Most of us have seen interviews of people released from prison because DNA testing revealed they were innocent. The exhilaration of freedom and exoneration must be like waking up from some horrible nightmare to discover it is a new day and the sun has come out. It is bad enough to be found guilty when you are guilty let alone being judged guilty when you really didn’t do it. There is a wonderful verse in Colossians 1. Speaking of God’s love for us Paul wrote, “He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” Once we accept His grace we are not just forgiven, the scars, the blemishes and the ravages of sin are so completely gone no one can even accuse us of anything.
Paul, as Saul, had the blood of martyrs on his hands. Here is a man who experienced so much grace and he wants us to share his joy. To the Romans he wrote, “With God on our side, who can be against us.” He then goes through a list including everything in heaven and hell and they are powerless to accuse us of anything. Revel in this passage. “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Did you really read it? Or once you recognized the passage did you sort of skip over to this paragraph? Often we do that. But this merits a very slow reading. Let it pour over your brain like maple syrup on pancakes.
Written by Roger Bothwell on December 28, 2012
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