Devotional Reading for: 7/3/2013 Were You There? He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree. 1 Peter 2:24 A well-known spiritual asks this question: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” (LSB 456:1). Yes, you and I were there! You ask, how could we have been there? We weren’t even born. That is true; however, we were there! Jesus Christ, God’s Son, bore our sins on Calvary’s cross. If Jesus bore our sins, then our sins were there! The thought is both terrifying and humiliating. However, none of us can thank God enough that our sins were there when they crucified our Lord. The story of our salvation can, in a way, be a story of pronouns: He . . . our; Him . . . us. “But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities . . . with His wounds we are healed. . . . The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5–6). Because of what Jesus did for us as our substitute, we are fully and freely released from the temporal and eternal punishment our sins deserved! All of our sins in thoughts, desires, words, and deeds, as well as all of our past and present sins and the sins we haven’t yet committed, have been removed from our record. This is possible solely through the shed blood of the Lamb of God, and by His grace we have been declared justified, forgiven! “Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all!” (LSB 425:4). Amen.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Jul 2013 15:06:39 +0000