Blood Bought

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Blood012_edited-2 copyRedemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. Ephesians 1:7.

I have heard it and read it innumerable times, and, in the repetition, my mind becomes desensitized to the immeasurable anguish and unspeakable agony of Jesus. I have struggled for years to understand the brutality of His death. The attempts at depicting it on the screen fall pitiably short of the actual trauma and mutilation. His mom witnessed it and was, perhaps, close enough to be splattered with her son’s blood. It was nothing less than horrific. Why the bloody brutality? Why not a quicker less painful death?
The Old Testament altar was a bloody place. Perfect lambs were sacrificed to atone for sin – their blood poured out day after day. Sin is written into my DNA and struggles to the surface of my life on a daily basis. I was born bad, and, even on my best days, I still fall short. The price on my head: death. No plea bargains. No negotiating. Blood was the ransom demanded for my life because without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.[1] But instead of sacrificing me, God sacrificed His Son shedding His blood to atone for my sin.[2]
The record of all my sins were laid on Christ and nailed to the cross. They were all washed white in the crimson flood and erased from the record forever. He does not condemn me now nor will He – not now, not ever.[3]
“…the Christian’s total debt has been paid by the death of Christ….The debt of our sins has been marked ‘Paid in Full!’….not only has the debt been fully paid, there is no possibility of going into debt again. Jesus paid the debt of all our sins: past, present and future. As Paul said in Colossians 2:13 ‘[God] forgave us all our sins.’ We don’t have to start all over again and try to keep the slate clean. There is no more slate.”[4]
So, how does that change today? What difference does it make right now? His death tore, from top to bottom, the thick veil separating me from God and exposed the sacred place of His Presence. He pealed back the covering of His heart and now calls me close. The Eternal Living God draws me into the hum of His power and the intimate pulse of His heart. He wants a personal relationship with me every moment of my day and has made the way.
Today, by His precious blood, I have entered the inmost sacred place of God – the very Holy of Holies – and sat in peace with the One who ransomed me and set me free from sin’s power and the strangling grip of guilt. I can talk intimately with Him and experience His power and Presence in my life day after day after glorious day. Hallelujah!
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[1] Hebrews 9:22
[2] Romans 3:25
[3] Romans 8:1-2
[4] Bridges, Jerry. (2008). Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love. Colorado Springs: NavPress.

Divine Mystery or Contradiction?

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The mind, composed of the elements of the earth, attempts to understand Divine mystery. The mystery of the Trinity or how Jesus could be fully God and fully man at the same time overwhelms the mind. How did Jesus become sin and still be the sinless Lamb of God who could pay my debt? How can the infinite God be contained in my body?
The mind linked to the body encased by time can’t grasp the mysteries of faith. Logic and intellect attempt to explain, but, in so doing, we cram God into the box of language.
I’ve been reading Ephesians for a couple months now, but am still in chapter 1. My mind slammed into a divine mystery in verses 4 – 6, and I’ve been groping around the edges of election and free will for a couple weeks. In an attempt to avoid cramming God into a box of words, I’ve identified a handful of truths He’s given us in the inerrant scriptures He inspired and spoke.
Truth: Chosen v. 4
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. I was chosen by God before time began. He set His love upon me and made me His before I existed and before there was an earth. He chose me, and I will never be unchosen.
Truth: Predestined v. 5, 6

  • In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will. With great love and tender affection, He set me apart to be His child because it delighted Him. By His will, I am. By His will, I’m becoming what He designed me to be.
  • to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. This is not about me or anything I did. I was nothing more than a deplorable object of wrath, but He lifted me to His great heart and made me an object of His mercy to the praise of His glorious grace which He continues to lavish upon me without reserve or condition.

Truth: He chose first – John 15:16
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit…. He chose me first. So, did I have a choice? Could I have chosen Him if He had not chosen me?
Truth: Free will – John 3:16, John 7:36, Revelation 22:17, Deuteronomy 30:19-20

  • If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink….
  • For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
  • Is anyone thirsty? Come! All who will, come and drink, drink freely of the Water of Life!
  • I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.

Anyone who thirsts, whoever believes, all who will come – the invitation is extended to all. He sets a choice before every human being and says, choose life. But we can choose death.
If I don’t believe the offered medicine will heal me and don’t accept it, then I will die as the fatal disease consumes me. If I accept it, I’m healed by the power of the remedy not by my act of choosing. My rejection of the cure denies its power to heal, but my acceptance of it unleashes its power to save.
Choosing or being chosen? Election or free will? Are they exclusive? Can it be both? The two sides of this Divine mystery – Sovereign choice and our free will to choose – are both unequivocally and absolutely true simultaneously.
In John chapter 6 Jesus combined these two truths:
Truth: Chosen v. 37
All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
Truth: Free will v. 40
For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.
Truth: Chosen v. 44
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.
Truth: Free will v. 47
Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.
I can’t reconcile the two sides of the mystery but faith accepts that both are true. The Father chooses who of us He will give to His Son, and no one comes unless God compels them. But He didn’t create robots. He wants to be chosen as much as He wants to choose. Does God not have the right to choose His bride, and would He not want His bride to freely choose Him?
“Men by their sins have forfeited all claim upon God; they deserve to perish for their sins – and if they all do so, they have no ground for complaint….When we are brought to see our own utter ruin, and the justice of the divine verdict against sin, we no longer scoff at the truth that the Lord is not bound to save us; we do not murmur if he chooses to save others, as though He were doing us an injury, but feel that if he deigns to look upon us, it will be His own free act of undeserved goodness, for which we will forever bless His name….”[1]
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this’?” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory? Romans 9:15, 18-23
What if He did this to overwhelm me with the riches of His glory?
I will bless His name forever for He is Sovereign and controls my hours and days. With love, He chose me and works through every circumstance to achieve His purpose in my life. I can make poor choices and turn away from Him. Though they will never separate me from Him, those choices will limit His greatness in my life and create shallowness. Or I can choose life and be overwhelmed by His glory and filled with all of His fullness.
Cynthia Heald, in her book A Woman’s Journey to the Heart of God, wrote “…the choices I make today determine whether I move toward Him, or toward self and the world. …one day I must give an account of my life to God. I will answer for the choices I made. I can never say, ‘The devil made me do it,’ for God has delivered me from the rule of Satan so that I am no longer a slave to sin. And I cannot say, ‘God why didn’t You make me do it?’ for He loves me too much to force me to obey Him.”
God of my heart, Maker of my soul, I am Yours. I love You. Deepen my love for You and Your people. Give me grace to surrender all to you – my freedoms and my chains. Show me Your ways, teach me Your truth and give me more faith to follow to the praise of Your glorious grace.
[1] Charles Spurgeon, (2003). Morning and Evening, Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books.

Soul-Union

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…that I Myself may be in them. John 17:26b
I stuck my nose into the white blossom of the star magnolia in my yard and inhaled sweetness. I wonder what God inhales when He puts His nose into my heart. If it’s sweet, it’s Christ in me. If it’s foul, it’s my own attempt at fragrance.
Christ Himself in me. I have soul-union with the living God! How does that work? Why on earth would the One that time and infinite space cannot contain do that?
“…this soul-union of which I speak, this unspeakably glorious mystery of an indwelling God is the possession of even the weakest and most failing believer in Christ.”[1] Hannah Whitall Smith
God has chosen to take up residence in this physical body of mine and be united to me. I am the dwelling place of God. I am not my own anymore. Every day, all day, every thought that runs through my mind, every word spoken, everything I do is in union with Jesus Christ. That should change everything.
I have been hovering over Ephesians 1:3 for quite some time: All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. 
The blessing of God is soul-union with God. Stop there and ponder that for a few weeks. In our poverty, our persecutions, our failures, our deteriorating health and frenetic lifestyles, we are blessed more than we can grasp, and more than we have embraced. Unimaginable blessing flows from our union with Him.
“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love him — these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. I Corinthians 2:9-10
Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know. Jeremiah 33:3 
The Spirit of God, who searches the deepest depths of God, longs to reveal the secrets of the deep. We can know these great and mysterious secrets. He wants us to know. He is always trying to tell us and waits for us to listen. There is a language of Deity, a transcendent exchange, and if I am still long enough to listen in the quiet, I will catch the inaudible song of the Trinity. All this is taking place in me, and I am called into the conversation. What glorious unspeakable blessings in Christ!
[1] Smith, H. W. (2009). The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
 

Going Deeper

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“A continual cry of my heart is that I might always be deepening my intimacy with the Lord. I do not want to become complacent, or even satisfied, in my current relationship with Him. I desire to keep growing in my love and knowledge of God – in essence, I thirst for His ongoing power and presence in my life.”[1] Cynthia Heald
30 years ago, I was floundering on the surface of Christianity trying to find my way into a deeper experience of God. After years of failure, I reached the end of myself and gave up. My spirit stilled, waiting for what might or might not come next.
In my quiet desperation, I began reading Ephesians and writing out my heart. God drew close, materializing out of the fog of my despair, and began His deepening work in my heart. Yet, the deeper He has drawn me, the more I despair of my shallowness and the greater my longing to know God more. For there is no limit, no rocky bottom, no end nor finality to the wondrously unimaginable depths of God. And I feel that I have only splashed in the spreading waves of the surf.
At the gate of 2015, He has again stirred my heart to return to Ephesians and plunge deeper. He has also brought back to me the writings of several of the godly seekers of the deep: Cynthia Heald, AW Tozer, Calvin Miller, and Andrew Murray. Their panting after God has inspired me over the years, and drawn me after them and after the One they pursue.
So, begins the next leg of my journey and rereading Ephesians and writing and, this time, blogging it. [For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly.] Philippians 3:10a, Amplified Bible
“…now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.”[2] A.W. Tozer
Anyone else thirst for God’s ongoing power and presence in your life? Anyone else hungry to go deeper into the mysterious depths of the Triune God? He calls us to it. He yearns and waits for it.
[1] Heald, C. (2009). Dwelling in His Presence. Colorado Springs: NAVPRESS, p. 7.
[2] Tozer, A. W. (1993). The Pursuit of God. Camp Hill: Christian Publications, p. 14.
 

First Christmas

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One day out of the blue (rather, out of heaven), the angel Gabriel stood in front of a very young woman. If it weren’t enough of a shock for a tall handsome angel to appear out of nowhere, he then announced to Mary, “You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.”
She, a virgin engaged to be married, was going to become pregnant with God’s son. Questions raced through her mind. “How in the world is that supposed to happen? How am I going to explain this one, and who will believe me? This changes everything!”
After learning how the impossible was going to happen, she looked up at Gabriel and simply replied, “I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said.” The angel then vanished with a smile.
In response to her absolute surrender, the mighty power of God moved upon her and the glory cloud of His Presence overshadowed her. In that private moment, heaven’s most astounding miracle materialized in secret – hidden in the womb of Mary and obscured by a cloud of glory.
Her heart was overwhelmed by the joy of His Presence and enveloped with His peace. Deity became two cells, then four cells, then eight, and soon the tiny heart of God’s Son began beating and circulating the atoning blood. All the fullness of Deity inhabited the humanity of a baby.
As the days of her pregnancy stretched on, she pondered all these things and treasured them in her heart. She keep turning the incredible message of the angel over and over in her mind – “the Most High God favors me, and I bear His Son…the King!”
While she and Joseph (who received his own personal message from the angel) were in Bethlehem to be registered for the census, the days were accomplished for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. Far above the lowly stable, in the black of the night, stood a star as a bright sentinel over the King.
Mary sat in the hay tenderly cradling Jesus under the gaze of a few animals. She counted ten little fingers and ten little toes and marveled at his tiny little fingernails. She held her newborn baby boy…she held the Ancient of Days, the One who named the stars, and she looked in wonder into the eyes of her Creator – the very eyes of very God himself. And they called him Immanuel which means, “God with us.” And so, the light of the world dawned in the darkness of a stable.
The only sounds in the night were the breathing of the animals and an occasional switch of a tail. A cool breeze rustled the hay and caressed the tiny face of God then slipped out into the night whispering the miraculous birth of the King.
An ecstatic multitude of the heavenly host crowded around the portal anxious to charge through and announce the greatest news ever to be proclaimed. Gabriel gestured for silence and for some much needed angelic composure. Then he slipped through the portal and stood before a small group of astonished shepherds. The luminous angel told of the birth of their Messiah.
Meanwhile in the other realm, the angelic order was once more about to disintegrate. The angelic host couldn’t take it any longer and pushed their way through the portal. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, good will toward men.”
The stunned shepherds rushed to Bethlehem and found Joseph and Mary in the stable. The scruffy men knelt in the hay before a manger that held God incarnate, the hope of humanity. In that humble hallowed place, they worshipped their Savior and their King.
God so loved us that he opened the treasury of heaven and gave his most precious gift – his only Son wrapped in human flesh. Even now, God draws us to the cradle of his humanity and overwhelms us with the glory of His Deity. How can we not fall to our knees in worship?
For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.
 

The concept of ecstatic angels was taken from Gene Edwards, The Birth, the Chronicles of the Door, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1991.
Scriptures used: Luke 1 and 2, Isaiah 9:6

 

How Far Can God Throw?

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Last week as I reflected on yet another birthday, I pondered God’s gifts to me. The first one He brought to the forefront of my mind was forgiveness. He led me to one of my favorite forgiveness promises – I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more (Jeremiah 31:34) – and He underscored the last phrase. It’s beyond my ability to comprehend, but His all-knowing mind chooses to delete my sins and never retrieve them….ever. God isn’t forgetful. The Ancient of Days hasn’t misplaced them. He purposefully and irretrievably removes my sin from His mind washing them away with His own blood.
From Jeremiah, He took me to other treasured places of forgiveness: Psalm 103:12; Isaiah 38:7; 43:25; and 44:22. He drew pictures of unreachable unsearchable distances, of blotted stains and vanishing mists. Then He took me to a new place in Micah 7, and I fell in love all over again.
This final chapter of Micah is set within the context of sin and guilt then culminates magnificently with forgiveness and love…
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives…? (verse 18)
Who is this God that fully pardons at no cost to me? All other gods roaming the planet and all those I place before Him are slave masters that imprison and condemn. There is no God like our God who placed all our sin on His Son and condemned and judged it once and for all.
You will again have compassion on us; You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea (verse 19).
I love the Hebrew word for compassion – racham. It’s a deep stirring of love and tender affection. When God looks at me, He is moved in His core with deep love even when I’m most unlovable and prickly. I can never exhaust His love, and His compassion for me never fails or falters – it’s brand new every morning. So, I drag myself out of bed and revel in the freshness of His racham.
Picture God walking on your sin with complete disregard then hurling the whole and totality of it into the depths of the sea. How far can God throw? To the bottomless depths of forgiven and forgotten and out of existence forever. And He will never dredge them up…so, why do we?