DLOGAN.NET

If you knew you were going to lose your job tomorrow, would you sleep well tonight? If you are one of the minority of people in the United States that actually has an emergency fund put aside, chances are you’d answer, “Yes”.

What if you knew that the economy was going to fold completely and you were not going to be able to find another job for six months, would you loose any sleep in that time period?

My guess is that most of us would answer “Yes, at some point I would loose at least a little sleep”. While I have faith that Christ will provide and take care of me, I know at some point along the journey my faith would waiver if ever so slightly. The rising demands and responsibilities of taking care of my family, paying for food, clothing, and our mortgage would get to me and I would wake up at least a little less rested at some point.

Playing this scenario in my mind, the biggest burden I would face would be my mortgage. If the economy collapsed I could probably not easily sell my house yet I would be responsible for the consistent payments. Moving in with family or friends would not release this obligation. I am bound by my debt as a servant to the lender. As Proverbs 22:7 says

Pro 22:7 The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower servant to the lender.

If I had credit card debt, car loans, school loans, or other consumer debt my situation would be even worse. My age group would actually be one of the worse off, according to this article which states

Younger people may not look poor. They have more stuff than ever — more valuable houses, cars and other assets. But they are so much deeper in debt than their parents — student loans, credit cards, mortgages, car loans — that their net worth has shriveled.

With the youth, the future of this country, being more and more bound to the lender its shaping decisions everyday, creating a pattern of slavery and reducing our freedoms.

The ironic part is that most people don’t even realize the freedom they are giving up. Having never lived a life without debt, they don’t know what it would allow them to do. They are stuck in the system, forced to work themselves to the bone to maintain what the have built up.

As a result of their decisions American Christians are bound alike with non-Christians in this cycle of debt and kept from 100% dedicating themselves to a life of serving Christ. What would The Church look like if the Christian American’s were debt free?

They showed this video in our church the other day. I thought it was pretty nifty and worthy of a post. I’m not sure if I really realized how crazy of a concept evolution really was until I really started to think about it lately. The chances of so many perfect combinations of attributes needed together for either of them to be useful “randomly” forming all at once is almost nill. This video points that out pretty well ;-). There are a whole series of them out there for someone who wants to take a look at them.

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Checkout my post at MinTheGap’s awsome blog!

I haven’t had a chance to add too much content here, but when MinTheGap asked me to write last week I couldn’t turn him down. Checkout the rest of his site while you’re there. There are quite a few thought provoking posts!

For the longest time I did not understand Christianity. How could someone who died two thousand years ago pay the price for my sins? Why did my sins even need to be paid for in the first place, and who was being paid? Couldn’t an all loving, all powerful God just get rid of my sins? Why bother with the whole sending-the-Son bit at all?

Even after I became a Christian, these questions still bothered me. I accepted that Jesus was God’s son that he had been sent to die on the cross to pay for my sins, and that on the third day he had been resurrected. However, the only basis I had for this belief was faith. No one could adequately answer my questions.

The biggest question I had was “Who is being paid”?, and why do they need to be paid? The answer I got from Christians was that “God was being paid for his own glory”. That seemed like a nonsensical response if I ever heard one. I mine as well have been told “Because I said so”. In my mind I imagined this picture of a guy holding a dollar bill. I imagined him picking up that dollar from one hand, punching three holes in it, giving it to his other hand, and jumping up and down with excitement. Originally he had a dollar, now he had a dollar with holes in it, and he was suppose to be glorified? Come on! Our God is an awesome God, not a crazy God.

It took me awhile but I eventually got my answer. The answer lies in covenant. While sacrificing something to make things right might be a foreign concept to us, it was the basis of Hebrew law. For every transgression against God, a man had to sacrifice something to make things right. The more perfect the sacrifice the more it could atone. However, there was nothing perfect enough to cover all sin. As a result with each transgression, a man had to make a new sacrifice. He was always in a state of moving in and out of grace.

Enter the new covenant. The Old Testament states that there would be a savior who would come to establish a new covenant. This savior will fulfill the old law and establish a new law that is written on a man’s heart. As Jesus said, “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”. For God to abolish the law would be impossible, and would deny his very nature. One can not be perfect and deny promises that you made. This answers the question, “Why can’t God just get rid of my sin if He’s all loving and all powerful?” To do so would go against his promise. Because God is all knowing, all powerful, and perfect He himself is holding Himself to that promise.

Then comes in the questions, since so many are falling short, how can God replace His old promise with a new one? The only way to replace the old promise is to fulfill it. It is only through completing the old covenant that a new one can be established.

The old covenant was made between God and Abraham. In exchange for a son, Abraham swore his family and his descendents to the law of God, through the act of circumcision. In order to fulfill this agreement there had to be a sacrifice that was perfect enough to pay for all the sins of all the people for the rest of time. Since the agreement was made over the promise of a son, it seems fitting that the only thing perfect enough would be God’s only begotten son. Living perfect and blameless, Jesus was God’s firstborn and only heir. Through his death he paid the price to God to fulfill His covenant with Abraham, to allow us to escape from the old law so we man not perish.

How do we get under the new law? We must proclaim that Christ was a perfect sacrifice (The son of God, perfect and blameless), and sacrificed on our behalf. This frees us from the old law, and we are able to enter into a new law through Christ. Through his sacrifice we are released of the old law, through his resurrection the new covenant is established. As heir to all that God has, a new covenant with Jesus allows us all things that were granted to his son.