Topic: Jesus Christ

If the cross is not about wrath, then:
• Christ did not take your punishment
• Christ did not bear your guilt
• Christ did not satisfy justice
• Christ did not remove condemnation
• Christ did not reconcile you to God
And if Christ did not take your wrath… then you must.

We try to fix ourselves with self help. God fixes us with salvation. We try to build our own lives. God gives us new life. We try to make our own world. God is making a new heaven & new earth. We try to save ourselves. God sent a Savior. God says: “You cannot cover you. But I can. And I will.” This is the gospel.

The serpent did not deny God’s existence; he questioned God’s Word, stirred desire, & taught Adam & Eve to interpret reality through what looked good, felt good, & seemed wise. This shows how sin distorts perception—& how the God we ran from is the God who came looking for us.

The truth is centering, stabilizing, clarifying—if we are willing to upend our devotion to our preferred vision of the truth.

The lie says: “God just wants you to be happy.” The truth says: “God wants you to be holy — and in holiness you will find a joy deeper than happiness.” The lie says: “God doesn’t care about your happiness.” The truth says: “God cares so much about your joy that He refuses to let you settle for anything less than Himself.”

The warning is, if you’re not putting Jesus in the 1st place, you are destroying your own faith & the faith of your children. Jesus knew that no matter what else you say, until your commitment to Christ is a priority, it was all a sham. This is Paul’s goal.

JESUS does not deserve your leftovers! He deserves the 1st place in everything. He is FIRST; He went first, and He should be first in our lives.

We do not need to blame God for our pain or believe that He is absent in it. He took our blame & our pain when He became present to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

If Jesus really rose from the dead, than He is who He said He was—we must tell because everyone needs to know! We need to go to the ends of the earth to tell them JESUS LIVES, JESUS LOVES, & JESUS SAVES, even if it means that we risk some-thing to do it.