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This Sunday as we celebrate our Lord’s resurrection, Holy week comes to a close. I hope you have taken some extra time this week to think about the significance of our Lord’s death and resurrection. The scriptures abound with words that at least attempt to comprehensively cover the achievements of the cross. Is it possible to find words that adequately cover every aspect? I think probably not! But the Holy Spirit breathed scriptures certainly give us much to meditate on. Consider these words from Paul to the Colossians.

Colossians 1:19&20 (NLT):    For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

Did you notice that twice used word everything? The accomplishments of Jesus on the cross dealt with everything needed for reconciliation! What does that exactly mean? I believe there is some mystery here! One commentator writes: I wonder if we have even begun to grasp the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ? He who is the head over the Church, is to become head over everything else. An interesting thought! Have you and I begun to grasp the greatness of our Lord and his accomplishments on the cross? Even if we have begun, I would submit there remains much more greatness to pursue.

In verses twenty-one and twenty-two Paul writes: This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

His death made our incomprehensible change of status possible. As the hymnwriter Charles Gabriel wrote before Christ our status was ‘a sinner condemned unclean’. Paul declares us to have been his enemies! Consider the drastic change in our new status! First reconciled to God, secondly, we stand now before him without a single fault. When asked how I am I sometimes reply: “Super working on perfect”. It is an honest admission that I have a way to go. Don’t we all? Yet Paul says that for those who have believed in Jesus and his accomplished work on the cross, and have asked and received forgiveness, we stand before our absolute Holy God blameless and without a fault. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe!

If the cross had not happened who would dare to presume to be blameless and without fault to stand before God?                                           Pastor Dave