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Him Who Knew No Sin

            God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (II Corinthians 5:21) Have you ever had a dilemma? There were two (or more) equal desirable outcomes, or two (or more) equally undesirable outcomes. You, yourself, and you have an argument. "You" wants one thing, "Yourself" wants the other, and "You" can’t decide. To be fully accurate, God doesn’t have dilemmas. He is wise; He knows how things will and must work out. But in a sense, God had a dilemma. He created the universe and put us in it. He loves us and is ready to forgive us, but at the same time, His sense of justice won’t permit it. We also have a dilemma. We’ve rebelled. We’re guilty. But we don’t want to face the punishment for our crimes. We want God to change the rules, and He does, but not the way we expect, because our solution either requires Him to violate His love or His justice. His solution might violate our egos, but ...
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Witnesses

                     For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time . (II Timothy 2:5-6)                 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,   and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.   After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,   and last of all he appeared to me also, as to...
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Honor

                 My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge . (Psalm 62:7) Chances are, we’ve learned that our salvation depends on God. At least, our eternal salvation. I suspect none of us is as convinced that our daily salvation (in whatever form that might take) depends on Him, or that we even need daily salvation. That’s something we might do well to pray about and a challenge we would do well to explore, but the rest of the verse is the focus today, because I suspect it leads to our eternal and our daily salvation. Imagine not having to protect ourselves all the time. Maybe that’s easy for you, but it’s not for most of us. Some of us spend our lives fighting against multitudinous threats. They’re not always big or physical, but they endanger something in us that seems important to us. Yesterday, a deaf customer came into the garden center, and my signing has never been good but is way out of practi...
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Suffering

                   For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, (Philippians 1:29)                 This sounds really bad, almost sick in our day. Granted to suffer? That makes it sound like suffering is a good or noble thing. Then again, I’ve read recent calls that the rich should be required to give up more of their money, and the whites should accept humiliation for the sake of other races. We should all suffer a little for the sake of saving our environment. Teams or groups are often called upon to give up something (often money, but sometimes time or the safety of their bodies) for their team’s statistics or some good cause. There are people around the world and through history that we honor who have suffered for the name of Christ. And then, of course, there are the her...
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Faithful and Just

                 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (I John 1:9) To begin, confession isn’t just saying that we did something. It’s a “con” word, meaning that it’s doing something with someone else. In this case, it involves agreeing with someone about the nature of something we believe or have done. It’s the difference between “I took” and “I stole, it was wrong, and I regret having done it.” The next term is “sin.” As I’ve noted recently, this word causes a lot of trouble. But, to explain it simply, it was a term taken from archery and meaning the distance from the bullseye that the arrow hit. In other words, it’s not some great big bad thing. It’s any imperfection. In some cases, we might actually be wrong about something being a sin, but the point is to talk it over with God and let Him inform you. Note: If Scripture says it’s a sin, it’s a sin. ...
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Wages

                 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord . (Romans 6:23) This is one of those “important” verses we’re taught as children like John 3:16. I don’t remember whether I was taught that wages are something you earn or not, but that’s the obvious conclusion. In one sense, we like that. It puts us in at least partial control. We can do something that deserves death. What we don’t like about it is that we don’t get to decide what constitutes sin that is sufficient to warrant death.  There are sins we might agree are sufficient, but telling a little white lie? Stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving family? Gossip? One one-night stand in 25 years of marriage? Calling someone a nasty name? Using bad language? Killing a dog? Maybe some people would happily state that most or all of these earn death. I agree that most do, but I’m not happy about it. We tend to think ...
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As My Servant Job Has

                 After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. (Job 42:7) If you read the books of Job and the Psalms, one of the things you can’t avoid is the sense that Job and the Psalmist expressed their feelings and ideas about God. Particularly, if you read Job, you’ll find four visitors who clearly tell Job things that we might think are good and true. Job shouldn’t be so arrogant. He should confess his sins, and then God will make everything all right again. And at the end of the book, God reprimands them for speaking what is not true about Him and says that Job was speaking the truth. Time for a close-up of the shocked faces of all concerned. And this is where we usually get stuck in the mud. What truth was Job telling? What truth were his friends not telling? Some...
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