When the Bible says that “God is love,” the word in the original is AGAPE. A different idea than what we think of when we think of “love.”
Our natural idea of love is to love nice people, beautiful people, people who are good to us.
The idea of loving a bad person, ugly, mean, even an enemy, is foreign to our thinking; it seems to be impossible, and in fact, such love is indeed impossible for us humans to experience.
We would never have known about it, never imagined its existence, until God made it known to us.
All through the Old Testament, this love (agape) was revealed for the Lord never kept it away from us; but its real revelation came when God’s own people, the Jews, grabbed His only Son, Jesus, and took Him to a place where they made a cross and nailed Him onto it to kill Him; thus they hated Him.
We may say, “Oh, I have nothing to do with that; I would never have joined them in killing God’s only Son! I am a better person than to have done that!”
But we don’t know ourselves; we think that we are righteous, but the Bible says that “There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, ... there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10-12).
“The carnal mind is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7), and the word “carnal” means natural, of the flesh, the kind of mind that we all have by nature. It may be dressed up in good clothes and we may make it seem like we’re good, but our natural self is at odds with God.
None of us can say, “I wasn’t there when they killed God’s only Son. I had nothing to do with it.”
In a corporate sense, we were ALL there; the carnality of our human mind that we all have by nature is basic enmity against God and against His righteousness. Don’t ever say that you are too good to have taken part in the crucifixion of Christ, for you don’t know your own self. Someone very wise has said that “the books of heaven record the sins that we would commit if we had the opportunity.”
The crucifixion of Christ is the sin of the whole world; and we have not even begun to repent until we include that sin in our personal guilt.
But this is not Bad News; it is Good News to confess this truth, because the Son of God pleaded with His Father while they were driving spikes in His wristbones and anklebones, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
John says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, 10).
But please note: if we don’t confess our sin in the crucifixion of Christ, we lose the joy of that forgiveness and cleansing!
That’s why confessing the truth of our involvement in the crucifixion of Christ is Good News.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
------------------------------
