I work in a very technical field. Right now I am between jobs, so I am learning some new things that a potential employer requires me to know. I will admit that I am very very tired of feeling overwhelmed and out of my depth. In my entire career in IT, I can’t remember a […]
The atonement we most need is the atonement that assumes we can do nothing to reform ourselves or ingratiate ourselves in some successful two-way relationship. It assumes, not that we are powerful and able to change, but that we are lost and hopeless, that we can do nothing to atone. It assumes, not that we can make up for our sins, but that our guilt is built up hanging over head like an eternal black cloud. It assumes that we need to be saved, not reformed.
There are people close to me who have been through a series of broken relationships, where they have moved in with someone, lived together with them for a time, and then for one reason or another, they have broken up. I am really sad to watch them walk through the fallout from it all. I […]
I lost my job recently. I’m actually not unhappy about it. The people there were wonderful, and it paid really well, and I think that what I did there really helped society. It ended well, and it really was time for me to go. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that I had that job. […]
Faith says that the blood of Jesus satisfies justice for every little thing we do wrong, all the time. Faith says that I always feel inadequate because I really am inadequate, but that I am saved through His cross from all of these judgements that daily accuse me. My thoughts are no longer bound up in the fear that I am inadequate and sinful and unworthy, but instead my thought is constantly that I am worthy of God’s death.
So we find the entire Jewish religious practice to be a picture of Christ. It isn’t simply that Jesus acted out a few isolated predictions from the Old Testament. It is that their entire culture was predicated on the coming of a Messiah who would be our savior through His own sacrifice. Their whole culture was law and gospel, morals and blood atonement.