Freedom
So, you think that you know what love is? Love is knowing the truth about forgiveness.
Read 1 John 4:10
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The ISSUE is SIN, our sin. It is sin that has separated us from God and it is His death that has reconciled us back to Him.
The TRUTH about sin is that the only accurate measurement of it is to compare it with the character of God, Himself and not with our fellow man. The absolute TRUTH is that we fall short of His Glory and His Righteousness. We must receive His Righteousness. If not we must be prepared for a destiny in the Lake of Fire. The Key to Life is to ask ourselves the following question:
What think ye of Christ?
You and I are guilty of murder, yes, that is right MURDER, we are murderers and according to the law of man we must die. Well, guess what, according to the law of God, We must die. God tells us in Genesis Chapter 9 that he who sheds the blood of an innocent man, by man his blood must be shed. God also tells us that the wages of sin is death.
Not only are we sinners, but we caused Him to go to the Cross. Jesus Christ was sinless and it was illegal by the laws of man and God for Him to die. Even His trial was illegal and was illegally done at night and yet He did not defend Himself. His love for us was so great that He maintained silence willingly accepting all of our sins including rejecting Him and carried it to the Cross where our judgment was poured out on Him. On the Cross, He hung bled and died for us not for Him. The works that He did ENDED on the Cross and yet the consequences will go on into eternity. Referring to John 3:16, Romans 6:23, John 14-17, we know that the purpose of the Cross was to reconcile us back to Him. He paid the penalty with His life and by accepting that, it is our responsibility to grow in His Grace and in knowledge of Him so that we can live by His lifestyle making positive choices and disallowing circumstances from ruling in our lives. You see, some of us have made circumstances our god. Jesus has removed circumstances from controlling us, none of us will ever have to live through the trying circumstances that He did and yet according to the Father’s Will and Purpose, Jesus did. He wants us to know that if we have accepted Him truly in our hearts and minds (not socially, intelligently or professionally) then we have the eternal salvation that He died for and it is time for us to move forward in maturity so that we can make a difference. It is not our purpose to hang on to our past miseries but to step forward with new life, a life that reflects His Glory on earth.
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The Bricks of The Barrier to God |
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| The First Brick is Sin | For all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God. Romans 3:23 |
| The Second Brick is the penalty of Sin | For the wages of sin is death. romans 6:23 |
| The Third Brick is physical death | Man is born physically alive but spiritually dead, separated from and unable to have fellowship with God. "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins." Ephesians 2:1 |
| The Fourth Brick is man's relative righteousness | No matter how good man may be, his human righteousness is completely unacceptable to God. "For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment. Isaiah 64:6 |
| The Fifth Brick is the Character of God | Man can never measure up to the Divine attributes of Perfect God. No one is as good as God. "There is none who does good, there is not even one." Romans 3:1 |
| The Sixth Brick is man's position in Adam | "For as in Adam all die." 1 Corinthians 15:22. Adam's fall and subsequent spiritual death not only disqualified all humanity from fellowship with God, but also limited the physical life span of the human race. |
Chart on the bricks from R.B. Thieme Ministries