Posted on 04/04/2020 5:26:37 PM PDT by pastorbillrandles
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (I Peter 3:18)
We have had a very basic look at the Law of God, the Ten Commandments. God has given us his Law, and it is holy, Just and Good.
But we have all failed to keep it in perfection. The law is beautiful as an instruction, and as a Revelation of God. It is also a look at what we were actually created to be like. The Law revealed on Sinai is in accordance with who we were actually created to be, had we not fallen away.
God created us to Hold to Him as our only center, and to be accepting of Him as He is, and to fear and worship him in Spirit and in Truth. He created us to love each other, and to be monogamous and happy in marriage, to respect each other’s property, to tell the truth, and to be content with the lot he has assigned to us.
We are all conflicted and bound, to the extent that we vary from any of these attributes.
But there is not one person among all of us, who have kept the Law of God. We have all broken it, and have “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”.
The Law, to us sinners is more of a measuring rod, than a guide. It shows us our sins and our sin. We haven’t loved God, nor have we loved our neighbor anywhere near as much as we have loved ourselves. We are not Righteous, and the Law, properly understood, reveals that to us.
By the standard of God and his Holy Law, we have to die. We have to perish, to use the biblical term, which means, we have to be ruined, forever. We must die Physically and we must experience the second death, which is Spiritual, and lasts forever, because we are transgressors of God’s law. We have brought disorder and rebellion into God’s world.
These are the demands of God’s Holy Law, which is a reflection of his Righteousness. In this way the broken law and offended Righteousness must be satisfied. God loves his Righteousness, as the eleventh Psalm tells us,
Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup. For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright. ( Psalm 11:6-7)
However, God also loves humanity, whom He created to bear his image. God fully knows of every sin we have ever committed, every act of defiance, rebellion, arrogance, prejudice, every murder, every adulterous thought or deed, every theft, all of the tears of pain, bitterness and disappointment meted out to others by our sins, and God hates every bit of it with every fiber of his Holy being.
Sin is a profound evil, it is the evil of all evils. Sin is worse than suffering, for it is the cause of all suffering, it is worse than hell itself. It would be better to suffer than to sin. God hates Sin!
A true understanding of the Ten Commandments must yield one conclusion about ourselves ; We are sinners. We are worthy of only judgment and wrath from the Holy God.
My first exposure to the Bible, was reading the Sermon On The Mount. Jesus hit me very hard with the sixth and seventh commandment, where I came to the realization, that outward obedience was not enough, the Ten Commandments are spiritual. Hatred and Lust are murder and adultery in the sight of God.
I could see the danger I was in, should I die in my sins! I could slip into Hell, and then be summonsed for judgment, where my thoughts, deeds and even the secrets of my heart would be examined.
It was at that point in my life, that I was shown the cross of Jesus in a whole new light. As a Catholic, I was familiar with the cross, I remember gazing at the great Crucifix in our church, week after week, wondering what it was all about?
I knew that the figure hanging there in humiliation, between heaven and earth, with the look of piteous love, and the very crown of thorns, somehow loved me, and was dying for me. But what did it all mean? Was I to suffer too to somehow please him? Was I to feel guilt or pity over it? I just didn’t know.
But years later, at a certain place in my life I was very despondent about my sins and the sure feeling that I would go to hell when I died. My sins were way over my head and they were drowning me. I tried to go to a church, and answered many “altar calls’ to try to shake the guilt, but to no avail.
One dark day I was in my apartment reading scripture, but not even knowing what I was reading. (Have you ever been so depressed, and so distracted, you didn’t know what you were reading?) I actually realized that I was reading the same sentence in scripture over and over again, and had a clear thought come into my head, “Look at what you are reading and understand it!”( I am sure that it was the Holy Spirit).
The sentence I was reading and re reading in my distraction was
“He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be the Righteousness of God in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
In a flash I saw it.
I saw that Substitution is the plan of God for our salvation.
But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. (Galatians 4:4)
God sent his Son, made of a woman, under the Law. Jesus, the original lawgiver, humbled himself and put himself as a human being under the Law, and perfectly fulfilled it. Then at the prime of his Life, he made himself an offering to God, an died in our place on the cross, bearing the penalty for our sins, and answering the demands of the broken Law and the offended Righteousness of God.
This is the way a Righteous God could forgive a deep sinner like myself, without sweeping sin under the carpet.
We know that God has accepted his sacrifice, because on the third day, for when his friends came down to finish embalming Him, the tomb was empty, for God had raised Jesus from the dead.
I offer this series to you in the hopes that you will see your sinfulness, and turn while there is time to the Father, in the name of Jesus.
In the simplicity of a little pray, I bowed, in faith in my substttute and prayd something like this,
“Lord God, , I see it now, Jesus died in my place and took my judgment on himself. Thank you for the gift of your SON. I believe in my heart that you, Lord have raised him from the dead and I ask you to forgive me of my sins, and let Jesus be my LORD. Take over my life, and give me the gift of eternal life, in Jesus name, Amen. “
If you prayed that prayer and want help, contact me, I have some teachings and books I want to give for your faith.
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In Christ we are brought out of death into life.
Ten Commandments on right now.
Exodus 38:26 A bekah for every man [l'gulgolet, לַגֻּלְגֹּלֶת], that is, half a shekel, after the shekel of the sanctuary, for every one that went to be numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty men.
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