Thankful...

I am so thankful for my good husband, my children, and grandchildren who keep me involved with life, when my natural inclination is to be a hermit. . .

 

I’m so thankful for all the faithful bloggers out there who create beautiful, thoughtful, and inspiring posts that keep me motivated and educated. . .

 

 

And I’m so thankful today for Oswald Chambers, who continues to teach and astound me with his wisdom and insight. . .

 

“The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin entered into the human race through one man. But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away, once, for all.  (see Hebrews 9:26).  The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but it is the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, “I am my own.”  This nature may exhibit itself in extremely proper morality and law keeping, or in debasing immorality and vile actions, but it always has the same basis — my claim to my right to myself.  

 When our Lord faced either people who had all the forces of evil within them, or people who were clean-living, moral, and upright, He paid no attention to the moral degradation of the one, nor any attention to the moral attainment of the other. He looked at something we do not see, namely, the sinful nature of mankind (see John 2:25).

Sin is something we are born with and cannot change or remove by our own efforts — only God can take away our sinful heritage through the redemption He Himself provided through the death and resurrection of Jesus. God nowhere holds a person responsible for having the heredity of sin, and does not condemn anyone because of it. Condemnation comes when a person realizes that Jesus Christ came to deliver them from this heredity of sin, and yet they refuse to let Him do so. From that moment they begin to set the seal of damnation. “This is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light . . . ” (John 3:19).

From “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers