Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Have you ever been close to losing your life, either from sickness or an accident? And you have realized that your life has been an undeserved bonus?
The faith of Jesus in God's plan of justification teaches that lesson in its truest dimension: "The love [agape] of Christ constrains us; because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died" (2 Cor. 5:14). It's so obvious that you wonder why you didn't see it long ago:
(1) Christ died for the world, for everyone (1 Cor. 15:3). That's true.
(2) It's equivalent to saying that if He had not "died for all," then all would themselves have had to die.
(3) In other words, death would have been the inevitable end of everyone, "all," because "the wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). Sin kills; the poison sting is in the sin itself. The end has always been wrapped up in the sinning. It's not an arbitrary, malicious condemnation on the part of God.
(4) That "death" is what Jesus described in our beloved text of John 3:16--to "perish." As 2 + 2 = 4, the logic is inescapable: if "One" "perished" in place of all perishing, then He saved "all" from perishing, and "all" can see themselves in a new light: they have escaped that terrible fate because of how He "perished" for them.
(5) The death that Jesus died is the "perishing" kind--what the Bible says is "the second death" (Rev. 2:11; 20:14). You came within a hair's breadth of suffering it yourself, except that Christ "perished" in it for you. That's the death He died.
(6) Now you are "constrained" to deny self and to live only for Him. Now "easy" to be saved and "hard" to be lost make sense--all because of that "love" (agape).
Copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Wieland.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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Daily Bread - Readings about life and the Word of God.
