Saturday, March 14, 2009

ransomed

In A Christian Worldview, Francis Schaeffer wrote:

We might note ... that the death of Jesus Christ was not an afterthought in history. It isn’t that sometime, say, around 100 B.C. God said, “What shall we do about this?” and then suddenly the idea of the death of Christ dawned on Him. Rather, 1 Pet 1:19-20 and other passages indicate that the death of Christ, “ the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,” was “foreordained before the foundation of the world.” Thus the death of Christ in space and time, planned before history began, the solution of man’s rebellion in the light of God’s character of holiness and love, stood in the natural flow of all that had been.

We recall that numerous separations came about because of the Fall. There were alienations between God and man, man and himself, man and other men, man and nature, and nature and nature. The last separation is the separation between the Father and the Son when Jesus died on the cross. The separations that resulted from man’s Fall were brought to their climax as Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, being bruised and bearing our sins in substitution, cried aloud, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).

Here, the power of the liberator defines the extent of the liberation. Regardless of how "ancestral bondage" happens, silver and gold are not sufficient to set us free. Instead, only the suffering and death of Jesus provides the way. At the cross the righteous died for the unrighteous so that we might be brought to God (1 Pet 3.18).

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