Christmas Part 1
Eternity Online: John Edmiston (Editor)
Eternity-Inspiration for Friday 12th December 1997
Christmas Part 1
(Matthew 1:21 NIV) She will give birth to a son, and you are to give
him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
Jesus means Saviour. That is His role. Yes He is Lord and that is
important too - but His nature is as the "lamb that was slain".
Redemption and salvation and healing and rescuing the world from
itself and from the demonic forces that inhabit it is His prime
purpose. On this latter point the apostle John is quite clear (1
John 3:8 NKJV) He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned
from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested,
that He might destroy the works of the devil.
Christmas means that God launched His attack against sin, death and
the devil. It was the opening move in a 30 year war. It was a
seemingly very fragile move and aroused instant hostility once it
became known through the magi. The Saviour himself needed to be
saved.
For us now though we have a Saviour and we need to know how this
operates.For years i saw my salvation as an event that happened on
the 1st of May 1978. Only as I read the Old Testament and
particularly Judges did I get the picture of what a Saviour was. A
saviour is someone who you call on continually to get you out of
trouble. Its like a doctor. We get a lot of medical attention when we
are born and certainly medical attention then is necessary and good.
However it would be foolish to never call on the doctor again. Some
Christians are just like that - they see Jesus as a Saviour when they
are born again but then they never call on Him again. Jesus is
constantly our Saviour.
Well what does He save us from? The above verse says that He saves us
from our sins. That is the great salvation. It means that our future
in heaven is secure and that no matter what this life brings we can
be confident that we are in good standing with God. Then there are
"small s" salvations and we see many of these during His ministry -
salvation from disease, from death, from demons, from lack of food,
from storms and from shame. Jesus can sort out whatever mess you are
in.
(Romans 10:13 NKJV) For "whoever calls on the name of the LORD
shall be saved." You need to call on your Saviour for Him to help you
and to call on Jesus requires faith that He will act. To get healed
you have to call the doctor and then not keep grabbing the scalpel
out of her hand. You have to trust your doctor. You have to let Him
prescribe and operate. To experience Jesus as our Saviour we have to
call Him into our lives and situations and let Him fix them and obey
His instructions for dealing with them. Sometimes He will do a
miracle but ordinarily He just gives us the wisdom to deal with it or
makes one of those "divine appointments" that fix the whole thing.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus help us to be humble and trusting and to let You come into
our lives and be our Saviour in all our troubles. In Jesus name.
Amen.
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John Edmiston ([email protected])
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