Whiter than Snow on Easter Sunday

What made Jesus different than the Old Testament prophets?

John chapter 2 tells of Jesus turning plain water into wine.
II Kings chapter 4 tells of Elisha turning a poisonous pot of stew into an edible pot of stew.

Matthew chapter 14 tells of Jesus supernaturally feeding 5000 people.
I Kings chapter 17 tells of Elijah supernaturally providing food for a widow and her son for "many days".

Matthew chapter 9 tells of Jesus raising Jairus' dead daughter to life.
I Kings chapter 17 also tells of Elijah raising the widow's son from the dead.

Matthew chapter 9 also tells of Jesus healing two blind men and a mute.
II Kings chapter 5 tells of Elisha healing Naaman of leprosy.

We woke up this Easter morning to three fresh inches of powdery snow. This area of the country has been trying to grunt the birth of spring for a couple weeks now. Our 30" of snow on the ground has been burned back to about 20", and the snow that was left was hard, crusty and dirty brown. What an object lesson to awaken on Easter morning to a fresh white covering of snow; appearing to once again purify all that is around it. King David said in Psalm 51:7 "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow".

So, what made Jesus different than the Old Testament prophets?

Matthew 9:2, Jesus told the man with palsy "Son, be of good cheer: thy sins be forgiven thee". Only the God of heaven would dare make a statement so bold. And only God could make good on this word spoken to the man with palsy. This surely was the God of heaven incarnate. Only He can forgive us our sins. Only He can wash us and make us whiter than snow!
I trust that your Easter was a blessed one, and that your thoughts of His sacrifice will continue throughout the year. God bless!

A Different Crucifixion - Revisited

I wrote this post in March of '05. Since posting's been kind of slow lately, I thought I'd re-post it. If I took the time to re-write this, I maybe would have changed a few things, but here it is in it's original glory. Ironically, I've been reading through Romans lately. Just yesterday I covered chapter 6. Keep in mind that I wrote this after Easter weekend, originally. And please read through the passage to make the connection. God bless!

With this last weekend being Easter weekend, I did quite a bit of thinking about the crucifixion and the resurrection, obviously. My thoughts were on Jesus Christ and what He did for us by saving us from our sins. Not only saving us from the penalty of our sins, but for saving us from having to sin. I know we never have to sin, but we do. My mind was on the crucifixion of another person; myself.

Romans 6

¹ What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? ² God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? ³ Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ⁵ For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: ⁶ Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. ⁷ For he that is dead is freed from sin. ⁸ Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: ⁹ Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. ¹⁰ For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. ¹¹ Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. ¹² Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. ¹³ Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. ¹⁴ For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.

I was never taught this growing up. I was taught that I will fight against sin and struggle with sin my whole life. I was taught that I will sin and, for the most part, there was nothing that I could do about it. The main scripture that I was taught was 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” A free pass to sin, right? And I did. I committed sins with every intention of asking forgiveness for it later. I felt this odd, but it went along with the teaching I'd heard. Had I ever been shown this passage in Romans (v.1), I would have known better (serves me right for not studying on my own).

I don't claim to be a perfect human. I don't claim to be sinless. With the death of Jesus, with me following Him into His death, He frees us from the bondage of sin. If He says we are dead to sin, do you think He expects us to have to conquer sin on our own. When we were resurrected with Him, we were resurrected with His power to combat sin.

When we do sin, we, being a new creature clothed with Jesus, take Jesus into that sin with us. It is not our “old man” sinning. Our old man is crucified and dead (v.6). The old man is not resurrected. If we say that our old man still lives, we say one of two things. We are not saved because we did not crucify the old man; or Jesus Christ's crucifixion was not sufficient and needs to be crucified again. We know this not to be true because of verses 9 and 10.

When we are under law, or our physical self trying to live a sinless life (or our sinful self), we are condemned by the law. We are married to that law. We want to be rid of that law and be under (or marry) grace, but we can't be married to Christ and His grace while we are married to the law. We need to wait until our first marriage partner (law) is dead. When the law is dead (allowing the old man to be crucified) we are then free to be bound to Jesus Christ and His grace. This is Romans 7:1-4.

This isn't difficult to comprehend, but it is contrary to what I have been taught. I find this right in scripture (as you see above). Jesus is not going to give me a commandment not to sin and then just leave me to figure it out on my own. He has taken care of it already. We just need to claim it. Why do we set people up to sin. Why do we expect it. It's because we have given them a free pass to sin by using the 1 John passage. This has been used by those who have tried to justify their own sin by saying we are all going to sin so get used to it; oh, and by the way, you're baptized now so here's your “get-out-of-jail-for-free” card. Yes, we are free to confess our sins to be forgiven, but this is not something we should be abusing, taking for granted or taking advantage of. This should be a rare occasion. Not something that we include in our form prayer every night before bed. This should be a sorrowful occasion. Like King David's confession in Psalm 51. He didn't weep just because he had been caught in a “big” sin. He wept and cried out to the Lord because he had sinned against God. No, this probably was not his first sin, but I'm sure he didn't hold on to the philosophy of 1 John 1:9 as a trump card either. I think we too often do.

These were my thoughts this weekend. We freely sin, hoping God's grace doesn't run out, rather than living holy lives. We want to hold on to the “old man” as a scape-goat. We need to wake up to the realization that Christ has already settled this. I think Satan makes us think it's harder than it really is. He puffs himself up by whispering to us that we have no power over sin. Sin is going to happen so just let it happen. Sin should not just happen. Our sinful self was crucified with Jesus. Let's act that way. Have you been crucified, yet?

Global Warming...again

Maybe I missed something. Or maybe I’m not taking this serious enough. Not only is the Vatican adding “ruining the environment” to the list of mortal sins, but the Southern Baptists are now actively taking a stance to stop global warming. 46 key members of the SBC criticized their denomination for being too timid when it comes to global warming. They say their passivity comes across as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed to the world. They should add that their stance against homosexuality comes across as uncaring; their stance against abortion comes across as reckless; and their stance against female clergy is ill-informed (all according to the world). Since when do we worry about how the world views the Church. The Church doesn’t belong to the world, it belongs to Jesus Christ. We should be worried what HE thinks about it. Once again, maybe He is worried how we’re viewed by the alarmists that are the global warming crowd. Maybe I have it all wrong. And as for the Catholic Church adding “mortal sins” willy-nilly, what more can you say. It’s the Catholic Church. If you follow the link and read the article, it sounds like they’re more concerned about their confessional rates plummeting. Maybe this is a way to draw more people in?