Monday, March 26, 2012
Colossians 1:13-14 He [God the Father] has made you alive together with Him [Jesus], having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.
THE INDICTMENT ON HIS CROSS ... IS YOURS!
"We preach Christ-crucified" the Apostle Paul writes in the New Testament. Literally, he says, we portray him nailed to the wooden cross. We read the New Testament and we see him hanging there, spikes through his wrists and feet -- and above his head is nailed the indictment Pilate wrote, the crime of which Jesus was convicted.
Now the Apostle says to you, "Look more closely. What is really nailed to Christ's cross, there above his head, is not His sins, not the indictment against Him, but your sentence, your sins." By his cross Jesus canceled the indictment against us, nailing it to His cross. On the cross Jesus suffered in our place the punishment we had coming for our sins -- paying in full the price we should have paid.
In so doing Jesus silences are great accuser, Satan, the Evil One who delights in leading us into sin and then turning on us sinners, accusing us before God -- on the basis of God's own law. This is the devil's twisted, evil way, of striking back at God whom he hates -- putting the holy Lord in a position of having to condemn the creatures whom he loves, condemning them to hell. All because His arch enemy has talked us into opposing the Heavenly Father.
How Satan delights in tormenting us, because he knows we know the charges are true! But what Jesus did, there on the cross, changes all this. Satan is stripped of his power, of his ability to accuse us and make it stick. For when he points to the indictment against us who trust in the Crucified One ...
It's not there!
It's been nailed above the head of our Savior -- on His cross!
Thousand, thousand thanks shall be, Dearest Jesus, unto Thee.
