Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
The entire Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is Good News, not Bad News. God is not a stern Lawgiver dishing out a series of impossible-to-obey rules with the penalty of death hanging over our heads; He is a Savior from breaking those commandments.
He wants to deliver us from death; He has purposed that every human being shall enjoy eternal life, "for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:3, 4). Christ is already "the Savior of all men," according to 1 Timothy 4:10, "especially of those who believe."
When God the Father sent Jesus Christ to this earth, He gave Him a special job description--go down to that lost world and save it. Says Jesus: "[I came] to save the world" (John 12:47). He is not trying to find a way to shut us out of heaven; rather, He is trying to prepare us to enter in. God "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, ... having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself" (Eph. 1:4, 5).
"But isn't there a terrible judgment coming when we shall all come under the stern scrutiny of God's law?"
Yes, but "if any one sins, we have an Advocate [defense lawyer!] with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 2:1, 2). And if anyone reading is afraid that this great "Defense Lawyer" won't take his case, John adds, "and not for ours [our sins] only but also for [the sins of] the whole world." He is already your Defense Lawyer if you don't push Him away. Some criminals on trial fire their lawyers and then lose their cases. Don't fire Jesus! Let Him hold on to your case.
Jesus has become the new Head of humanity. He fired Adam, our first head who led us into sin, and has taken his place.
Thus you and I have a birthright given to us in Him, just like Isaac's son Esau had the birthright already given to him. Nobody in heaven or earth could have deprived Esau of that birthright except his own act of discarding it. When he sold it for a mere dinner entree, we read, "Thus Esau despised his birthright" (Gen. 25:34). Paul warns us, don't give in to the subtle temptation to be a "fornicator or profane person, like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright" (Heb. 12:16).
Wouldn't it be heartrending in the final judgment as we stand before the Great White Throne of God, to realize that He actually gave us the gift of eternal life like He gave the birthright to Esau, but we sold it for some of this world's flashy treasures! To save us from that ultimate agony, He is today sending us the message of the pure gospel as very Good News.
--Robert J. Wieland
From: A New Look at God's Law, 2000.
Copyright © 2017 by "Dial Daily Bread."
