Friday, June 02, 2006

Daily Bread

Revelation 1:5- "And from Jesus Christ the faithful witness the firstborn from among the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth. The One who loves us and has washed us from our sins with His own blood."

There is a very striking change of tense in this verse that helps to underscore the fact that the blood of Jesus has freed us from every sin. The change in tense is between 'agaponti' (loves) and 'lusanti/lousanti' (loosed/washed). While 'love' is in the present tense 'loosed' is in the past tense. This alludes to the fact that Jesus freed us from our sins at the moment that we received His forgiveness. By the blood of Jesus we were set free to go out from the land of bondage and captivity to sin just as the children of Israel were set free from slavery on the night of the Passover. They were not being set free every day little by little but God gave them a complete deliverance when He came and saved them from their oppressors. He set them free so that they could serve Him, be His people and live in His land. Equally, we were set free from sin when we called upon the name of the Lord Jesus. We had, as it were, our own individual Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7). When we were set free we came into the realm of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is the realm of our inheritance where we are protected, guided, and provided for by God. Here in this place of His goodness we grow and mature in every dimension of God's ways through the activity of His love that has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). In this grace and provision of God if we sin and confess our sin the blood of Jesus will cleanse us from any contamination that would separate us from God so that we can continue on in His blessings (1 John 1:9; 2:1).

Blessings

Pastor Mark Spitsbergen
www.abidingplace.org

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