God's Plan, God's Power

"Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain" (Acts 2:23)

If you get nothing else from this chapter, it is essential that you understand and retain this truth: the world's redemption is not in mankind's hands. I cannot tell you how glad I am that there is at least one thing that we humans cannot bungle. The plan of salvation is God's plan. The power of redemption is God's power. Only the Lamb of God could die in our place. This is God's way of doing things, not ours.

Our redemption was not by muscle, but by love. It was not wrought by vengeance, but by forgiveness. It was not by sword, but by sacrifice.

We are Christians because Jesus destroyed His enemies by dying for them. He conquered death by letting death conquer Him, and then He turned death inside out as He burst forth from the tomb as victor! This whole work of redemption had to be accomplished in the way things are done in heaven.

Lord, thank You that before the foundation of the world You knew me, loved me and planned for my redemption. Thank You that it is Your perfect wisdom and power, and not mine, that brings about redemption. Amen

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No Problem to God

"And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 1:14)

Our theology is too much colored by our secret self-admiration. We picture God as draining ... draining the last ounce of His strength to save us. This gives us a highly enjoyable feeling that we are capable of mighty world-shaking deeds so terrible that even God respects our power to do evil. The lurid overcoloring of pulpit rhetoric has worked to destroy the truth of God's sovereignty and to greatly overstate man's prowess as a sinning rebel.

A man may sin to the limit of his ability and still be no great problem to the Deity. "But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" (Romans 5:20).

God is infinite and man is finite, which is to say that every man's sin, however terrific it may seem to him, must have a limit, while God's grace can have none. Always God must be out ahead, or He would not be God.

Let us put our pride under our feet and admit frankly that our sins are not big nor mighty nor noble. There is nothing romantic about sin. It is a sordid and shameful things practiced by moral cads so weak that they take advantage of God's kindness to defy Him and so cowardly that they run whining to Him for help when trouble comes.

Lord, keep before me always the exceeding ugliness of my sin that I may not take pride in it. Thank You that Your grace is so much bigger than my sin. Amen

~A. W. Tozer~