We
are nearly one week past Easter - Resurrection Sunday.
"The Passion" continues to play to record
crowds. The debate about who killed Jesus and who
might misuse the so-called anti-Semitic ideas continues.
Christians of all denominations have strongly rejected
labeling Jews as "Christ Killers."
Observations from Scripture to consider:
First - There is no ethnicity to evil. Nowhere in
the Torah or New Testament does God single out a racial
group as evil solely because of their ethnicity or
politics. He makes the grounds for judgment clear.
"There is none righteous, no not one. For all
have sinned and come short of the glory of God."
"The soul that sinneth it shall die." We
ought therefore to "fear God who can cast both
body and soul into Hell."
Is that the Gospel - the good news? Sounds like pretty
bad news to me. But it sounds like the truth.
Take an honest look in the mirror. Wherever you set
the limits of your moral behavior, no matter how low
or narrowly you define the limit beyond which you
will not sink - the worst things you will not do -
do we not all find that at some point we violate our
own rules? We feel guilt and shame and thus anxiety
and anger. Unless you are a social psychopath, your
conscience has told you and me "that was wrong!"
Jesus plainly said, "No man taketh my life from
me. I have power to lay it down, and I have power
to take it up again." Why did He do it?
Second -- "For God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth
in Him might not perish but have everlasting life."
That's the Good News, the Gospel; open to all, no
racial limits.
