There was a little girl who was the perfect and only match to her baby brother and the only blood donor who could save his life. Knowing she could not fully understand all that she would be doing her parents ask if she was willing. The little girl agreed. They prepped her for the transfusion, and when they were both ready, they proceeded with the treatment. As she sat there watching her blood leave her body and enter her baby brother's, she was silent until the moment she turned to her mom and dad and asked when SHE was going to die. When she agreed to help her baby brother, she thought she was agreeing to give her life for his. Few things in a person's life are truly life-altering. One that is a sure thing is new life in Jesus, and God gives it as a gift knowing that no one fully understands their greatest need nor deserve His gift knowing the cost to His own Son. Let's read today passage... 2Corinthians 5: 16-21 New Living Translation 16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! 17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” 21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. Today's passgae has two of the most well known verses. Verse 17 says anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person and this comes with the benefit of life altering change. Our old life of sin and death is behind us and God calls us to walk or, in other words, to live in this new life. Paul can't help but remind us again that this is a gift from God as he did in his first letter-
"But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” 1Corinthians 1:30,31 So it is, that this transformation is not a maybe but in Chrsit a sure thing. Then he goes on to make sure that we know why we are saved and at what cost. Paul says we are given the task of reconciliation, which means bringing two people back together again. This is only possible becasue of what the Father sent the Son to do, graciously die on behalf of sinners. Someone may read- "no longer counting people’s sins against them" and think God overlooks or just dismisses sin but Paul tells us clearly the great cost of this great exchange. Our sin for Jesus righteousness came at the cost of Jesus offering or giving His life, so that, Paul writes we could be made right with God. Ask yourself:
May it be a wondeful day, and God bless you real good!
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