Christ Our Lord (Final part)

 This sin gave Satan the firm foothold he had been looking for. Sin and Satan now held the world in a vice-like grip. God’s people now walked in darkness: oppressed by Satan. Spiritually speaking, they lived in a never-end­ing winter: rarely experiencing the warmth of God’s love.

Enslaved by sin as they were, they were doomed to die both physically and spiritually. ‘(Adam’s) sin brought death with it. As a result, death has spread to the whole human race be­cause everyone has sinned.’ – Romans 5:12

Who could rescue God’s creation from the curse of Satan, the enemy? Mankind’s rescuer would need to be someone strong enough to engage in battle against the power of Satan; someone who would fight compromise with evil, for evil cannot combat evil; only goodness can do that.

There was only one person who could even attempt the rescue bid: God Himself. So God entered the world in the form of the perfect man: Jesus Christ. ‘God in Christ was reconciling the world to Himself.’ – 2 Corinthians 5:19

Jesus knew the solution to the sin-problem. He, the man-who-nev­er-sinned, would need to take upon Himself every sin each individual in the world had ever committed and would ever commit. It would be as though He Himself had committed the crimes of the cosmos. He would, therefore, pay the penalty in per­son. He would die: ‘Without beauty, without majesty (we saw him), no looks to attract our eyes; a thing de­spised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, a man to make people screen their faces He was despised and we took no account of Him.

And yet ours were the sufferings He bore, ours the sorrows He car­ried. But we, we thought of Him as someone punished, struck by God, and brought low. Yet He was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins. On Him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through His wounds we are healed. We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way, and Yahweh burdened Him with the sins of all of us.’ – Isaiah 53:2-6

PRAYER

Lord Jesus, help me to drink in these facts:

Mine were the sufferings you bore

Mine the sorrows you carried

You were pierced through for my faults

Crushed because of my sin

God laid on you the punishment that brought me

Peace

Joy

And a whole new start in life

Help me to say an adequate

Thank you.

RANSOMED

A man was once caught stealing from his employers. When the court case was heard, the judge imposed a fine of GH¢50. Failure to pay the prescribed fine, he said, would result in imprisonment. The night of the court hearing, the man despaired. He had no money. That was why he had resorted to stealing in the first place. How was he to pay the fine? The thought of a period in prison filled him with horror. Next morn­ing, a brown envelope fell through this man’s letter-box. It contained ten, crisp, new GH¢5 notes and a hand-written explanation: To pay off the debt. The offender never discovered where the money had come from. The only information he could glean was that a member of the nearby church heard of his plight and decided to set him free from the threat of imprisonment.

When Jesus died on the cruel cross, He brought our release from the clutches of the evil one. He also set us free from the bondage to sin in which we had been trapped. And He delivered us from the effects of the sin-stained past and from the guilt that enshrouded us: The death of Christ ‘One act of perfect righteous­ness, presents all men freely acquit­ted in the sight of God.’ – Romans 5:18. ‘God loved the world so much that He gave his only Son, that every­one who has faith in Him may not die but have eternal life.’ – John 3:16

This article has been heavily inspired by Joyce Hugget in “Ap­proaching Easter, Meditations for Lent.”

By Rev. Dr Joyce Aryee, the author