Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Who is Jesus Christ? The glib, thoughtless answer: "The Son of God." Yes, 100% true. But more:
He is also "The Son of man." The Father "sent" His Son in "the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8:3). He became One of us, eternally to bear our human nature as well as His divine nature. That also is 100% true. But what has He accomplished by this great condescension and sacrifice?
Jesus' job description, when the Father sent Him down to this dark world, was: save that lost world! He told His Father that He had "finished the work You gave Me to do" (John 17:4); yet why is the world more sinful than ever?
Christ did His work; He did "save the world." The grace of God has abounded "much more" than all the sin in the world (Rom. 5:20, 21); but people have "frustrated" that grace (see Gal. 2:21). They don't appreciate the cross where that grace was displayed. What has gone wrong?
The answer: something that popular Christianity seems unable to grasp. Even the seventh of those great churches of history ("Laodicea") reacts to the cross in a lackadaisical, careless way, "lukewarm" (Rev. 3:14-21). There is a little Greek word in the Lord's message that doesn't get through in any of the English translations--"ho," which makes Jesus say, "Of all the seven churches of history, you are the one outstandingly wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked" (vs. 17).
Both "Babylon" and Laodicea fail to grasp that Jesus died the second death of every person who has ever been born: "He by the grace of God tasted [the second] death for every person" (Heb. 2:9). Not just our "sleep." The sacrifice on the cross was infinitely greater than "we" have been able to "see." The teaching of natural immortality is the bottom-line factor that makes distortion of truth possible; it says Jesus didn't truly die the real thing, our wages of sin--death! Thus He didn't "pay it all."
No wonder the general response has been so lukewarm!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: June 27, 2007.
Copyright © 2013 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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