The miracle of the
Cross is not sublime at all! There is a
mistaken teaching that has been passed around for hundreds of years that when
Jesus Christ was crucified, he magically erased our sins, blotted them out as it
were like divine suds. That is not the case at all. He bore our sins; took them into His own body
and they putrefied within Him, sucked the life out of Him, and each one added
to His misery. Why is the Church so
content to slough off sin as a relic of our past rather than see it as the
great monstrosity of our present. Each
sin we commit today adds to the shame and horror of the crucifixion Jesus
endured two thousand years ago. Only God
could do this; bear sins committed tomorrow and not just the ones of
yesterday. As we sin and sin
unthinkingly, we strike Jesus ourselves with the whip, drive the stake deeper
in though his feet, take the rod and break it more ferociously upon his back
and sides. The sins of today are not
nothing; they pry out of Christ's body more blood and break His heart even
worse. We may be free of real guilt but
that does not mean Christ is. He bears
them all, the sins of yesterday as well as the ones of today and at some point,
won't we just stop it? Won't we just
fiercely reject the notion that we can sin freely and easily and it doesn't
matter? John the Apostle says we don't
have to keep sinning willy-nilly; we can put an end to it...not because we are
getting better at righteousness but because the Holy Spirit lives in us and
empowers us and moans too with the agony we cause Jesus every time we throw our
fist up to the Heavens and tell the Lord we will do as we wish. There is no greater evil in this universe
than our own sinning...it is the root of every terrible thing we find all about
us. Certainly your "little
sin" did not tear the earth enough
to cause the earthquake out in China but it was sin that diseased the universe
and continues to scourge earth and sky.
We are such fundamentalists when it comes to getting our garbage sorted
among the various recycling options but do we give the same care to the very
sin that brought this mess upon us? We
do not have a population crisis in our world, we have a sin crisis and the
multiplication of sin is what is "doing us in". Pray with great emotion and bitter pain
that God would keep you from temptation.
The Christian who truly understands sin will begin to loath every point
at which sin enters through him...not because of the cost he pays but due to
the cost Christ pays and that hurts dearly.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that
in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV
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