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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
“Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus, the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through Him, everyone who believes is set free from every sin, a justification you were not able to obtain under the law of Moses.”
Acts 13:38-39
This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin...So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:34, 36
These words from Jesus resonate through the remainder of the scriptures, from the moment He uttered them through the end times predicted in the Book of Revelation. It speaks of the liberation a believer finds when he or she chooses to place their hope and faith in Jesus as Savior. He and He alone breaks the chains of sin that imprison a person and hold them hostage until death and destruction come.
This is the truth that we find the Apostle Paul finish with as he concludes his message of exhortation, a message that was encouraged by the leaders of the Pisidian Antioch synagogue where Paul and Barnabas went to worship during the first missionary journey.
Speaking to an audience of Jews but also God-fearing Gentiles, Paul started his message by reminding those gathered in the synagogue of how God had been in the business of deliverance since the day He chose the Israelite people to be His own. These consistent efforts by God to deliver His people culminated in Jesus, the final act in God’s redemption story.
Before Jesus, God had delivered His people from their enemies but there was one enemy that required a special initiative and that enemy was sin. The Jews had offered sacrifices to God to serve as an atonement for their sins but none of those offerings were permanent. The offerings were presented over and over and over again.
And so God made the way for atonement to be granted one final time with that atonement lasting forever.
There was only one catch.
That sacrifice would be His one and only Son Jesus, the perfect unblemished “Lamb” sent from heaven to earth to take away the sin of the world.
And so it was.
Jesus came and lived alongside mankind for 33 years before being crucified while bearing the sin of the world on the cross. From that point on, anyone who placed their belief in Jesus wouldn’t perish but have eternal life, saved by the blood of the “Lamb”, Jesus.
This was the message Paul wanted those gathered in the synagogue to hear, that through Jesus, they could have forgiveness of sins and be set free from every transgression they had ever committed.
Friends, this is the beauty of justification. For it was only through Jesus that someone could end up appearing before God to answer for their lives and appear as if they had never sinned, pardoned by Jesus who had bore the penalty and judgment for them. Jesus’ death was substitutionary, His death in place of ours. This was something the law of Moses couldn’t offer. For God didn’t grant salvation through His law; He granted it through His Son.
Today, sinners are still set free from the bondage of sin and justified by the shed blood of Jesus, the “Lamb”. It is a fundamental premise of the Gospel of salvation that all Christians are expected to share with others. My hope is that through this series of six devotions, we have been better equipped to provide messages of exhortation to others and help them find their way to salvation through Christ.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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