50 reasons why Jesus died – Part 4/5 – Passion week!

April 6, 2012 Leave a comment

Part 4. Reasons 31-40.

Please check out the short pre-amble if this is your first entrance to this 5 part series.

Please also check out John Piper’s free e-book 50 Reasons Jesus came to die

We are redeemed from under the death sentence of the law and now free from its just punishment, we can live for God, bearing fruit and living as he Jesus lived when he walked the earth. Christ died that he might ‘bring us to God’ – to bring us to magnify His person – not that He needs our praise and our spiritual fruit to feed off, as though ‘we might help him’ [page 83] but so that we could live as we ought to live and can enjoy the fullness of who we were created to enjoy and live for.


“The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” [Galatians 2:20] … again the purpose of Christ’s death is to bring about the opposite – life. We have seen that this life bears fruit, but at its crux this life is lived, by Him and through Him so that it can be lived for Him. It is ‘Christ in me the hope of glory’ who enables such fruit bearing and God-infused life.


The value and magnitude of His death is played out in our every day life, so that we might see ever more into the ‘mystery’ that was/is marriage. You see; ‘Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her’ [Ephesians 5:25] brings about this great picture for us to apprehend with our senses day by day the union of Christ and His bride through His cross. This is so that as He gave himself up in his cross, the husband ought to lay down his own life metaphorically and [if it must be] in actuality for his wife! Indeed, he came to ‘give marriage its deepest meaning’. *

‘Christ suffered and died so that good works would be the effect, not the cause, of our acceptance’ [Page 90]. Indeed because we ‘live by faith in the Son of God’, we can now with this God-infused life offer true fruit and good works up to God, not as obeisance to satisfy His wrath, for that has already been done in the cross (!) but now we do it, as the effect of His life in us is worked out day by day!

His death, his love, provides us with a model to imitate, that we might share in Him to the fullest!


‘When Christ went to the cross, his aim was to call a great band of believers after Him.’ [Page 95] It is true in Him all die, that all may live. We live by Him, but first He bids us come and die – that we may live. To take up your cross and follow Him – to die to your old life and to live anew!

“He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). We are the freest of all people.” [Page 92] For freedom Christ has indeed made us free. Free from the sting, fear and power of death! And when this mortal shell passes on we shall go straight to Him and there be forever!

This is the cross of Christ!


* The title of chapter 35

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GIVE GOD YOUR BEST – (LEARN FROM THE MISTAKES OF THE PRIESTS IN MALACHI’S DAY)

July 2, 2010 Leave a comment

All scripture quotations are ESV unless otherwise stated

LET US BEGIN!

‘A son honors his father, And a servant his master. If then I am the Father, Where is My honor?
 And if I am a Master, Where is My reverence?
 Says the LORD of hosts
 to you priests who despise My name.

Yet you say, ‘In what way have we despised Your name?’

“You offer defiled food on My altar,

But say,
 ‘In what way have we defiled You?’
 By saying, ‘The table of the LORD is contemptible.’
 And when you offer the blind as a sacrifice, is it not evil?
 And when you offer the lame and sick, Is it not evil?
 Offer it then to your governor! Would he be pleased with you?
 Would he accept you favorably?”
 Says the LORD of hosts.’

[MALACHI 1:6-8 NKJV]


In the old testament under the Law of Moses, the priests were required to set the best animal as a sacrifice upon the altar as on offering to God. And now under the new covenant (testament), now for those who are in Christ, there is no more need for animal sacrifice to earn God’s favour, as when a person is in Christ, He has God’s favour by virtue of being in Christ ‘What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? ‘ [ROMANS 8:31-32]


And so now we do not offer sacrifices to God to gain right standing with him because that is DONE AND COMPLETED in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but we now are called to this…

‘I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship’ [ROMANS. 12:1]. And what does Peter call those who are in Christ, ‘you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.’ [1 PETER 2:5].


And so the lesson to be learnt here is that the Great God Almighty is worthy of our very best, when the priests at that time (approx 400 years BC) offered the sacrifice upon the altar they were the dregs, not their best, the lesson now is for those who are in Christ we are now a ‘holy priesthood’, the lesson is to GIVE GOD THE BEST YOU HAVE WHETHER IT BE TIME, EFFORT, OR TALENT, not that he NEEDS it; but that he is WORTHY of it.

God bless YOU!

Bow down and worship Him – Bishop Paul S Morton

Here I am to worship – Hillsong

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