Sacrifice

Sacrifice...

We Americans often think of sacrifice in terms of working later hours, driving old clunkers of cars, buying off-brand clothing, or eating cheaper cuts of meat. Sometimes we "sacrifice" our free time to serve in worthwhile charities. We put our good intentions into some kind of "bank" that should outweigh all the bad things we've done. But if we use some sort of internal measuring rod, it just never seems to be enough. There's not enough time, or enough money, or enough things. The internal drive to be good enough is never satisfied. Even our tears of remorse, when we realize we have disappointed some we love, or have fallen short of God's perfection, are not enough.

Jesus understood what sacrifice was all about. It's all about His blood.

"Yuck!" you say. "Blood??!"

I'm with you! I can hardly watch reality TV hospital shows with little bits of blood here and there. To actually handle watching the scourging, the beating and the driven nails of Jesus' crucifixion - - and the blood! I can hardly stomach it. But it was Jesus' blood sacrifice that satisfied God's requirement that we be holy. 100% pure holiness, not 99.44%! The blood that fell from the Body of Jesus as He hung on the cross covered the ground below. And it covered my sins, and the whole world's.

So why was Jesus considered the acceptable sacrifice? What did He do that we can't do? Why was it enough? Because Jesus, being fully God and fully human, could live and not sin.

"Ugh," you say. "I hate the word sin. It's so judgmental."

Sin may sound judgmental, but let's call it what it is: falling short, blowing it, being stubborn and doing things the wrong way. We may call moral standards "judgmental", but yet are constantly judging ourselves. What we do is never good enough. Who we are is never perfect. Jesus is. It's not just what He did (dying on the cross for us) but Who He is: the perfect, holy Son of God.

His sacrifice shows that we are worth everything to Him...

From our home to yours...

Deb