Holy Friday

The Atonement

Our distorted perception of God's intentions is well illustrated by the urban legend of a woman driving home alone one evening when she noticed a man in a large truck following her. Growing increasingly fearful, she sped up, trying to lose her pursuer, but it was futile. She then exited the freeway and drove up a main street, but the truck stayed with her, even running red lights to do so.

In a panic, the woman wheeled into a service station, jumped from the car, and ran inside screaming. The truck driver ran to her car, jerked the back door open, and pulled from the floor behind her seat a man hiding there. The woman was fleeing from the wrong person. She was running from her savior! The truck driver, perched high enough to see into her backseat, had spied the would-be rapist and was pursuing her to save her, even at his own peril.

So often we run from God, fearing His wrath, while He is pursuing us to save us from destruction. Instead of seeing Him as our Savior, we sometimes see only the promise of loss and a lack of fulfillment. I urge you - if you have sinned, stop running from Your Savior. Return to God; allow Him to forgive and heal you. He's waiting with His atoning blood.

Monday, 29 MAR 21

 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

2 Corinthians 5:21 KJV

God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

2 Corinthians 5:21 MSG

In other words, God made Jesus to be like us, so that we could be like Him.

God's Word for Monday, 3/30/2020

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

Isaiah 53:3-4 KJV

The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.

Isaiah 53:3-4 MSG

God's Word for Sunday, 3/29/2020

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

2 Corinthians 5:21 KJV

How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

2 Corinthians 5:21 MSG

God's Word for Thursday, 4/11/19

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:6-8 KJV

Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

Romans 5:6-8 MSG

God's Word for Tuesday, 4/4

Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.

Ephesians 1:7 MSG