Sounds like a good book.
I’ve heard more than my share and HATE it.
I know people mean well, but it is somshallow and dismissed, I’ve come to almost wanting to punch someone in the mouth when I hear another oe.
Looks like an interesting book. I saw one on a very similar theme when I was at a friend’s house for a meeting Sunday evening, but another attendee borrowed it before I could ask!
“God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.”
——————
That one really bothers me. I have known people with severe mental illness. They obviously got more than they could handle. I have to hope for a better eternity for such sufferers because this life has been awful.
Here’s a quick clichéd phrase the church could live without, “Jesus died on the cross for your sin.”
It’s not wrong, but it’s very nearly sinfully glib. It goes NOWHERE NEAR far enough in describing the transaction that occurred on Calvary.
Yes, Jesus did die on the cross, and the manner in which he died did affect salvation for everyone who would receive him. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, that “in Christ Gid was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them...” (2 Cor. 5:19).
Friends, that’s Divine forgiveness right there. Forgiveness of everything, forever. To put it another way, the Earth is filled with unsaved people who don’t know they’re more than halfway to Heaven already. The forgiveness is complete they’ve just got to accept that it’s true, and come to the table with repentance.
But what did God DO at the cross make all of that happen?
Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death, and there are no qualifiers. A single “white lie” counts every bit as much as genocide. You sin; you die. Period. But how do you die?
Your sin, no matter how seemingly innocuous, so afronts the astounding HOLINESS of God, that Divine Justice demands from you your very life. And, as it is The Almighty Whom you have, ultimately, sinned against, it is He Who is the Authority designated to take your life from you.
Succinctly, per Romans 6:23:
The ‘wages’ — the payback, the penalty, the fine, the punishment — of sin is death by execution at the hands of God Himself.
Back to Calvary, then.
Since Jesus bore our punishment himself on that cross as God “laid upon him the iniquity of us all,” Jesus was executed in our place.
On The Cross, God The Father PERSONALLY EXECUTED God The Son in your place, and in mine.
“Yet it was the will of the LORD to CRUSH him; He has put him to grief...”
— Isaiah 53:10
The Jews didn’t kill Jesus on the cross.
The Romans didn’t kill him.
Jesus didn’t die from the physiological traumas of crucifixion.
[Remember, when the soldiers came to break his legs to hasten his passing, they marveled that He was dead already.]
None of that killed Jesus.
Jesus died because God executed him, and Jesus submitted willingly, as he testified:
“No one takes [my life] away from me, but I lay it down of my own free will. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it back again.”
— John 10:18
So, what shall we say to this?
Perhaps it’s time The Church spoke the fullness of The Eternal Gospel PLAINLY: “On The Cross, God The Father PERSONALLY EXECUTED Jesus, God The Son, for your sin.”
The hour grows late, the shadows are lengthening, and night is falling when no man can work.
Let us be done with the glib and be clear.
If it is just you or just you and your spouse sure.
But when the We is you and God, you can indeed do all things through Christ.