War In Your Heart # 60

Christ Our Provision (continued)

In Christ - the Redemption of the Race (continued)

Only One possessing the eternal life of God could cope  with eternal death. That He did possess it was proved by the fact that the bond of death was broken and that He came forth from the grave, the risen Saviour to live forever, and with the keys of death in His possession and power (Revelation 1:18).

But the full end of death's defeat is not yet recorded or reached. 

God's last Adam was made a life-giving Spirit, who, as Federal Head of a new race, was to share His own uncreated Life with the redeemed. He not only died the death of the sinner but He became the life of the believer, upon whom He bestowed as a gift His own eternal life (Romans 6:23; 1 John 5:11, 12).

The moment we believe this truth and receive the Son as our Saviour we are forever delivered from the death penalty; we have "passed out of death into life" (John 5:24). The reign of death has ended and the reign in life has begun.

Condemnation-Justification

Adam was a lawbreaker. He had deliberately and willfully transgressed God's law (Romans 5:14, 15, 17). Adam was condemned as guilty and banished from the presence of God. In Romans 1:18 - 3:30 God gives a terrifying picture of a guilty world; a world of lawbreakers, those who have broken the law written in the Book or the law written in their hearts and consciences, all are guilty: all are condemned (Romans 3:19).

Is there no hope for the transgressor? Will the condemnation of guilt rest upon him forever? Is there no way of acquittal for the guilty sinner? There is a way, but only one way. Again it is through God's Second Man, the Representative Man, who in every act of His human life perfectly kept the perfect law of God: who in every step of His earthly walk obeyed the will of God; lived by the Word of God: and followed the way of God. The Son of man satisfied every claim of the holy law of God. This Man took the sinner's guilt; stood before His Father in the sinner's condemnation; bore the sinner's curse (1 Peter 3:18).

He who was the absolutely Just One (Acts 3:14; 7:52; 22:14), the altogether righteous and obedient One, was condemned to die s a malefactor and a criminal. He in whom there was no sin, nothing worthy of death, was condemned to die the worst and the most disgraceful of all deaths. Pilate, the judge who examined him, said:

Luke 23:14: I ... have found no fault in this man.

Luke 23:15: Nothing worthy of death hath been done by him.

Luke 23:22: "I have found no cause of death in him." Even one of the thieves hanging on the Cross beside the Man Christ Jesus rebuked his fellow companion in crime who was railing on Jesus, saying: 

Luke 23:40, 41: Dost thou not even fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds but this man hath done nothing amiss."

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 61)