Creator's Joy

Between heaven and earth

If there is a messenger. A mediator, one amoung a thousand. To show man His (God’s) righteousness. Then He (God) says: “Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom! (Jesus)”
Job 33:23-24

There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.
1 Timothy 2:5

God loves us so much He is willing to forgive us and yet He is not willing to do that without a ransom,
without someone paying the penalty for our sin. Someone who paid the price we owed to righteousness, we owed to God.
Why? Because otherwise we would not learn what righteousness is as I mentioned in earlier posts.

Read also “Creator’s joy”.

So we needed a mediator. Someone that could reconcile us back to God and make us in rightstanding with Him again.
Someone that loved us that much He was willing to give his life in exchange.
His life in our place. His life for our life.
Someone that deemed us worthy to die for. Even while we were sinners.
Someone that saw a great treasure when looking at humanity, at every single one of us individual, and saw something that was to be greatly desired and worth suffering for. Yes worth giving up all that He had. Worth giving up the glory and comfort of heaven and becoming like one of us. Suffering like all humans suffer. And even becoming so small He had to grow and learn the way all humans have to learn and develop.
Someone who was perfect and never sinned, and yet was willing to become a humble baby and live among hostile man. And even to die on a cross. Mocked, scourged, rejected and killed.
And yet He did all that for the very ones that rejected and killed Him.

They thought they killed a man.
Little did they know He was the Son of God who had come down from heaven to do just that: to die. That in fact He had surrendered himself willingly so that they could be saved instead of having to die themselves.
I am speaking now of the spiritual death we have if we are separated from God through our sin and the eternal condemnation this eventually will bring to us if we don’t repent. Then we spiritually die. The bible calles this the second death.
If we accept his sacrifice, his life that He gave for us, we become alive again spiritually and are united with God. And we have eternal life with Him. And yes one day our body will be raised from the death as well. It will be new, whole, healthy and perfect. But even now we can partake of some of the change this will bring to our bodies. Even now we can be healed and even now the dead can be raised and already have. (just do a google-search if you don’t believe me) All because Jesus carried our sin with it’s consequences in our place. So we even don’t have to be sick anymore.
I’m not saying sickness is a result of direct personal sin, but at it’s root the cause of sin is the depraved nature of a mankind that is fallen away from God. Once we see the provision God gave for us to be healed, through Jesus who carried not only our sin but also our sickness when He died in our place, we can be free from all disease. We just have to believe it.
But the greatest thing is we can be in right standing with God again if we choose to accept the life that He gave in our place. If we repent and say:

“Yes, I need you, I was selfish and lived my life for me, I put myself above you God, and did not acknowledge you and give you the honor that was only due to you. I made a little god of myself and others and gave things and people a place in my life that only you should have.
I repent for not believing in you and I now acknowledge you as God over my life and surrender to you now and every day of my life is yours from now on. I give you both my sinful past so you can erase all my sin and make me clean again. And I give you my today and my future so you can change me and do what you want to do in and through my life. Show me your plan for me, show me your will and help me to surrender to it.
Thank you that you are now with me and even in me. I am yours forever.”

If you prayed this prayer you might want to check out this website for new believers:

https://www.shilohfellowship.com/growingingod

And keep reading this blog, there’s a lot more to say…

Bless you!

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The bible calles it the wisdom of God
And foolishness to the world

What made God give up his Son
Let Him become a man and die on a cross?
What made Him do that?

“For God so loved the world…”
The bible says

What extravagant love is this?

I did not always have a conviction of sin
I love and believe in God as long as I rememeber
And I did not understand why Jesus had to die for me
I just knew it was true
And the cross gave me a sense of awe
Now and then

Later I became more aware of my sinfulness
It’s not about following rules
Having no sex before marriage
Going to church every week
Those things are important
But our behaviour comes from what’s in our heart
And to a degree we can modify this from the outside
And look good by living up to certain standards

But I’ve come to see more my true sinful nature
With which we all were born
And which only a touch from God can free us from
It wasn’t just about eating a forbidden apple
Like a child might take a cookie without permission
Although this was no ordinary “apple”
And eating it had certain consequences
It was also not that us eating a wrong fruit made God angry

What happens when people don’t obey the laws made by a king?
What happens when they don’t ackowledge his autority?
When they appoint there own rulers and crown another king?
If the king wants to uphold his kingdom he would have to punish
those rebels, or even put them to dead or lifelong imprisonment

You see God is the King of the world
And He allows us not to obey Him
But we shouldn’t think this has no consequences
Or how could his kingdom otherwise stand?

The sin of Adam and Eve, and all of us
Is that we place ourselves above God
It doesn’t matter how big our transgression is
In it’s core there are no degrees in sin
Our sin is not just to do something forbidden
It is that we rebelled against the king of the universe
That makes every transgression though seemingly small so big

So why did God send his son Jesus to earth to die on a cross?
I believe Jesus paid the price we deserved to pay for our sin
I believe the suffering Jesus went through is a picture
Of the severeness of our sinfulness
If we have trouble to see the depth of our depravity
The severeness of our sin
We just have to look at the cross
And see what price needed to be paid
To pay of our debt we had through sin

The righteousness of God looks different than ours
He didn’t want us to pay the price we deserved
But righteousness still had to be done
Otherwise we would not learn what is good and what is not

It’s not that God is mean and didn’t love Jesus
But He was able to pay a price we were not able to pay
Because He never sinned He was able to endure all suffering
To endure the darkness of men’s soul that now came on Him
And because He was pure darkness had no hold on him
And he rose from the death
Thereby declaring: it is finished, the price is paid
The debt we had to righteousness is settled
We are now in right standing with God
United with Him forever

If we believe

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When the Israëlites lived in the desert years ago,
They once encountered a large plague of snakes that bit them.
Many were dying.
God revealed to Moses that the cause of the plague was the sin of the people.
But God gave them a cure.
Moses put a bronze serpent on a pole and stuck it in the ground for all to see.
When the people looked at it they were healed.

This is a picture of the cross on which Jesus would die many years later.
Jesus was not the serpent though.
The serpent was satan, also called the devil, whose power was destroyed on the cross.
When people sin it gives satan power in their lives.
When you obey someone you give that person autority.
Satan tempts men to sin and if we do it gives him power over us.

Unfortunately his intentions for us are not very good.
On the contrary they are evil and he only wants to destroy us.
God on the other hand has always our good in mind.
He loves us so much He himself paid the price that we deserved to pay for our sin.
When He died on that cross He took away satans autority over our lives
Because our debt to righteousness, our debt to God, was now paid by Jesus.
So the devil has no claim on us anymore.

However in order to experience the benefits of what Jesus did for us
We have to look at it, we have to look at the cross and what it means.
To ponder the healing and deliverance it brings to our lives.
Believing is receiving.
It’s kind of impossible to receive a gift you don’t even believe was given to you.
Faith is the hands that receive.

That’s why Jesus said that all who believe in Him are saved,
although he died for the sins of the whole world.
But He didn’t just die to save us from eternal damnation.
He died to free us from every darkness in our lives.
To heal every disease and fill every need we have.
He provided this all for us on the cross.

We just have to look and believe.

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Like children were meant to be their parents delight
So we are the delight of God
He did not make us out of some need
Except his “need” to express his love

He does not need slaves
He can do anything He wants without help
He does not need subjects
To feel good about himself
And to give him a sense of selfworth

He is God
He defines everyone’s worth
His own worth comes from who He is
And He gives everything else their worth

So He decided to make creatures
That are worth everything to him
Like children are worth everything
To their parents
(or should be anyway)

So we mean the world to him
For him we were worth dying
Not because anything we did
But because we are His

He made us in his likeness
We bear his DNA
When we were born
We already had great worth

No mistake or rebellion
Or succes on our part
Can take away or ad to this

So when men rebelled
And turned away from God
He did not stop loving us
He did not turn his back to us
He did not leave us alone

No He decided to win us back
To draw our heart to him
So we would be united once again

He showed us our worth
By dying for us

How can God die?
Would that not be the end
of our existence?

To die though does not mean
That we stop to exist
Death is the absence of good things
The absence of health and beauty

For us death is the absence of God
Not that God is ever absent to us
The bible says God is even in hell
But if we do not have relationship with Him
We can’t partake of the life this gives us

In a sence we can be death
While still living on the earth
Our spirit is death
When we are not in relationship with God
When we are not in right standing with Him

But how could God die?
First He, Jesus, the Son of God
Who himself is God as well
(just bear with me for a moment)
Became a man

Once He had part of our human nature
Once He had a body
He could die

This does not mean He ceased to exist
It means his body stopped breathing
And He went to another place
He went to hell

Jesus went to hell for us
He went there in our place
Because of our rebellion against God
We deserved to go there

But God did not want us to suffer
He did not want us to be seperated
From the expression of his love
From the life He intended us to have

So Jesus went instead

Now why would God
send anyone to hell in the first place
If He loves us that much?

Truth is He didn’t
We go there through our own choices
If we choose to live seperated from Him
And not even acknowledge him as God

How can you expect to go to heaven
If you don’t want to be with God?
Since that is were HE is
And He respects your free will

You see it’s not that God is evil
And wants to punish us
And send us to hell
We choose to go there ourselves
If we don’t let him be God in our lives

Now God is righteous and holy
And He can’t do anything
That goes against who he is, his nature
That makes sense right?

How do you feel
If someone murders a child
And the killer is declared innocent
While clearly quilty?

We all have a sense of justice
No one wants criminals to be free
Roaming around in the world
Killing and stealing

We are like that
Because God is
And we were made in his image
Although much of that image has been tainted
Some traces are still left

So what should God do
About sinful men?
What would be the right response
To our killing (gossip is murder to you know)
and lying, cheating
and putting ourselves above God
and others?

It’s not that He doesn’t want to forgive
But would it be right?
Would it be just?
Would it be desired
If men could do what they want
Without consequences

How would we learn justice
Know what is right
If God didn’t show us
The result of our sin
The destruction it brings

If He didn’t show us
The nature of our crimes
Our selfish desires
Our looking down on others
Our playing God

The result of sin is death
There is no hope for this world
If sin is tolerated
Men would get worse
and hate more and more
Instead of becoming kind

How could a loving God
Tolerate our sin
And not let it have consequences
So it grows rampant
And destroys the love that is left still

It would not be love at all!

So God did the unthinkable
He did not want us to pay the price
That our sin required us to pay
He did not want us to bear
The consequences of our lives
that would send us straight to hell

He did not want us to be
Separated from his love

So He himself paid the price
That his righteousness
Required us to pay

He became a man
He lived a perfect life
He identified with us in every way
Except that He didn’t sin

Then He allowed sinful men
To captivate him
Mock him
Scourge him
To nail him on a cross

And by doing so
He paid the price
We deserved to pay

Then the unthinkable happened
Thankfully
Once again

On the third day
After they killed him
He rose from the death

And this was the sign
That our debt was paid
The debt we had through sin
Was now erased

So now everyone
Who receives this gift of life
And surrenders their life to Him in turn
Is now forever saved

And so He showed us
The price He was willing to pay

We are still his delight
We are the joy of heaven
If we let this gift unite us
With Him by whom we were made

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