We can now become who we were meant to be-right standing with God

We sang one of my favorite hymns last night, and our community-wide Good Friday service: The Wondrous Cross. The last line of the last verse is particularly compelling to me:

Love so amazing, so divine demands my soul, my life, my all.

The cross is God's amazing love for us. It compels us to respond. Only those who are dead are incapable of responding. If you are dead you can do nothing. But by the grace of God, by His dying on the cross and rising on the third day, defeating sin and death forever, we can become alive - in Him. Apart from Him we are dead. This generosity demands response. It demands not selfishly but because it is lavish and generous that a Thank You must follow.

This Sunday we celebrate our Thank You. We are overwhelmed by His generosity. We are in awe of His love for us - so amazing!

This past week I've been reading Romans from the Message version of the Bible. For me it's easier to read Paul in the Message. These verse stood out to me, touched me to the core, as the message of the Resurrection. 

God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity He put us in right standing with Himself. A pure gift. 

He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where He always wanted us to be. And He did it by means of Jesus Christ. 

God sacrificed Jesus on the Altar of the world to clear the world of sin. Having faith in Him sets us in the clear. 

God decided on the course of action in full view of the public - to set the world in the clear with Himself through the sacrifice of Jesus finally taking care of the sins He had so patiently endured.

God does no respond to what we do - we respond to what God does - Our lives get in step with God.
When everything was hopeless Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said He would do.

The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God - set us right with God.

He didn't and doesn't wait for us to get ready. He presented Himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready.

There is no longer a question of being at odds with God in anyway.

What God has always wanted to do for us - set us right with Him - make us fit for Him.

Our old way of life is nailed to the cross. A decisive end to that sin-miserable life.

Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you. God speaks your mother-tongue.

Don't give sin a vote in the way you conduct your life.

All your lives you've let sin tell you what to do. But thank God your started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free.

In His son, Jesus, He personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all.

When God lives and breathes in you you are delivered from that dead life.

God's Spirit beckons!

God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are!

He knows us far better than we know ourselves.

That's why we can be sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.