Nearly every culture has a sacrificial system. Mankind instinctively understands that we will be severely judged and penalized unless we make up for our shortcomings and sins. Unless we do penance for being smaller than we are created to be.
I got to thinking about what it means to be a Christian, with the incredible freedom of a relationship with God. What a pleasure to live life without mandatory good works and an ongoing balancing act of, “Am I good enough” weighing us down. We do good because we love to please the one who has satisfied all requirements, not to prevent great harm.
This verse sparked my meditation: John the Baptizer saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) What? Someone has taken this entire debt away? Removed not only the sins I do but the very nature of sin that enslaved me?
Why would I not fall on my face in joyful worship and lift my hands in grateful praise to a God who understands me well enough to make such a provision?
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*Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.
For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it and his hand formed the dry land. Come let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care. Psalm 95:1-7 NIV
*…the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world. Revelation 13:8 NEV
*Nothing impure will ever enter [the holy city God builds at the end of time], nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.
Revelation 21:26-27 NEV
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