We are in our 3rd week discussing all that was accomplished when Jesus said, “It is finished.” And then died on the cross. Part of what Jesus meant by that is that He fulfilled the law.
When we come to Jesus our spirits are made new but our minds and emotions are stuck in a law-based way of thinking and have to be transformed through an ongoing process. The law is an If/Then way of thinking. If I do this, then this will happen. The law says, “You have to do this and then this will be the result.” And we can never do it. Jesus did all that stuff for us! He took our place so that we could walk in the freedom He intends us to have.
In Hebrews 11 we see story after story of people in the Old Testament who didn’t always immediately respond in faith to what God said, but they wrestled with what God said and then believed! At the end of this chapter it says, “And all these, having obtained a good testimony. . .” What was their good testimony? That they worked hard, that they gritted their teeth to make it happen, that they busted their gut, that they showed us how they could live holy lives in their own strength? NO!!
Hebrews 11:39 says, they “obtained a good testimony through faith.” And what was their faith in? It was in Jesus – in the promised Messiah that was yet to come. Did they receive that promise? No. God wanted to wait and reveal the Messiah so that we all could be perfect together in the Messiah. As verse 40 says, “God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.” It doesn’t say that they didn’t become perfect, they just didn’t become perfect until the blood of Jesus was applied to their lives.
Just like our friends who lived in the time of the Old Testament, you and I will never qualify to meet God’s righteous standards, except through Jesus. Apart from Jesus we can accomplish nothing. Like a truck stuck in the mud, we tend to spin our wheels harder and what do we do? We dig a deeper hole.
This week rest with me in the identity exchange of Jesus. He took our sinfulness and gave us His perfection.
