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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| Nearly 2000 years ago, I rose from the dead. |
No kidding.
I am not talking figuratively either. You see, I am a born again Christian, and I was on the cross with my Savior Jesus Christ. I died there, when He died; and I was buried with Him. He died, in fact, because I was there. Had I not been there, God could never have poured His wrath out on Jesus - well, at least not justly. But because I was there - united together with Christ - God was not only able to righteously pour His wrath out on me - He was obligated by His own righteousness to do just that. I died there, and because Christ and I were united, my Lord and Savior died too.
But He didn't have to be there.
He could have let me experience God's wrath alone, and if He had, there would have been no rising from the dead afterwards - because there is no reason for a righteous God to raise again to life a guilty sinner who has received the wages earned through living a life of sin.
Yet my Savior loved me, and demonstrated that love for me, not because I became a good person and suddenly attracted His merciful attention - but rather He had mercy on me at a time when I was entirely a rebel, and had no interest in Him whatsoever. When I understood that I could not get to heaven by being good, and that my only hope was to trust that God would forgive me if I would simply place my trust in His love, His mercy, and His forgiveness - if I would throw my sinful life into His hands and trust that He would accept me, and save me - sinner though I was - if I would do that - this God promised to save me.
I didn't want to trust Him for that, to speak the truth. Really, I wanted to just ignore it, and enjoy my sin. Why shouldn't I? I mean, as if God could really love me right? Yet I knew in the moment I heard the gospel, that it was not simply life - it was the only life there was. To reject it, was a greater crime to me than I was willing to commit. I gave myself to this God who loved me even though I hated him, and when I did, something changed. I stopped hating him.
When did that happen? It happened almost 2000 years ago where God dealt with my sin once and for all. I was united together with Christ in that death - and the part of me that God condemns in my life today - that part was on the cross receiving in full the entire weight of my condemnation - but because I was united together with Christ, my Savior, Lord, God - He received the full weight of God's wrath as it was poured out upon my sin - and that wrath killed us both.
I havn't experienced the death personally, but it happened none-the-less.
But here is the awesome part... Because Christ was innocent, God could not let that Holy Person see corruption in the grave. God promised Christ that He could take up His life again if He laid it down in this way. What a profound promise that was - Christ had to lay down his life, but the promise was that if he did, he would be able to take it up again. Magnificent.
That is how a righteous God can be justified in saving a guilty sinner. It isn't that God put the gun to Christ's head, then looked at me and pulled the trigger, killing his innocent Son - the cosmic demonstration of how far God was willing to go for us in love is not that He was willing to kill his son instead of us - but rather to kill him in order to provide the ark through which we could pass through death.
You see, just as Noah's family passed through God's judgment in the ark, so too we guilty sinners pass through the judgment for our sin (death) by being in our ark - Jesus Christ. We cannot die and come back to life because we are guilty sinners - but Christ could. -That- was the demonstration of how far God was willing to go to show His great love for us. He was willing to send His own Son Jesus into the world, to live so that He could take into Himself a chosen people, die in union with the guilty so that His innocence could justify them being raised again through that same union.
God is love my friends, and no single act in history is a greater testimony to that love that the fact that nearly 2000 years ago, God raised me from the dead in Christ.Labels: resurrection Sunday |
posted by Daniel @
10:20 PM
 
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| 3 Comments: |
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I thought I should have at least one comment. It makes my blog feel more alive.
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I'm surprised no one commented on this post. I think the blogosphere is unusually quiet these days.
No one is commenting at my place either (although that's not necessarily unusual :-) It's just as well since I have greater priorities (homeschooling and a stay-at-home work possibility) than blogging at this time.
This is an excellent post, Daniel. I shall use the ark analogy with my daughter at some point - passing through judgment. Oh that we would all visualize ourselves as dying when He did - and rising the same - to new life in Him.
I'm finding that if I drop to my knees each morning and submit myself to Him and dedicate my life to being His to use as pleases Him each day - well, the days are different than they used to be. Something's shifting.
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Susan, I am glad somebody read the post.
Holiness is not an option for the believer, but the modern church - and I include the reformed academia in this as well - has somehow bought into the idea that as long as you are well read and externally doing the right things, it doesn't matter a hoot that your prayer life is thin, your bible reading spotty, and you sin just as often as you ever did - but just not as "big".
When we start to spend real time in prayer and studying of God's word - the Spirit works real change in us.
It therefore does not surprise me to hear that something is shifting - would that we all learned that path and walked it.
Grace to you, indeed.
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I thought I should have at least one comment. It makes my blog feel more alive.