As we approach the
celebration of Christmas, the coming of the Savior Jesus, I am reminded that
Christmas is about grace and mercy.
I am truly amazed when I
hear people expressing the idea that somehow God is a harsh, unfair, demanding
tyrant. Christmas shows that God is all about grace and mercy.
In Philippians 2, Paul
says that Jesus was God, but did not keep a hold of being God. He emptied
Himself and became a human and humbled Himself to die on the cross for our sin.
In Colossians 1, Paul
shows us the greatness of Jesus. Paul says:
Jesus is the image of the
invisible God
Jesus is the firstborn
over all creation
that in Him all things were
created
that everything was
created by Jesus and for Jesus
that He is before everything
that in Him all things are
held together
He is the head of the
body, the church
He is the beginning
He is the firstborn from
among the dead
He has the supremacy in
everything
all the fulness of God was
in Him
all things were reconciled
through Him
He made peace through His
blood
Jesus is God, the Creator
of everything, and He chose to give up all that power and authority and become
the Savior by giving His life for our sin.
So, you say we are God’s
creation, and His creation is good, so what is the problem?
The problem is:
Genesis 6:5
The Lord saw how great the
wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every
inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.
The creation had been
perverted by sin, and human beings’ lives were now characterized by wickedness
and evil.
The problem is:
Romans 3:10-18
As it is written: “There
is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no
one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their
mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There
is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Humans rejected Jesus and
began following their own ways and it lead down a path of evil and violence.
The problem:
Matthew 15:10-11; 17-20
Jesus called the crowd to
him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into someone’s mouth does not
defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”
“Don’t you see that
whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But
the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile
them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts – murder, adultery, sexual
immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person,
but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”
Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is acknowledging that in our natural condition we are
separated from God.
Other people,
circumstances, or even the fallen nature of our culture are not what defile us
as humans. It is our own hearts that defile us. In our natural human state, we
are filled with things that are evil, immoral, and destructive to others.
These are the conditions
that Jesus came into. He didn’t come to make humans better; He came to save us
and transform us.
He came to save us from
the penalty and power of sin.
He did that by His death
on the cross.
Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is looking to Jesus and Jesus alone for our
salvation.
He came to transform us
from:
sinners to saints
enemies to friends
rejecters to followers
He did that through His
resurrection.
Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is acknowledging that Jesus is the only thing that can
really change our lives.
Jesus came to save and
transform and He is our only hope for both salvation and transformation.
Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is looking to Jesus as our only hope.
In the Hope of Jesus Raising the Roof and Removing the
Walls,
Joe
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