Month: March 2012

Facing Calvary Ocho : Ransomed or Redeemed

Lenten Reflections Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi 2012

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For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10:45

The word redeemed has become favored in church vernacular as we talk of our salvation. It speaks of the marketplace, a milieu of which we are familiar. Use and time have softened the edges and made it safe like the carpenter does with hard corner of a table apron. We are a redeemed people, a part of a transaction on which many of us fail to reflect these days. Redemption gives us a sense of payment changing hands, but from what and from whom we have little recollection.

It is also what we do with grocery-store discount coupons.

Ransom, on the other hand, conjures up images of zip-ties, blindfolds, panel vans and grimy, artificially darkened rooms. Sweat and fear permeate the air and the transaction forms the balance between life and death. Since that fateful day in the Garden, humanity has been held in the grips of this tableau, this shadowy existence of bondage. We feel free but our soul groans each time we bump into the boundaries of our prison, our hands unable to break free and find a way out. Trapped.

The sin that holds us in bondage is not of our making, but it is our reality. Like captives who begin to identify with their captors, we rationalize and find the sin not so difficult to abide. Many times, we like it, mistaking it for true freedom. We are tempted to try to make our own deal for release, to try to barter with our captor only to discover the price, life itself. Blood must pay the price.

Blood did pay the price.

Ransom is an ugly word but it is our reality, brothers and sisters. We were bound and headed to death until the only One who could pay the ransom did so. The price cannot be measured in dollars and cents like other transactions. The price was life for life. He give His so that you might have yours. Don’t cheapen it. Live it.

Grace and peace to you.

image ian sane

Facing Calvary Seven : Hilaskomai

Lenten Reflections Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi 2012

God 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—he 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. (NIV) Rom 3:25-26

imageChrist Jesus ,whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. (ESV) Rom 3:25

The question of what was accomplished on the Cross that Friday afternoon has both simple and complex answers. The simple response is, it changed everything. A more in-depth examination discovers the true magnitude of that change.

The truth of Romans 3:23 [All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God] points us to His attitude toward humankind. His holiness demands retribution, His love leads to sacrifice. The perfection of His character does not allow one or the other. Propitiation—the turning of God’s righteous wrath away from sinners—is the answer to the first, the self-sacrifice of Himself in Christ the second. No substance or creature from within the fallen world held the perfection necessary to fulfill the demand of perfect holiness. For this reason, Jesus enters the world thirty-three years previous.

Modern Christians don’t often meditate on the turning aside of God’s wrath. We have pushed into the realms of the angry-God of the Old Testament, forgetting that it demanded the life of Christ for satisfaction. The life of our buddy. The life of the Jesus of modern prom songs. The life of Jesus who has become a casual expletive.

The life of Jesus our Savior.

 

Grace and peace to you in the Name of the One who is over all and through all and in all.

image Fred Jackson

Psalm 114 ~ We Ran So Far Away

 

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Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,

at the presence of the God of Jacob,

who turned the rock into a pool,

the hard rock into springs of water. Ps 114:7-8

The psalmist pours out his worship as he remembers the great work of God in bringing His people out of Egypt. Psalm 114 is brief but wonderfully expressive. He writes of the moment marking the birth of Israel, of the becoming God’s people.

When Israel came out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign tongue,

Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion. (vv 1-2)

Do we have an equally exquisite psalm stored up in our hearts for the day we were called out from our previous bondage? In true worship of the Holy Almighty God, you and I as His people should be putting pen to paper and leaving a legacy of thanks for those who come after us. That they may read of our transition from imprisonment to freedom is the greatest motivation we can give to others, imbuing them with hope for their own situation.

Grace and Peace to you..

image Sonyason

Facing Cavalry Six : Substitute

Lenten Reflections Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi 2012

imageWe all, like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. Isaiah 53:6-7

Of the array of forensic categories for understanding the atonement, it is the substitutionary idea that draws our attention. Facing Golgatha, we ask why in seeking to understand the necessity of the Savior  hanging upon the cross. The answer, it seems, is quite simple; He alone was able to do what we could never do. Jesus alone was able to take the sins of all humanity on His scourged shoulders, bearing up the weight unto death and assuaging the righteous God.

The application is more complex. As Cranfield writes in his commentary on Romans:

God, because in his mercy he willed to forgive sinful men, and, being truly merciful, willed to forgive them righteously, that is, without in any way condoning their sin, purposed to direct against his own very self in the person of his Son the full weight of that righteous wrath which they deserved.

The wrath that we deserve for our heinous sins. The wrath that we deserve for our lack of love for others. The wrath we deserve for the slightest transgression that we dismiss without a thought. The wrath demanded by the perfect holiness of the God we serve. The wrath expressed in love; the great paradox of God placing himself in our position. The love we are challenged to understand;

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Grace and peace to you in the Name of the One who is over all and through all and in all.

image Maurice Koop

Four Chords and Seven Hours Ago…

imageThe progression itself wasn’t anything special—D Am7 C G. Guitar players have been fashioning  songs from those notes since the first neck attached to a spruce top and strummed. That the fingers naturally move from one tone to the next may contribute something; a natural abandon inhabits the musician when following the chart becomes secondary. The feet move, the neck is raised in emphasis and the voice finds its volume.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty

Who was and is and is to come

With all creation I sing praise to the King of Kings

You are my everything and I will adore you

Your eyes roam around the stage as you are caught up in the moment of worship being shared with your fellow musicians. The world truly fades away and an apprehension sets in as the last verse is sung and you know the end of the song is approaching but you don’t want it to stop. There are smiles and closed eyes as each person approaches the throne through their own music. Harmonies are heard, the drummer locked in and then filling with abandon. The Spirit heavy in His presence, descending in reception and encouraging us on. Laying aside the crowns of this world for a brief glimpse of heaven, this is the privilege of worship.

And then the realization that so few on Sunday will share this moment…the heart breaks.

Filled with wonder, awestruck wonder

At the mention of Your name

Jesus your name is power, breath and living water

Such a marvelous mystery

 

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Facing Calvary Five : Satisfaction

Lenten Reflections Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi 2012

imageEmil Brunner suggests a duality in God that is appropriate for our reflection during this Lenten season. We are fond of the oft-repeated aphorism God is love. It is a truth borne out in Scripture (1 John 4) but it is also a truth that seems foreign the closer our proximity to the Golgotha hill.

Why would a God of love demand such a price?

In challenging this simplistic assertion, Brunner states that “God is not simply Love. The nature of God cannot be exhaustively stated in one single word.” Our dilemma arises as we gaze upon the broken body of the savior hanging from the beam, all the while knowing that God’s wrath demands this unimaginable price. God is love and wrath, simultaneously.

Brunner continues, saying that the Cross of Christ “is the event in which God makes known his holiness and his love simultaneously, in one event, in an absolute manner.” Whatever our understanding of atonement, it must take this duality into consideration.

Emil Brunner, Mediator

Grace and peace to you in the Name of the One who is over all and through all and in all.

image Charles Stirton

Facing Calvary Four : Sin and the Need for Atonement

Lenten Reflections Anno Domini Nostri Iesu Christi 2012

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Why doesn’t God just forgive everybody?

Why indeed? Why was it necessary that the Divine Lamb to die in such a horrific manner to appease the wrath of God? This question and thousands like it have been voiced by believers through the years, often with poorly formed answers and a surfeit of resulting fruit. This question and the thousands like it also reveal the inadequacy of our understanding of atonement. The direct answer to the question is jarring:

Because of your sin, its depth, severity and continued existence.

Let that sink in and your mind races with denial and justification for your personal sinfulness. Certainly, your heart tells you, your sin cannot possibly be that bad! Oh, I might do this or that every once in a while, and occasionally I slip up in this area but I’m a pretty good person. This isn’t a new attitude, though its depth sometimes appears to have historical measure. Few are the Christians who wrestle with the true nature of their fallen souls. Fewer still are the numbers who stand their sin against the absolute holiness of God.

You see, only when we fully comprehend the perfection of God’s holiness can we begin to form a theology of atonement. Only when we have heard from the Spirit how God sees any sin, large or small, as horrific can we even start to understand the answer to our initial question. Only when we understand that God Almighty cannot be in the presence of even the slightest hint of sin can we start to see why the blood sacrifice of the Son was necessary. Only then will we ask the right question,

Can God be in my presence?

Grace and peace to you in the Name of the One who is over all and through all and in all.

image pinkMoose

Burial Cloth and Neatness

The Jesus We Missed by Patrick Henry Reardon

imageThe folding of the kerchief may have been completely unconscious. I do not find this hard to believe. The universal Christ, the eternal Word in whom all things subsist, was still the same Jesus to whom an act of elementary neatness came naturally.

It was in reading these words in the closing paragraphs of The Jesus We Missed that the import of the book finally took hold. The humanity of Christ, while a matter of theological discussion through the centuries, is rarely given the biographical treatment that we read on these pages. Is it important? I believe yes, because the full picture of the God-man Jesus is incomplete unless the full measure of his humanity is realized and taken into account alongside of His words and actions.

Jesus was not God simply inhabiting a human form. He was God who willingly made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness (Phil 2:7). He was not an infant who simply pretended not to comprehend the voices around him, Jesus was the helpless babe in the feed trough. He was the terrible two-year-old, the rebellious teenager, the young man full of strength and possessing the craftsmen’s hands.

And He was God, knowing an intimate relationship with the heavenly Father that we are called to emulate in the days preceding His return.

Reardon’s excellent book is not a casual read. It demands consideration on every page of the human nature of the Savior. In doing so, the reader is awakened to the senses of sight, smell and hearing in the fully-man Jesus. Events that often take on an other-worldly character when we forget His humanity are viewed in a different light as you consider scriptural hints that you may have skimmed in the past. The human portrait that Reardon paints is an encouragement to the reader in addition to its edification. Jesus relied on prayer to know the Father and His will and God used that open conduit to guide the Son’s steps. Has He promised anything less to us?

The Jesus We Missed will challenge you. It is written for the non-theological reader but that doesn’t make it a breezy read. You will be stopped on page after page as you find facets of the Lord that you had not considered in your travels through the Bible. Don’t hesitate to put the book down and pick up the Scriptures. The expanded perspective is well worth the time.

I am grateful to Thomas Nelson who provided this copy for review.