good news
I once worked in an office where someone regularly (at least once or twice a month, all year long!) emailed us with the days, hours, and minutes to go until Christmas. Now I loved this person (and Christmas), but I usually deleted those emails unread. I do not dread the holiday season, yet I do not live in unending anticipation of its coming.
Heedless of my feelings though, like a force of nature it comes...
I love you but there is only ONE cross. You are really not that special.
Jesus Christ didn’t suffer and die on the one, then climb down, then get up and die on another cross especially for you. And this is GOOD NEWS!
The one cross was entirely NECESSARY and entirely SUFFICIENT.
Necessary because your sin was always, and has always been, about God. Without the cross, you are an absolute offense to the one holy God of all, undeserving of the very shadow of his presence. You were doomed, and no number of good deeds, no amount of logic and learning, and no variety of self-hate or self-love will substitute for, or add to, or take away from what the one cross did. What it did, it did for all. What it did, it did for all time. That means you...and that thing you did. Yes, even that. Even the first, fleeting thought of it was offensive to God, separating you from him before you lifted a finger or spoke the first word. The cross is necessary because even if you think you are OK, you are not. Sin and death are the real marks of a fallen world and separateness from God. Born into this fallen world, we are ALL indelibly stained, irrevocably lost, terminally ill, and dead on arrival BUT for the ONE CROSS of Christ.
Sufficient is the one cross because on it suffered and died the ONLY begotten Son of God. God himself, he is the Son of Man prophesied throughout scripture hundreds of years before he entered time and laid aside his glory to unite with our flesh. He took on our lives that we might take on his LIFE. Sufficiently, he became the curse, became our sin and shame, became all that God rightly hates, and then meekly and willingly, yielded to God’s just wrath. Sufficiently, he faced EVERY temptation COMMON to man. Your struggles are real and I am sorry for your pain, but take heart, they are not special. Many have faced them or the bible would not call them common. And Jesus faced them, then died to satisfy the Father’s righteous judgment on them and all sin, all shame, all distortions, and all damages that have been done to his world and his people.
Sufficiently, the ONE Messiah died on the ONE cross ONCE and FOR ALL. All people, all sin, for all of time. There was no need of a second.
So, take heart, you are not special. Nothing more is required. It is finished. He has done it. Rest, O weary heart, and rejoice in the only one worthy of all praise. Rejoice that, because of the cross, and in the twinkling of an eye, you will soon be finally free.
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