People of Light
People of the Cross – Part II
Scripture Reading: 1 Peter 2:21-25
Key Verse: 1 Peter 2:24
He personally carried our sins in His body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By His wounds you are healed.
I cannot imagine what the Saturday between Good Friday and Resurrection Day was like for the first followers of Jesus. I guess that it was the longest day of their lives.
Jesus’s followers had hoped that Jesus would come down off that Cross and destroy the Roman armies and set up His new Kingdom on earth. That did not happen, and Jesus’s death must have seemed like the end of Him.
What those first followers could not yet see was the result of Jesus’s death. The Apostle Paul’s words to the Colossian Christ-followers paints the picture:
Yet now He has reconciled you to Himself through the death of Christ in His physical body. As a result, He has brought you into His own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before Him without a single fault. (Colossians 1:22)
I wish we could see what God sees in us believers!
It would be great if you could see clearly that you are “holy and blameless as you stand before Him without a single fault.”
May God help us all to truly believe these scriptures that describe what Jesus did for us that day on the Cross. Let’s not be depressed and discouraged, as I’m sure the first-generation Christ-followers were on that Saturday. Let’s be what we are, Christ-followers on this side of the Resurrection Day and be full of Joy for what Christ has done for us.
I recently read Colossians 1:23 with a new appreciation… though I had read it many times before. Look at the challenge this verse gives us:
But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News… (Colossians 1:23a)
If a Christ-follower does not continue to believe in the truth of the Cross and its benefit, they lose their joy. How could any of us have joy if we believe that our salvation depends on being good enough for God?
We must have faith and continually emphasize in our minds the work of the Cross. That is why it is so important that we celebrate Easter every year… it helps us remember what Jesus did for us.
The Apostle Paul said for us to “stand firmly in” the truth. Are you?
Look at the other warning: “Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News”.
God protected the Holy Scriptures so we could read, believe, and rest in the assurance of what God sees in us:
… holy and blameless, ready to stand before Him without a single fault. (Colossians 1:22b)
Father, please help me to fully believe Your Word and rest in the fact that I am holy and blameless in Your eyes. Blessed assurance… Jesus is mine! It is in Jesus’s Name I pray, amen.