I Peter 2:24

     Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness – by whose stripes you were healed. 

     We come now to a magnificent verse.  We can hardly study it without falling on our knees.  Jesus, our Lord bore our sins in His own body.  Look who took our sin!  It is not just a heroic man or a kindly stranger; it is Jesus – the sinless, matchless, peerless, immortal Jesus.  If there were ever anyone who should never have tasted the sting and pain of sin, it should have been Him.  Yet He volunteered to bear my sins.  Are we not humbled to the point of kneeling before Him and tremblingly stutter out words of thanks?  And whose sins did He bear?  My sins.  I am sinful, insignificant, unworthy, and prone to repeat the same mistake more than twice.  If there were ever a man born who was less worthy of having a savior lift his sins from his back, it would be me.  And yet I was healed when my Savior bore my sins on His own body on the tree.  How can I rightfully respond?

     We thank doctors for healing our diseases, and yet what do they really do for us?  They point us to a cure and then require that we pay them for it.  A doctor sacrifices nothing to gain us a cure, and yet we shower him with praise and gratitude for restoring our health.  But look at the means by which Jesus cured us of our sin.  It is as if we came to Him with our broken arm and in order to heal us – His arm is broken.  We ask Him to treat our headache, and we are cured when his head pains Him instead.  We, the sick, come to our Healer with our diseases and syndromes and cancers and torments and when we leave Him we are cured – because those things which tortured us are left to torment Him.  For a Physician like that, we would rightly, gladly pay Him all we had.  Our Great Physician Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree -- and by His suffering we are healed.  How can we adequately thank Him?  This same verse begins the answer: “that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness.”  Since our sins have caused Jesus such anguish, let us despise sin.  Let us put to death our willingness to sin and make all effort to “live for righteousness.”  Seeing the anguish that our sin caused Jesus, how can we turn our back on this great show of love and mercy and willingly sin again?  Let us hate sin, the sin which Jesus bore to His own grief, and let us love Jesus who bore our sin that we might be freed of its weight.

Saturday Night Devotions return

Dear readers!

     We just finished a wonderful 2 months of furlough in the US.  We were so blessed to be in so many great churches during that time.  While we were travelling from church to church during these last two months we only rarely posted a new devotional.  But now we are back in our home and in our ministries here in Thailand and so we will return to our weekly updated devotional entries.  May the Lord use the words to encourage His people.  Immersing ourselves in God’s Word and taking care of God’s people remain mainstays of our work here in Thailand, and it is our hope that in some way, these devotionals will continue to touch on both these desires.

     Thank you for praying for us.  We feel the need for your prayers.

Doug and Cheryl    

 

 

I Peter 2:19-21

     For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully.  For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently?  But when you do good and suffer for it, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God.  For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.    

     Peter here commends us for enduring grief if we choose to endure because of “conscience toward God.”  Once again we are encouraged to be “mindful of God (ESV)” or conscience of God’s presence while at work.  We are instructed here to respond to mistreatment at work or elsewhere by silently praying, “Lord, I will quietly and patiently take this abuse just as Jesus quietly took the cross for me.”  It should humble and inspire us seeing that Jesus’ suffering was for the highest, most noble cause imaginable, yet God chooses to consider our sufferings in our mundane workplace somehow a picture and a comparison with the great sufferings of Jesus.  The amazing teaching here is that since Christ suffered for us on the cross, we can be encouraged to embrace suffering at work and in the world.  My how these verses transform our ordinary work efforts into something glorious!  We are somehow able to picture Christ’s death on the cross when we patiently endure people yelling at us and mistreating us at work.  Peter is quick to point out that not all suffering is comparable to Christ’s suffering.  If we mess up and suffer for it, this brings no praise to God, we must simply quietly take our punishment like a man.  But if we do well and suffer for it, we can quietly take our punishment like the Son of God.  May we all find proper inspiration in these words.