Tag Archives: sins

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

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The Cross Our Refuge

Bible Study, , , ,

THE CROSS OUR REFUGE

When you were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh. God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross  (Col. 2: 13-15).

These are three of the most powerful and the most liberating verses in the whole Bible. Let me tell you why.

There are two things which believers struggle with – the penalty of sin and the power of sin. Satan has a weapon which he uses against us constantly – lies. His lies translate to uncertainties in our minds. Am I really forgiven? Why do I still have troubles and problems? Is God punishing me for things I have done wrong? Is the devil attacking me?

Satan would love us to believe that he still has the power over us, but he is a liar, and his lies have been exposed. It was at the cross that his lies were brought to light and his weapons taken from him. The only power he still wields over us is his deception. He can manipulate us when we believe his lies.

Let’s handle our misgivings one at a time.

First the issue of forgiveness. Does God still punish us when we sin? The answer is a resounding ‘NO!’ The Bible makes it clear that Jesus was the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world.

All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast – all those whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world (Rev. 13: 8).

Since God is eternal, not subject to time, He planned that the sacrifice of His Son on the cross, although it happened at a point in history, would be sufficient to provide forgiveness for all people, for all sin, and for all time. Why then the sacrifices of the Old Covenant? The sacrificial system of the Mosaic Covenant was intended to be a visual aid for the people. Their faith was in the promise of God’s forgiveness through His Lamb, not in the animal blood that was shed.

The Jewish leaders were outraged when Jesus forgave people without offering a sacrifice. They did not understand that He could forgive sin on the basis of His sacrifice which was effective from the beginning of creation.

This means that our sin was forgiven before we were even born. Can God, then, still punish us for the sins we commit now? Again a resounding ‘NO!’ Why not? Because He would be acting illegally and against His own nature. In any justice system, it is illegal to punish a person twice for the same crime. How much more, then, according to God’s justice, would it be wrong for Him to punish sinners for sin for which His Son has been punished.

Why, then, do God’s children still suffer? Why do things go wrong in our lives? Why do bad things happen to good people? The answer to this question deals with our second misgiving? Is the devil attacking me? Once again the answer is ‘No!’ This demands the question, ‘Who is in charge?’ Jesus’s message to His people when He came was, ‘Change your mind. God is in charge.’ When Jesus died and rose again, His clear message was, ‘The devil is a liar. God the Father is in charge,’ and He proved is by raising His son from the dead.

Your troubles and mine are not punishment but discipline. There is a great deal of difference between punishment and discipline. We cannot escape the hardships in this life because they are part of the consequences of Adam’s sin. However, God directs them and works in them for our good.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose (Rom. 8: 28).

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what children are not disciplined by their father? . . . They disciplined us for a while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in His holiness (Heb. 12: 7, 10).

Through Jesus’s death and resurrection, we have the assurance that God has forever dealt with our sin and with the devil. We can now have complete confidence that we are His children and that He is training us now for our life with Him forever.

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.

 

The Slain Lamb

Bible Study, , , ,

THE SLAIN LAMB

“David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven,                                                                 whose sins are covered.                                                                                                                   Blessed is the one                                                                                                                             whose sin the Lord will never count against him.” Romans 4:6-8.

Now we have another problem. If God can only forgive sin on the basis of the death of His Son, how could David experience the blessedness of knowing that his sins had been forgiven when he lived long before Jesus?

The writer to the Hebrews made it very clear that animal blood can never remove sin. It is only a picture of the greater sacrifice – that of God’s perfect Lamb.

“The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins.” Hebrews 10:1-3

“But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God…for by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” Hebrews 10:12, 14.

Did David somehow understand that his sin was forgiven on the basis of a sacrifice that was perfect and acceptable to God for all time? On what basis did the children of Israel escape the angel of death when he passed over Egypt and struck down the firstborn of the Egyptians? By obeying God’s instruction to paint the blood of a lamb on the door frames of their houses, they were placing their faith in God’s promise and in the blood of a lamb.

Jesus was often in trouble with the religious leaders for forgiving sin. They accused Him of blasphemy because only God can forgive sin. On what basis did Jesus have the right to forgive sin? Because He was God? But God, according to His own decree, declared   that the only basis upon which sin can be forgiven was the death of a human being who had no sin of his own.

Now let’s look at God’s response.

“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.” 1 Peter 1:20.

“Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the centre of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders …The Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the earth…” Revelation 5:6; 13:8.

Since God exists outside of time, He views the effects of what Jesus did on the cross, although it happened at a time in history, as spanning all time, not just the time after Jesus died.

The sacrificial system incorporated in the Mosaic Law was intended, not to be the basis for the forgiveness of sin, but a visual aid to help His people understand the nature of, and remedy for sin. When they trusted in the shed blood of a sacrificial lamb for the forgiveness of their sin, they were actually acknowledging God’s provision of a perfect Lamb that would deal with sin once and for all, and trusting in His promise of forgiveness.

The Israelites learned slowly, through a process; one lamb for a family when the angel of death passed over them on one occasion, memorialised by their annual celebration of Passover; one goat for a nation to forgive their sins for one year and, finally, one Lamb, God’s Son, for the world, once for all.

“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.

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God.” 1 Peter 3:18.

Acknowledgement

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

 

You Will Die In Your Sins

Bible Study, , ,

YOU WILL DIE IN YOUR SINS

“Once more Jesus said to them, ‘I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come.’

“This made the Jews ask, ‘Will He kill Himself? Is that why He says, “Where I go you cannot come”?”

“But He continued, ‘You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

“‘I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am He, you will indeed die in your sins.'” John 8:21-24 (NIV)

‘And go to hell when you die!’ Is that what Jesus meant?

How differently we non-Hebrew-speaking people interpret the Word!  Is it not true that we automatically assume that that is what He meant? Unfortunately, we have come to use “heaven” and “hell” as the measure of salvation. “Saved” people are going to heaven; “unsaved” people are going to hell.

We have already discussed the meaning of “light” and “darkness” in Scripture. Now we need to examine two other contrasting concepts that Jesus frequently used; “life” and “death”. Although it is impossible to treat this subject fully in a short article like this, I will attempt to give pointers to a better understanding of what He meant by “eternal life”.

In His night-time encounter with Nicodemus, Jesus uttered the words of the most well-known verse in the Bible — “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16. Three things stand out clearly in this statement: Eternal life is a gift; it comes through faith in Jesus; and it rescues the one who believes in Him from perishing.

We have to ask the questions: When does this “life” begin? Is it only for the future or is it a present reality? What is eternal life?

According to Jesus, ‘Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.’ John 5:24 (NIV). Eternal life, then, is not living forever in heaven when a person dies. It is a dimension of being he enters into as a gift from God the instant he believes and receives the truth that Jesus is the Son of God.

Eternal life is a present reality. The other three gospels focus on “the kingdom of God”; John speaks of eternal life. These are inseparable truths about the life Jesus came to model and to give to those who believe in Him. Eternal life is living in the kingdom of God, in the realm of God’s rule, under His authority and in submission to Him, modelling Jesus’s attitude and behaviour in the way we live.

This life is a free gift (John 3:16); it comes to us through Jesus (John 14:6b); it is about reconnection to the Father through Him (John 14:6a); it is sustained by intimate fellowship with Jesus (John 6:35); following Him enables us to understand and live this life (John 8:12); it is about self-forgetful and self-sacrificial love for others (John 15:13).

But what is this life? God is love. Although His love is immeasurable and beyond the limits of our understanding (Ephesians 3:16-19), Jesus came to model the Father’s love so that we catch glimpses of the enormity of a love that gave His only Son to free us from self-destructive lives of self-will and alienation from God; and that we can follow that way through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The more we follow Jesus, the more we move towards the essence of salvation; becoming whole people again; “being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossian 3:10 – NIV).

Because the Jewish leaders had rejected Jesus and refused to believe that He was the Son of God, they were perishing in their chosen path of self-destruction. This was not Jesus’ judgment on them. It was the inevitable result of their selfish and greedy lifestyle. They were destined for the trash heap because they were wasting their potential as sons of God and were living worthless and useless lives.

To everyone who believes in Jesus He offers the opportunity to escape the destruction of self-indulgence and return to the way of life that enables us to become truly human as God intended. Real life is living in loving interconnection with God and with all of creation and is only possible through faith in Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Do you have this kind of life?