The God-Man is Bleeding!

I spoke to a man recently who came from a Charismatic background. He was looking for evidence of the Spirit in the form of healings and miracles.

Then I watched a movie. A typical Christian movie. It was full of signs and miracles and changed lives, but not even one time did they explain the gospel that rescues sinners. Not once! So I sat down to write…

The religious world in our day is infatuated with miracles. We love to hear about healings, and resurrections, and rain out of a clear blue sky. We obsess about tongues and supernatural events and the visible “working of the Spirit.” We long for them. We talk about them. We share them with others.

And all the while, we sit beneath the cross where the God-man is bleeding. Bleeding! And dying for us.

“But God raised Jesus from the dead”

The amazing thing about Jesus’ resurrection is not that a dead person was brought to life. God gave life in the first place and He can raise men whenever He wants to. The amazing thing about the resurrection is that the infinite Being who bore the weight of all our sins and paid an infinite penalty, was raised to life. The resurrection is not about a miracle. The resurrection is about the conquering of sin and death.

The resurrection means that not only did Christ bear our punishment, but that we can now live eternal life in Him! We serve a living Saviour who broke the power of the curse and gave hope and signal of the final resurrection for each believer.

Enough of the hype

So don’t tell me about how you accepted Jesus Christ into your life and He changed you. No matter how sensational the story may be, it’s missing the point. Tell me about Christ’s gospel and how you finally learned to obey it!

Don’t tell me about the Spirit’s work in tongues and miracles and amazing signs. Tell me about the love and joy and peace that are the fruit of your daily submission to the Spirit.

Don’t tell me about your miracles. They’re boring. Tell me about a cross where the God-man is bleeding. Tell me how Christ did the unimaginable and came to this planet because He loved us. That is a miracle.

Tell me how Christ took my sin on Him and bore it to the cross where He was brutally murdered… in my place. That is a miracle.

Tell me how the rebel-heart of some “lovely Christian person” has been broken and brought to a conviction of it’s own rebellion and sin. That is a miracle.

You seek the sensational? You want the amazing? You want something with life and power?

The God-man is bleeding!

He’s bleeding!

And dying.

For you.

My links are backing up…

So many links. So few posts to share them in. I’ll show some self-discipline and only give you a few.

• Andy Naselli points out how easy it is to be influenced to show grace inconsistently depending on whether someone is left or right of us theologically.
• A good quote from Jerry Bridges’ recent book, Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate, over at Paleoevangelical.
• Only click on this one if you are bored out of your mind and have a few minutes of your life to consume gratuitously. Abe Lincoln’s emoticons…
• Finally, I got this link from Farid this week. Evidently this really happened!

Grace to you.

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