 3: 25-26)

A sacrifice of atonement, more accurately translated “propitiation” – what does that mean? It is a truth about the blood of Jesus that is not spoken about much these days. Forgiveness – yes. Propitiation – no. Although it is in the Bible, we ignore it because we have no idea what it means.

Propitiation has to do with the wrath of God, something we don’t like to think about because it conflicts with our idea of God’s love. How can God love us and be angry with us at the same time?

“In the first three chapters of Romans, Paul makes the argument that everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, is under the condemnation of God and deserving of His wrath (Romans 1:18). Everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). All of us deserve His wrath and punishment. God in His infinite grace and mercy has provided a way that His wrath can be appeased and we can be reconciled to Him. That way is through the sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus Christ, as the payment for sins. It is through faith in Jesus Christ as God’s perfect sacrifice that we can be reconciled to God. It is only because of Christ’s death on the cross and His resurrection on the third day that a lost sinner deserving of hell can be reconciled to a holy God. The wonderful truth of the gospel is that Christians are saved from God’s wrath and reconciled to God not because “we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10)”

(http://www.gotquestions.org/propitiation.html – retrieved October 2015)

In order to understand the meaning of propitiation, we must understand the implications of sin. Sin is much more than just the bad things we do that God does not like. Sin, in the Bible involves everything that contradicts God’s perfection. This includes things like disease, deformity and death; bloodshed or the disruption of anything that God created. Even the mildew in the houses of the Israelites had to be atoned for by sacrifice because it was something less than perfect.

Imperfection of any kind is an affront to the perfection of God’s nature. The wrath of God is  His settled disposition of anger directed towards sin.

“Wrath is defined as “the emotional response to perceived wrong and injustice,” often translated as “anger,” “indignation,” “vexation,” or “irritation.” Both humans and God express wrath. But there is vast difference between the wrath of God and the wrath of man. God’s wrath is holy and always justified; man’s is never holy and rarely justified. . . 


In the Old Testament, the wrath of God is a divine response to human sin and disobedience. Idolatry was most often the occasion for divine wrath. . . The wrath of God is consistently directed towards those who do not follow His will (Deuteronomy 1:26-46; Joshua 7:1; Psalm 2:1-6).

“he New Testament also supports the concept of God as a God of wrath who judges sin. The story of the rich man and Lazarus speaks of the judgment of God and serious consequences for the unrepentant sinner (Luke 16:19–31). . .

“The wrath of God is a fearsome and terrifying thing. Only those who have been covered by the blood of Christ, shed for us on the cross, can be assured that God’s wrath will never fall on them. “Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him!” (Romans 5:9).”

(http://www.gotquestions.org/wrath-of-God.html – retrieved October 2015)

Since God is holy/love. His wrath must be appeased and therefore demands the death of the sinner, but His love cries for mercy. How could He be both just in punishing sin and, at the same time, the justifier of the sinner, declaring him not guilty and allowing him to go free?

God’s solution was Jesus. He came into the world as the Son of God, a human being born without sin because He was conceived, not by a human father but by the Holy Spirit. He lived a life of perfect obedience to the Father. Since He had no sin of His own, His death was unjustified unless He became the substitute for sinners.

God’s wrath against sin was directed at Jesus. Death was the culmination of everything that ,sin could throw at Him, which He absorbed into Himself without rebellion or retaliation. When God’s wrath was spent, Jesus died – but He rose from the dead because death could not hold Him. Unlike sinful man, His death was not for His own sin.

God’s wrath was completely satisfied. Sin’s debt had been paid in full. Sin was atoned for – God was propitiated, and He was free to absolve every sinner from the guilt of sin. Both just and the justified of those who have faith in Jesus.

This is the power of the cross.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

 

 

The Power Of The Cross – Redemption Through His Blood

Gospel, , , ,

THE POWER OF THE CROSS – REDEMPTION THROUGH HIS BLOOD

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us. (Eph. 1: 7)

I think this is the best place to start, don’t you? Everything that God has done for us flows from His grace but through the cross. I said yesterday that Jesus foretold the fact but did not give the reasons for His death. It was Paul who received the revelation from the Holy Spirit to explain the depth of meaning that the cross has for us.

Before we go any further, let’s sever, once and for all, the connection between Jesus’ death and Easter with all its pagan trappings. No self-respecting believer in Jesus should ever celebrate Easter (or Christmas, for that matter) because everything Easter and Christmas stand for are an intrusion into the truth.

What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they will be my people.’ (2 Cor. 6: 16)

The death of Jesus is rooted in the Passover feast. God gave His people seven annual feasts to celebrate, in anticipation, the work of Messiah. Each feast foretold, in picture form, an aspect of what Jesus would do for His people. The first of the annual feasts was Passover which told the story of their redemption from Egypt.

Just as the Israelites were slaves to their cruel taskmasters in Egypt, so the human race was enslaved by the devil when Adam chose to believe his lies over the truth of God. God created the first pair to be one with Him. He made them in His image and filled them with His Spirit (breath) so that they would enjoy fellowship with Him and live in perfect harmony with Him as their Father and with the world in which they lived.

God gave man one gift which put both Him and man at great risk – the gift of choice. Without the freedom to choose, people would be robots, programmed and controlled by their Creator. True freedom involves the right and power to make choices without the control of anyone else, including both God and the devil.

Satan lured Adam and Eve into believing that God had short-changed them; that He had withheld from them something that would be to their benefit, independence. God never intended that freedom to choose would involve freedom to make the rules. The moment they capitulated to the devil, they were hooked. They did not understand that the depth of true freedom lay in their oneness with God, doing His will and living in perfect harmony with Him because only He is truly free – from everything imperfect that enslaves the heart.

They were enslaved to a nature that was corrupted and could no longer serve its purpose – to have fellowship with the Father in the perfection of His untainted nature. They had a new nature, corrupted and evil, and a new master – a cruel taskmaster who drove them through shame, guilt and fear to hate God and to run from Him. They no longer recognised or experienced God as their Father, but they hid from Him because they were afraid of His wrath.

Their imperfection became an impenetrable barrier between God and them. They could not reach Him and He could not reach them. They were enslaved, body, soul and spirit to the devil, and no amount of self-effort could remove the barrier.  Even if they tried to be perfect, their past disqualified them from access to Him.

God built into His instructions for living – His Torah – a sacrificial system which would teach His people how serious the problem of sin was, and that the death of a perfect lamb was demanded to pay the debt of sin and free the sinner from his enslavement to the devil. Animal blood was only a picture of redemption. It could never pay the debt God required, but it spoke of one who would come – a perfect Lamb who would be qualified to pay the debt and free the human race from the penalty of death.

Every year, the Israelites celebrated their redemption from slavery in Egypt in anticipation of the one God would send to redeem them from even greater slavery – slavery to the devil.

When Jesus came, they refused to recognise Him or to acknowledge that He was God’s Messiah. He lived the life of a perfect Son before them, but they crucified Him. They did not realise that the very suffering they put Him through, in His life and in His death, qualified Him to be the perfect Lamb that would remove the barrier of sin between them and God and rescue them from slavery to the devil so that they could be restored to fellowship with the Father.

It was Jesus’ forerunner, John the Baptist, who recognised Him to be that perfect Lamb.

The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’ (John 1: 29)

Through His death, Jesus took sin away and broke its hold over the sinner. Satan can no longer hold us to ransom because the debt has been paid. He no longer has a claim on us. Jesus provides forgiveness for the whole world and for all time. Even the sins that lie in the future are taken care of by His blood.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2: 2)

This is the power of the cross!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

 

The Foolishness Of The Cross

Gospel, , , , ,

THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE CROSS

We’ve travelled a while through a series I called “Things Jesus did not say.” As westerners – at least some of us who read this are – our worldview is different from the ancient Hebrew worldview which the Bible represents. When we understand what Jesus said from His perspective, many of the things He said which made no sense to us before, have come to mean something to us now. Then I asked myself, “Where now?”

A short while ago I was browsing on YouTube and came across a beautiful song with simple but powerful words called “The power of the cross”. I got to thinking about the title. What is it about the cross of Jesus that is so powerful? After all, He was just a man who was crucified – or was He? Paul wrote this in his letter to the Corinthian church over two thousand years ago:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1: 18)

In the Gentile and Jewish world of his day, Paul was up against huge opposition to his message.

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Cor. 1: 22-24)

Throughout His private life with His disciples, Jesus referred to His approaching death on more than one occasion. He informed them that He was to die at the hands of the Jewish leaders.

From this time on Jesus began to explain to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. (Matt. 16: 21)

Apart from His time with His disciples in the upper room when they celebrated the last Passover together, Jesus told them nothing about the reason for His death. He indicated that He was to be the fulfilment of Passover when a lamb was killed for a family, and its blood painted on the doorposts of their houses to protect the family from the angel of death. That He would be killed, yes, but why? No.

He promised His disciples that the Holy Spirit would come to take His place, and that He would be within them. It would be left to Him to lead them into all truth and to teach them everything they needed to know about Him, including the ramifications of His death. God chose the great Jewish rabbi, Paul, a man who had a powerful legal mind and a thorough grasp of the Scriptures, to understand and explain the meaning of the cross for all who came after him.

Paul had studied under Gamaliel, one of the significant rabbis of his day, but one whose yoke led Paul into deep bondage to legalism and produced a fanatical persecutor of those who believed in Jesus. It was only through a personal encounter with the risen Christ that Paul recognised Him as his Messiah and his understanding of the cross was transformed from foolishness to power. He knew the way the Jews thought. He was one of them. He had also dismissed the crucified Jesus as nonsense until his eyes were opened on the Damascus road.

It was the power of the very cross he despised that had changed him from a vicious religious fanatic to a passionate lover of Jesus and preacher of the cross. From that moment on, his stance was:

I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom but on God’s power. (1 Cor. 2: 3-5)

There it is again; what to humans was foolishness was really God’s power.

The Jews rejected Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God because they demanded signs, yet they dismissed as foolishness the greatest of all signs – God’s love demonstrated by His presence among them and His sacrifice for them. They were too blind to see in Jesus the fulfilment of all the prophetic signs in the very Scriptures they claimed to know and hold to.

How ironical that they had Him killed because they refused to believe that He was their Messiah, and yet His death, the very death they had engineered, was the greatest of all the signs that He was who He said He was, and that He had to die and rise again according to their Scriptures.

The Greeks dismissed the cross of Jesus as foolishness because it did not fit with their human “wisdom”. They had no understanding of sin because sin was not an issue in their religious beliefs. In fact, the very way they worshipped their idol gods was through the celebration of every fleshly lust. That God was holy and demanded payment for sin did not suit their lifestyle of indulgence. They wanted something to tickle their minds, not change their lives.

In our world nothing has changed. People still follow false religions and reject Jesus because he is too “nice” and His gift of forgiveness and salvation too easy. People either want to indulge their fleshly appetites without conscience or restriction or they slavishly follow the demands of their legalistic gods because it satisfies their need to “save” themselves.

The real foolishness lies, not in believing in Jesus, but in rejecting Him. If He said He would be crucified and raised again on the third day, and it happened, why would we not believe everything else He said? Why would we throw away the opportunity to get rid of our guilt, our fear and all our hangups and insecurities and live lives of peace and purpose because we don’t want to trust the most trustworthy person who ever walked this earth?

To me, that is sheer foolishness!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/