Redemption March 25, 2009
Posted by jonesy24 in Christianity, God, Theology.Tags: Jesus Christ, Redemption, the cross
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Redemption is synonymous with being liberated, freed, or rescued from bondage and slavery to a person or thing.
In Exodus, God’s people (the Israelites) were enslaved to Pharaoh (which I’m assuming is a fancy Egyptian word for ‘king’), who rules over the most powerful nation on earth, Egypt. He was worshipped as a god, and he didn’t exactly treat his slaves very well. The slaves cried out to the one true God, and he heard their pleas. God raised up Moses to speak on his behalf to Pharaoh, demanding that the slaves be set free in order to worship the true God. God nicely but authoritatively called Pharaoh to righteousness, but Pharaoh became hard hearted (just as God said he would!), and he refused to let the slaves go free. Big mistake. God sent a bunch of plagues as judgements and warnings upon Pharaoh, giving him more than a few opportunities to repent and do what God demanded.
Pharaoh repeatedly refused to repent, and release the slaves, so God sent a series of pretty awful judgements upon the entire nation of Egypt. The wrath of God was eventually poured out on the firstborn son of every household, who were all killed in one night. The only families that were spared were those who took a lamb without defect, (sorry vegans!) killed it as a substitute, and used it’s blood to cover the door posts of the entry of their homes. Because they done this, the wrath of God skipped them out.
God redeemed his people. He set them free. Whatever you want to call it.
The interesting thing about this is that we see a theme of ‘redemption’ throughout the bible. God ‘redeeming’ his people a bunch of times in the old testament. Then in the new testament Paul talks about Jesus being our redeemer (Rom 3:24, 1 Cor 1:30, Gal 3:13 etc).
Before I was ’saved’, I was a slave to sin.
But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. (Romans 6:17)
Jesus Christ is MY redemption. Not only did he take the punishment for our sins, and cleanse us from our sins and the sins done against us like I talked about in my previous blog, but he also set us free from the slavery to sin!Just as he freed the Israelites from their slavery, he freed me from my slavery to sin through death on the cross.
Jesus Christ – My Redemption.
Substitutionary Atonement March 12, 2009
Posted by jonesy24 in Christianity, God, Theology.Tags: Jesus Christ, Substitutionary atonement, the cross
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The most famous symbol in all of history is the cross. The cross represents symbolizes the believer’s connection with the death of Jesus. What’s amazing about this is, back in the days of Jesus, the cross wasn’t a ‘pretty little symbol’, but a shameful, excruciating (which literally means “from the cross”), horiffic mode of death. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus called crucifixion “the most wretched of deaths”. Cicero – an ancient Roman philosopher – asked decent Roman citizens not even to speak of the cross because it was such a disgraceful subject.
Paul talks about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus as the most important event in all history, and the verification of the truthfulness of all Scripture. (That’s right… the Old Testament is all about Jesus too!). He then talks about this being the ‘good news’ – that Jesus died because of our sins. It was our sins, but his death.
From pretty much the beginning of Scripture (Genisis 2:17) to the end (Revelations 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. In other words, if we sin – we should die. But it was Jesus, the son of God, sinless, who died in our place for our sins – He took the penalty for our sin.
This means that Jesus’ death was substitutionary.
In good old Leviticus (one of my favourite books), we read about the day of atonement – which was the most important day of the year – the day in which the ’sin problem’ between humanity and God was ‘dealt’ with. On the day of atonement, two goats without defect (perfect little hooves shining) were selected to represent sinless perfection.
The first goat was a sin offering. The first goat got slaughtered (sorry vegans!), which acted as a substitute for the sinners who, according to what we see all throughout scripture, deserved to die. The head priest (who had the joy of slaughtering goat number 1) then sprinkled some of it’s blood on the seat ontop of the Ark of the Covenant inside the most holy place. The goat was no longer innocent when it took the guilt of the people’s sin, and it was a sin offering for the people (Lev 16:15). The goat’s blood represented life given as payment for sin. The dwelling place of God was thus cleansed, and God’s just and holy wrath was satisfied.
The high priest, acting as a mediator between the sinfil people and God would take the second goat (drum role please for goat number 2), lay his hands on it and confess the sins of the people. Goat number 2 (called the scapegoat) would then be sent away to run free in the wild (no doubt to be eaten by a lion or something) away from the sinners, symbolically taking their sin with it.
This is like one giant foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus, our High Priest who mediates between us and God, the sinless substitute who died in our place for our sins, and the scapegoat who cleanses us of our sin to be remembered by God no more.
You have to understand the function of the two goats in order to appreciate the atonement.
“The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.” – John Stott
Substitutionary Atonement is Jesus taking our place on the cross, cleansing us from our sin, and restoring the relationship between God and man.
A multi-faceted jewel March 10, 2009
Posted by jonesy24 in Books, Christianity, God.Tags: Christ, Jesus, the cross
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“One theologian has called the cross the great jewel of the Christian faith, and like every great jewel it has many precious facets that are each worthy of examining for their brilliance and beauty. Therefore, you will be well served to see each side of this jewel shining together for the glory of God in complimentary and not contradictory fashion.”
After reading a book called ‘Death by Love’ (Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears) I realized that I had managed to walk into something I’ve been determined to avoid. I ‘forgot’ the cross. To explain, what I mean is as I was reading this book, which focuses on the different aspects of the cross, I was thinking ‘I know this, but I had clearly forgotten this aspect of the cross’.
My point is… we forget that Jesus was our Substitutionary Atonement, our Christus Victor, our redemption, our New Covenant Sacrifice, our gift righteousness, our justification, propiation, expiation, our unlimited limited atonement, our ransom, our Christus Exemplar, our reconciliation, and our revelation.
I’m probably going to do a blog on each of these, part because up until recently I hadn’t fully understood some of these and think it important to explain them if i’m going to throw them in a blog like I’ve just done, and partly because It’ll help me go over and remember the final details of each of these.
What I realized after reading this book, and thinking about it A LOT, is that many of the people I know understand and know most of these to varying degrees. But in certain aspects of their life, you don’t see it. Jesus as our expiation, meaning he cleansed us from the defilement of our sins and the sins done against us, means that we shouldn’t be hiding in shame, or be being shaped by things in the past – why? Because we were made new in Christ, and he dealt with our sin and our shame on the cross.
Following on from that last post – Meet ‘Lou’ the snake. March 4, 2009
Posted by jonesy24 in Glasgow, What's happening with me....Tags: snake
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Meet ‘Lou’ the snake. Named ‘Lou’ because we captured him in the toilet aka. Loo. On Sunday afternoon a couple of the guys that had been playing football inbetween church services came back to use our flat’s shower, etc. We joked about how 3 showers in a row would no doubt bring out the snake.
By the second shower, the snake came out… And I caught it. Basically kept it in a pillow case over night, a shoe box by day… until yesterday afternoon (monday), the owner came to claim him/her. It was sad to say good bye to what we thought might be our new pet – Lou the snake.
The ‘horror’ in/under the bathroom… March 1, 2009
Posted by jonesy24 in Glasgow, What's happening with me....Tags: snake
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I’m assuming from the title you can tell this is another one of my silly blogs… which is more for my entertainment that to blog anything meaningful.
Anyway, It being as Saturday, I was having what was meant to be a long lie… and it was probably about 11am when Stuart (my flat mate) came into my room, telling me I had to come see something. Usually, in my half asleep state, I’d tell him to ‘go away’, but something in his tone of voice suggested urgency.
I clambered, nae… jumped off my bed (which is up ladders on a platform), and followed Stuart out of my room, through the living room, and into the bathroom. I literally could not believe what I then saw. A big spider? No. Something only boys would be proud of in the toilet bowl? NO! A large bright yellow and orange snake, coming out a hole in the floor behind the toilet. AGHHHHHHHHH!
There’s no word to describe the screach of disbelief that came out of my mouth. This thing was huge, and it certainly was no grass snake, adder, or any other boring UK snake… this thing was big, boy band coloured (you know, bright orange, sky blue, sea foam green – those sort of colours), and foreign.
Now what does one do with a large unknown species of snake, from an unknown origin, with no prior experience of handeling snakes? I decided I wanted to pick it up. Thankfully, Stuart spoke sense, and suggested that because we didn’t know what the snake was… whether it was aggresive/dangerous/etc… maybe I should be careful, and not stick my right hand in it’s face as I was about to.
I then proceeded to armour myself with winter gloves (bough for my by my lovely mother for the cold season of winter), a towel wrapped round my arm… and my boots. However, as if the snake knew our plan… it decided to begin to slither back down the whole from whence it came… I arrived back in time to see it disapear back down the hole in the bathroom floor.
Anyway, it was exciting. Until we realized that we had to ‘use’ the toilet…
Who knows… maybe the snake will come back again… and if it does… I’ll hopefully have the sense to take a picture… and then you’ll perhaps understand the horror, the terror… that is the snake in/under the bathroom.
