Devotionals

Who Purifies Himself

by Terry Barlow
01/23/15
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    Proverbs 20 verse 9 in the so called "Old" Testament is a perfect setup for the gospel to come so clearly in the pages of the New Testament. “Who can say, “I have made my heart clean, I am pure from sin”? The answer to this rhetorical question, of course, is no one. Only Jesus the Saviour can make our hearts clean, purifying us from sin. It is the one most important thing we cannot do for ourselves. "None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him...For the redemption of their souls is costly...." (Psalms 49 verses 7&8) But the one who was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, says Romans 8 verse 3, the one who hung out with sinners and looked like a sinner himself (looks are so deceiving), the one who stood in line with repenting sinners to be baptized like all the rest, that One did it for us.

  "....Who has established all the ends of the earth?  What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if you know?" (Proverbs 30, v.4) I'm thrilled to find even that verse in Proverbs, wich contains far more than we may realize.

 There was a monk who began bleeding in similar places to the places from which Christ bled. He thought that somehow he was making Christ’s suffering more sufficient, perhaps with Colossians 1 verse 24 in mind about “filling up what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body.” But the redemptive suffering on the cross by Jesus is already all-sufficient, it was accomplished once for all as the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us.  Jesus Himself on the cross, just before yielding up his spirit, exclaimed, "It is finished!" (John 19, v.30)

 The afflictions of Christ that we are allowed to suffer are never for atonement, ours or anyone else’s. Those afflictions are to help shape and produce the character of Christ within us and to carry us into the fellowship of His sufferings, which puts us also into a position to comfort others undergoing similar sufferings.