Dear Friends of “Dial Daily Bread,”
The righteousness of Christ now can cleanse the one greatest sin of all time. According to John's profound statement in 3:14-19, it's the sin of unbelief, not the mere passive ignorance of never knowing truth, but the active sin of disbelieving truth. "He who believes in Him is notcondemned ..." That "not" discloses the darkest guilt of sin.
But what is unbelief, this sin of disbelieving? It's the sin committed by the most righteous people on earth, those to whom God's Messiah was sent (the Savior of the world). They made the eternal Prince of glory become the slain "Lamb of God" by the people who slew Him. The cross of Christ extends its arms over the universe of God--the truth of eternity encapsulated in time at Calvary for us to "see."
Unbelief is the sin of cherishing hard hearts that cannot be melted, of eyes that cannot shed tears of repentance, of souls that "survey the wondrous cross" with callous disregard. It's the sin of hearts unmoved by the love (agape) that "constrains" any believing heart to total consecration to the One who died our second death for us. It's poisonous sin, the most subtle and deadly of all time.
Unbelief is the sin that infiltrates the great world church of Laodicea, the "seventh" and last of all time, the church that torments the resurrected Son of God to the point of acute nausea (Rev. 3:14-21). Each individual professed believer in Christ is a microcosm of the world church, no one holier than everybody else, all sharing a corporate sin of unbelief, all desperately needing a corporate repentance before God, all awaiting the long-promised Elijah who will proclaim a heart-reconciliation, the final atonement.
Let's not cap off history by crucifying the Lamb of God afresh. Let's overcome where ancient Israel failed.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: December 20, 2005.
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