Saturday, January 24, 2015

Christ: Our Salvation



“…now Christ has come, as the high priest of all the blessings which were to come. He has passed through the greater, the more perfect tent, … and he has entered the sanctuary once and for all, taking with him, not the blood of goats and bull calves, but his own blood, having won an eternal redemption for us. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer are sprinkled on those who have incurred defilement and they restore the holiness of their outward lives (emphasis mine); how much more effectively the blood of Christ, who offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to God through the eternal Spirit, can purify our inner self (emphasis mine) from dead actions so that we do our service to the living God” (Hebrews 9: 11-14).

 The Old Covenant was but a shadow of the New. God’s power in saving the Israelites from the slavery of the Egyptians—all who sprinkled their doorposts with the blood of the slaughtered unblemished lamb were saved from death--was but a foreshadowing of God saving us by the blood of His only begotten Son from the slavery of Satan, a slavery far more devastating than any kind of slavery here on earth by human beings enslaving other human beings.  Satan roams the world in search of souls to cast into everlasting fire, separated from God for all eternity. The slavery that we endure here on earth never separates us from God, as God’s connection with us is eternal, is of the spirit and can never be severed by what can happen to us physically. Spiritually, God has secured our eternal redemption in Christ Jesus, the unblemished Lamb of God who takes away sin and who sits at the right side of His heaven Father in heaven interceding for us.

Steep me, O God, in this mystery of redemption and the price it cost your Son to save me from the slavery of sin.

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