Just went on a semi-spree; blogging-spree, that is, looking at blogs. I found a few nice Christians with blogs; I’ll add them to the menu now.

I know what this person means, about atheists and agnostics who speak out against God and the Christian faith. Too often have I read threads in PEX or other writings by skeptical bloggers who readily speak out against Christianity in all its forms (whether conservative Protestantism, liberal born-again Christianity, or traditional Catholicism), making bold, arrogant claims without any facts or quantification to back them up. Statements along the lines of… “The Bible? How can you trust some book written by smelly sheepherders thousands of years ago? Everyone knows it’s been edited and re-edited hundreds of times.”

Of course, anyone who’s done his homework will know that particular piece of atheist propaganda is dead wrong.

Last Christmas (1999), I won a single range gas stove at the company Christmas party. I had no need for it, so I left it in my room, unwrapped and forgotten for the whole year.

Two weeks before this Christmas, I spied the package sitting on my bottom shelf, so I took it out, dusted it off, and brought it to church to donate the stove to the Flying Medical Samaritans. They’re a group of Christian missionaries in Mindoro who take care of poor homeless children and run medical missions around the islands. Gerry, of the FMS, who attends at our church, accepted the stove and said he would see if anyone needed it.

The following week, Gerry approached me and said that a pastor ministering to villagers on one of the more remote islands of the Visayas had been needing just what I gave: a single-range gas stove, and he had been overjoyed to receive it when Gerry arrived by plane.

I’m glad that God is constantly working in our lives. What if I had just decided to let the gas stove rot on my shelf till it wasn’t fit for anything but the garbage? (It’s happened to a few of my things before.) But just when someone needed it, he sent it through me. Praise God!

I just want to share something with you, because I don’t plan to blog till after Christmas…

We all know what sin is. Even in this “whats-true-for-you-isn’t-true-for-me” world of moral relativism, we still have a conception that there are things you absolutely shouldn’t do. (i.e. push old ladies in front of 10-wheeler trucks, rape your mother, etc.)

God has declared that the wage of sin is death. Put it simply: if you sin, you die. Not just physically; there is a spiritual death as well. In the Old Testament, God made provision for this by instituting a rather gory system of sacrifices, which would symbolize a washing by blood for the sins of Israel: the life of an animal to pay for the sins of many.

One thing you notice in the Old Testament (in the book of Leviticus) about these animal sacrifices is that God always demanded sacrifice of an animal “without defect.” (a phrase that constantly pops up in Leviticus) He was telling the people by symbolic example: “This is what you need to earn my redemption; not just little sin, but a spirit free of any stain, without defect.” And since no person can live up to that standard, they instead were granted the concession of offering up spotless animals in their stead. And whenever someone tried to get away with sacrificing a defective animal (say, a blind one, or one with a broken leg), God would get pretty mad.

It doesn’t really work, does it? The blood of spotless animals can’t compensate for a spotted soul, except as a symbol.

Then God sends Jesus — literally a part of Himself, God become human. And being God, he didn’t sin. He lived a completely sinless life. And for it he was killed by capital punishment. Executed by standard Roman crucifixion for a sin he didn’t commit.

Sort of like a lamb on an altar, being killed to pay for evils done by someone else, evils the lamb knows nothing about. Except that Jesus knew. He knew that people didn’t have the power to save themselves from their own sin; God knew that his children needed something to save them from this pattern of blood and death. So he came down and endured the blood and death himself.

So that you don’t have to.

He made the ultimate sacrifice; sacrificed himself, GOD, in your behalf, carrying the sins of all people up onto the cross, and dying for them.

At any time, he had the power to strike Pontius Pilate and the jeering Roman guards with fire from heaven. He could have floated off the cross, could have seized power by force. But he chose not to, because he was carrying the burden of our sins, and he knew that if he didn’t die to pay for them, no one could. He endured that pain, and that death, for every person, because he loved them.

And he loved you.

Sin has been paid for, and salvation has been granted. Jesus paid the bill. He grappled with death to cancel the blood-debt, and then he laughed in its face by rising from the dead. And his promise to you is that if you accept his gift to you — his death for your sin — you will join him also, in that return to life.

You’ve already been saved by his love. All you need to do is accept his love, gain eternal life, and he will touch you in ways never imagined.

Merry Christmas!