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“… and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Rm 3:24-5) Praise, You, O Lord! My guilt is gone through the blood of the Cross! This week’s blog continues the last one. If you haven’t read the last one, scroll down. In the last blog, I mentioned that real Guilt involves relational brokenness and justice. When we sin, we justly deserve punishment and we harm our relationship with God. Therefore, any attempt to deal with Guilt…

… holding faith and a good conscience (I Tim 1:19) … the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared … (I Tim 4:2) May I, by your grace, O Lord, have a clean conscience in Christ, for you have taken my guilt and thrown it into the depths of the sea. I bet you have someone in your family like Aunt Georgina. She feels guilty when she dries her hands on the wrong towel in the bathroom at Uncle Bob’s house. She apologizes when she gives Christmas gifts because she wasn’t sure what you wanted. Her conscience troubles her when…

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.  (Heb 10:1) Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  (Mt 5:17) Many years ago, I heard an interview on the radio in which a secular news reporter was criticizing Christians for being inconsistent and failing to follow their own book. “For…

… a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (II Tim 2:15) As you spoke in ancient times to real people in real settings, so, too, do you speak today to real people in real settings, and you use what you said to the ancient people to encourage and challenge us modern people.  Praise your name! We have been talking about how to read the Bible, and I have been saying that, in one sense, we ought to read the Bible in much the same way we read other books. The past couple…

“… a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”  (II Tim 2:15) I pray, Lord, that you grant me your Spirit as I read to help me grasp the plain sense of what you say. Let’s say you write a simple text that says, “Hi Abdul, We’ll come Saturday.” You write that text because you are in a specific situation and feel the need to communicate specific information to a specific audience. And this is true no matter what you write. The simplest email or a 300-page dissertation both give specific information to…