Theme: The purpose of Jesus’ life on earth<\/p>\n
1 Peter 2:24 (NIV), ‘\u201cHe himself bore our sins\u201d in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; \u201cby his wounds you have been healed.\u201d’<\/p>\n
Question: What does this mean to you, what is your personal experience of this verse?<\/p>\n
Related verses: Isaiah 53:5, 53:12, Mark 10:45, Luke 19:10, John 10:10, 12:46, 18:37<\/p>\n
The two phrases which Peter quotes are from Isaiah 53 in the section on the “Suffering Servant”.<\/p>\n
Isaiah 53:12: ” He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.”<\/em><\/p>\n This explains the substitutionary nature of the cross, how Jesus took the penalty of our sins upon himself to save us. But this was written 700 years before Jesus fulfilled this promise of God; it shows the cross was not a defeat, but the crucial part of God\u2019s plan to save mankind from sin.<\/p>\n Isaiah 53:5: “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”<\/em><\/p>\n This repeats the explanation that Jesus went to the cross as our substitute, but it also describes the peace and healing from sin that we are given by His suffering and death.<\/p>\n All of Jesus\u2019 ministry on earth was leading up to His victory over sin on the cross and His resurrection \u2013 from the time in Luke 4:17 of His reading from Isaiah 61 about the coming Messiah and proclaiming \u201cToday this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing\u201d, through His many miracles that showed His divinity, His teaching of the disciples about who He was and what He must do, and His teaching of people of how they could only be saved by God\u2019s grace, to prepare them to receive His victory \u2013 all was in preparation for the cross.<\/p>\n Back in the 1970\u2019s and 80\u2019s some churches became shy about mentioning sin. But without an understanding of mankind\u2019s state of sin (which we looked in Romans 3:10: \u201cThere is no one righteous\u201d), there is no understanding of mankind\u2019s state of separation from God, the source of suffering and death, and the need for God\u2019s salvation. As a result, those churches could not make sense of the cross, and I remember skimming through a book which outlined lots of possible reasons for the cross, none of which made sense, while it ignored the crucial reason we have been given in the bible.<\/p>\n And that same lack of purpose flowed through to preaching about the ministry of Jesus, He was demoted to the role of a prophet, with various purposes invented for his ministry. But an author I read hit the target when he said he didn\u2019t want ever again to hear the phrase (which I have often heard), \u201cJesus came to teach us how to live\u201d \u2013 that was the role of all the prophets God had sent in Old Testament times, but that had never worked, the prophets had been repeatedly ignored. People did not need another prophet, they needed a Saviour.<\/p>\n Jesus did not come to advise, he came to die, for us.<\/p>\n Jesus did not come to tell people how to live, He came to give them life \u2014 a new and real life that is freed from slavery to sin. Jesus states in John 10:10, \u201cI have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.\u201d<\/em> Not just in eternity, but even now. As we place our faith in Him and what He has done for us on the cross, he lives in us through His Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n This verse gives uplifting encouragement, that despite the failings I see in myself, God has given me the forgiveness that Jesus won on the cross for me. With Paul in Romans 7:19, I can confess that I don\u2019t feel free from sin, I so often do what I don\u2019t want to, and don\u2019t do the good I should.<\/p>\n But I notice that with my non-believing friends, life is a never-ending cover up of sin, a refusal to recognise it. It\u2019s all about self-justification, but the problem of awareness of sin is never resolved.<\/p>\n A family connection once began to talk about his sense of wrongdoing, the way with age it eats away at us from within. So, I offered to talk about the only solution, but warned him it involved the Christian faith to which he was bitterly opposed; and sadly, he immediately stopped conversation on that, he said he had it covered and it wasn\u2019t a problem.<\/p>\n I thank the Holy Spirit for giving a desire to recognise my sin, a need to confess that to God, and an eagerness to be freed from it. And also a readiness to be shown more in my life that needs to be corrected.<\/p>\n While I would regard my failures as a reason to give up, I think God has other ideas, and He gives new opportunities and tasks to do in His name.<\/p>\n Praise God that through Jesus He doesn\u2019t give up on me when I might.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Theme: The purpose of Jesus’ life on earth 1 Peter 2:24 (NIV), ‘\u201cHe himself bore our sins\u201d in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; \u201cby his wounds you have been healed.\u201d’ Question: What does this mean to you, what is your personal experience of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"1080","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-verses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30124,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30118\/revisions\/30124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/questionsandbelief.org\/sw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Personal Experience<\/h3>\n