If all Christ did was take our punishment then we would owe him our gratitude not our hearts. Holiness is a response to being loved well.
The Crucifixion of Christ was abundantly more than an offering of substitution for our sins. God was not pleased to punish anyone for crimes he did not commit. Nor was the devil bound by laws of justice to return the keys of life and death to the one who ransomed them back. Not at all. Such a view misses the entire profundity of Christ’s gift and the Father’s love. It was not a demand for punitive damages that compelled the devil to return what he had stolen, as though the devil was owed anything from God for the lives he’d stolen, but rather an act of immense power infinitely more deserving of those keys that forced the devil to hand them over. A power more commanding than justice. A power of infinite priority in the order of creation: Love.
For there is no greater power in all the cosmos than Love, and Mercy is born from Love, and it is greater than the power of Justice.
In the history of the world, no god had descended from his throne to offer himself as a sacrifice for anything nor anyone. No god had loved mankind enough to lower himself in the order of the cosmos as to become such a lowly and wretched creature. No god but One.
And it was He who humbled himself and offered both his creatureliness and his divinity as a sign of love to humanity; that for those who would accept this lone god among gods, they would be saved from death and ascend to Mt Zion, the home of this god, and live forever with him.
This is what Christ did for you and for me and for all humanity, Love came down that we might believe there is truly One God who Loves us.
Choose this day whom you will serve, the god of this world who seeks to devour you and has rejected all love that he cannot even love himself or the Lord of All who with the Father in the Son gave Himself completely to us, on a cross, that we might never be alone.
It is not that we deserved the punishment he bore, although we are certainly justified to receive it, but that we deserve to partake in this Love He has offered.
Choose Him because He first chose you.
Love him because He first loved you!
Commit your whole heart to being filled by this love and learning to love like Him. This is what it means to be a Lover of God. To be adopted as His son or daughter you have to say Yes to his offer of adoption: the cross. Accept his cross and believe that he did everything related to it because he loves you, because he loves you, because he loves you!
We don’t owe God our love because he took the wrap for us, we get to be his children forever because he made a complete offering of himself to love us forever.
What man has ever offered you his whole self, even to the point of dying for you? This man loves God and has been filled with His love.
Come Holy Spirit 🔥 fill our hearts with the fire of your Love and we shall be recreated.
Let the whole Truth set us free. #NoMoreLies
