EASTER
Romans 6:23 says: “The wages [payment] for sin is death.” This is
not a “maybe.” It’s absolute. The results of sin come in the form of immediate
death or in various partial deaths—body parts not working right, sicknesses and
diseases, mental disorders, accidents, bad relationships, etc. But God made a
way we would not have to pay the full price.
God gave people freedom to choose, and He knew people would choose
badly sometimes. He knew that the consequences would get into the DNA makeup,
and once sin got started, the results would be passed from generation to
generation, no matter how good a person tried to be. Sin eats away at people;
that is its nature. So God chose a people He could work with and gave them a
way to make amends for their sins.
They could substitute a personal sacrifice, paying with something
very dear to them, and the sin would be covered for a certain period of time,
without the deserved consequences. In Old Testament times, they sacrificed
sheep, wheat, barley, doves, and other things that were precious to them and
valuable. This quickly got perverted in many cultures to sacrificing babies and
virgins (the purest and most precious), which of course, is the exact opposite
of what God wanted.
God’s ultimate plan was to give His own son Jesus to mankind,
trusting that Jesus would escape death and hell by never committing any sin.
When you accept Jesus into your heart and life, you have the most
valuable and precious treasure imaginable, greater than anything else in all
God’s creation.
And when it comes to giving up your most valuable treasure as a
payment for sin, you didn’t even have to think about it because Jesus already
did it. He gave His life for all our sins because He loved us. And by the way,
He knew what he was getting when He got us, our broken miserable selves with
all our problems, but He did it anyway!
Jesus was a perfect man, and He was the payment for all the sins
humans commit. But instead of having to remain dead or in hell, God raised Him
from the dead as victorious over everything bad. When we believe in Him, He’s
willing to be our Lord. Could you get any better than that? No.
If you don’t know Jesus Christ and you want to, then say with your
mouth, “Jesus You’re my Lord, and I believe in my heart that God, our Creator,
raised you from the dead, free and victorious over everything.” (Rom. 10:9-10).
Jesus Christ comes into your heart, and all the old sin is washed
out. You become a new person with the seed of Christ in you to stay. And that
seed in you rejects sin. So when you slip up (and we all do), God says just
admit it, confess that you were dead wrong, and we’ve all been dead wrong a
number of times in our lives. Sometimes we don’t even know it until years
afterwards, but repenting takes the burden of sin off, and that is a great
relief.
Telling God that we know we were dead wrong about something is
telling the truth, and God agrees with us, Yes, you were dead wrong. He loves
us and already knows we’re going to sin at times, even with the spirit of
Christ in us. But when we admit we were dead wrong about stuff, it’s the truth.
God knows it, and we know it. Then He is able to forgive us and expects us to
move on.
When God Almighty forgives us, we have no right to hold onto guilt
anymore! We’re forgiven by God, and He forgets it too. Our sins go into an
ocean of forgetfulness “for I
will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer.
31:34). He doesn’t want to be pestered anymore by our whining and
lingering on something that we both knew was wrong. There’s no room for
thoughts and actions that prolong the shadow of sin on our lives. It’s
forgotten and needs to be dropped while we move on to the new things the Lord
has for us to do. “Behold, I
will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?
I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isa. 43:19).
We repent and receive our forgiveness from sin, and if we have to
endure a few consequences, so be it. Jesus guides us through those too. “If God
peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they
may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by
him at his will. (2 Tim. 2:25-26).
Jesus paid it all. He died for everything bad about us and everything
good about us. And He is alive now to lead us and bless us. We can live free in
the goodness of God’s plan for a victorious life now and forever through the
sacrifice and resurrection of His beloved son, Jesus Christ.
Love, Carolyn
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