#DailyDevotion Because Of Jesus, You Can’t Say Not Me

February 5th

Read John 1:19–34

Joh 1:28-29  These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.  (29)  The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

 

When God, Jesus, your preacher or some other person comes to you and says, “God loves you” or “Jesus died for you” you cannot say, “No, not me.”  John gives us that reason here.  Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  You are part of the world.  Your sin is taken away by Jesus’ sacrificial death.  His atoning blood is for you because it is for everyone.

 

Jesus as the Lamb of God is the lamb who blood when covering us makes the angel of death Passover us.

 

Jesus is that Ram whose horns are stuck in the thicket and is the substitute sacrifice to God to redeem us from death.

 

Jesus is that goat whose blood covers the mercy seat of God and the horns of the altar.  He is that scapegoat on whom the sin of us all is placed upon and sent outside the city into the wilderness.

 

Jesus is that lamb who is sacrificed as a whole burnt offering for our individual sins when we rebel against God’s law.

 

We see that Joh 3:16  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  You see it’s the world and you’re part of it.  John would later write, 1Jn 4:9-10  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  (10)  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

 

Even Paul gets into the act in not leaving to say, “No, not me.”  He says, Rom 5:18  “, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” And again he says, 2Co 5:18-19  “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;  (19)  that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”

 

So quit being so stubborn!  You know it’s only because you are being selfish and self-centered.  You want to be special and you don’t feel special if he did it for everyone.  But this is your certainty of salvation to know you are included in the word “World.”

 

Lord Jesus Christ, help us to believe your word that when you say World in your Word you mean me.  Amen.