Every Sunday I go to a Remembrance Meeting. This is a time where we praise and worship God, we take the Lord’s Supper and we remember what God and Christ has done for us. I am a Christian and this is a central point of my life. Sadly, sometimes I find it very easy to gloss over what the Son of God has done for us. We are talking about the greatest tragedy, the greatest love story and the greatest victory of all time. Nothing that man has ever done, will do, or could do, could compare. My goal over the next several days is to write about the tragedy, the love story and the victory that our Savior gave us to help us remember the importance of living for Him.

Jesus, the Son of God, who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens, tempted but never sinned. He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. He came down to earth as a man, ”but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross! He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter. (Hebrews 4:15; 7:26 Philipians 2:7-8; Isaiah 53:7,9). And that is exactly what we did to Him.

In the United States, in this day and age we execute people as humanely as possible. Execution is the exception, usually taking years before it happens making sure every legal recourse is taken. Two thousand years ago, there was no such legal protection. Crucifixion was designed to produce a slow death with maximum pain and suffering. There is an article written by doctors at the Mayo Clinic and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association called “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” which details the physical trauma that the human body goes through in crucifixion. This article gives us some perspective on what a heinous death our Lord suffered. The article details how flogging was the legal preliminary to most crucifixion, the whip typically used had sharp sheep bones and iron balls braided into it. It details how scourging would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of flesh. Usually by the time the flogging is done the victim is going into shock. It talks about the condemned having to carry the cross bar (patibulum) which weighs between 75 – 100 pounds and carrying it to execution ground. The Romans then took the spikes and nailed His wrist to the cross. The positioning of the spike went through nerve and muscle would have caused excruciating pain. To prolong the crucifixion process, a horizontal block would be secured serving as a crude seat. One poignant detail to me is this statement ”The major pathophysicologic effect, beyond the excruciating pain, was a marked interference with normal exhalation…. Adequate exhaltion required lifting the body by pushing up on the feet and by flexing the elbows and adducting the shoulders… However this maneuver would place the entire weight of the body on the tarsals and would produce searing pain.“ Crucifixion was not about killing someone it was about torturing him, punishing him, death was only the end of the process.

Christ came down as the least of men, to be tortured and to die the most humiliating and painful death man could conceive. Jesus certainly didn’t have to do this, he could of stopped this at any time, he could of called legions of angels to prevent this. Why didn’t he? One answer is found in Matthew 26:53-54. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

More on this in part 2.

Technorati Tags: Cross, Gospel, Jesus Christ

Sometimes in an effort to remind people of the cost of the cross, we withhold grace until we are sure they understand their sin. But it is in giving of our grace that we remind people that they need to go to Jesus to find their own. People understand their sin without our help. It’s grace they need help in understanding.This is so simple and profound. The message — more so, the real experience — of grace is much more powerful than reasons and threats. Fear may cause people to act and conform (or pretend to), but only love can capture their hearts and set them free. I can only live out these words if I know and experience the love of the Father myself.This came via a website called Brushed.orgit is written by a gentleman named Andy (no last name that I can find) that has chosen to serve the Lord in Orient. The quote itself comes from another author and blogger named Wayne Jacobsen.

Technorati Tags: Grace

I finally broken free. I finally escaped the lies that have kept me in bondage over the last month. It shouldn’t surprise me how easily I get snared by the lies the enemy tells me. I know the enemy. I should know better. Actually they aren’t lies they are truth, the master manipulator can use the Bible against us if we forget the whole truth.

The lies are simple for me to believe. What the enemy tells me (I am paraphrasing for the sake of decency and possibly clarity):
I am of the darkness
I am worth nothing
No matter what I do I will never be holy enough to be seen by God
I don’t deserve God’s forgiveness.
I turn away from God/I am an enemy of God
My life is leading to death/I should be dead

What right do I have to write about God? None!

Over and over the Bible talks about how unworthy man is and how we deserve God’s wrath. The enemy is right.

BUT

The enemy forgets… Sooner or later the whole truth comes out. Sooner or later his lies are exposed.

John 8:32And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”Romans 3:19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. 21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished — 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

Ephesians 2:3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

The enemy is right I am of the darkness, I don’t deserve God’s love. My life of sin leads me to death and then the rest of the truth comes out.

I am a struggling Christian. I am a fighting Christian. I am not sure which term I appreciate more. My friend says that as a fighting Christian the “action” is more proactive. I struggle to remember the reason for the sacrifice Jesus Christ made. He did not die on the cross to condemn me to the wrath and anger of God. He died on the cross to take the dead and decaying people of the world and to make them alive and seen by the most Holy God. He chose to die on the cross to save a worthless, self-destructive person and gave him life.

Two of the books I have read most in the Bible are Romans 7 and 8. Romans 7 talks about the battle between the flesh which is worldly and the mind which is spiritual. I appreciated and found comfort in the fact that the great apostle Paul took the time to write about the war within him the war between his flesh and his spirit. Near the end of the book , verse 7:24 Paul cries out “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” This is where the enemy wants to leave us. He wants to leave us in abject misery.

Paul goes on:
25I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. Romans 8:1There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Paul ends chapter 7 laying out the struggle of the Christian life and reminds us of the victory that Jesus Christ has won for us. A victory that he won and gave to us as a gift, which we flat out don’t deserve. Chapter 8 really explains what was won for us unworthy people. Christ freed us from the bondage of living in everlasting sin and brought us closer to our Father. He changed the relationship with God from Fearful Judge to loving Father.

The enemy wants us to believe that we are condemned to live a life of endless failure and decay, driving ourselves into deeper and deeper perversion. The truth is that there is a light out of the darkness. There is a pathway to true life, the life our Creator meant for us. A life with him.

Technorati Tags: devil, Gospel, Redemption, Sin