Friday, October 1, 2010
Acts 1:8b You shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
YOU ARE A WITNESS
Today, of course, all of the apostles are dead. There has not been an eyewitness of Christ walking the earth for nearly 2000 years. Yet testifying as witnesses of Jesus still continues today through Christians who have seen our Lord through faith. You have heard from the apostles through the Holy Scriptures. Even more importantly, these are words authored by the Holy Spirit Himself. You are indeed witnesses of wonderful events, and are called upon to testify by the Lord.
Normally we hear that word "testify" or "witness" in a courtroom setting. If you are called into court to be a witness, you have been called so that justice could be served, so that the innocent go free and the guilty are punished. As a Christian, you'll find that your testimony of Jesus will be about the Innocent being punished and the guilty going free. Yet you'll still be speaking of justice because God doled out the punishment for sin. You are a witness to justice intersecting with love because the punishment for sin was laid upon Jesus. This is what you believe. This is what you know by faith.
The news of salvation can be told in about thirty seconds by reciting John 3:16. But you can say even more than that. You can tell about what great punishment we have escaped because of God's mercy. You can speak of the importance of repentance. You can relate how salvation is free of charge and tell of how three persons of the Trinity are involved in salvation. You can tell of how God creates and preserves faith through the means of grace. There is much more to say than thirty seconds worth. You could not plumb the depths of God's love in 30 years of talking. There's no time like the present to get talking with those in your life.
