In Jesus

July 16

Some people jump through hoops as they scrupulously follow the tenets of their religious systems with the hope of attaining salvation. There are the pious pilgrims who ascend a ‘holy’ mountain with their foreheads dragging on the ground to please their gods. There are the animists who sacrifice their children to satisfy the blood lust of the gods they serve. There are the terrorists who are counted as martyrs when they blow themselves and their victims up to gain their perceived promises of paradise.

To the Western mind, this sounds foolish and futile. To the Christian mind, it sounds demonic, for anything that smacks of death must be attributed to the evil one who does not come to save men or spare them the rigors of hell but to ‘rob, kill and destroy’ them, and to expedite them to the pit (John 10:10).

The purpose of the enemy of God is to deceive man however he can and to thereby rob him of the ‘unspeakable gift’(II Corinthians 9:15) that Christ has given him. The evil one doesn’t care whether an individual is deceived to the point of futilely sacrificing his children or himself—as long as his actions end in delusion and death—in a Christ-less eternity.

The blood sacrifice that was made by Jesus Christ, the Holy One at Calvary paid the price for all man’s sin. There is no other blood that must be shed. No other blood can pay the price that’s been paid. “In Jesus we have redemption …the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace,” Ephesians 1:7. In Jesus are we saved--completely, eternally.