Worship on Sunday at 10:30

Church Family,

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I give thanks to our gracious God for putting you all in our lives. Your faithfulness and your enthusiasm fill my heart with joy and helps complete my hope in Christ. Every day I look forward to serving our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ alongside each of you and growing in our discipleship journey together.

As a groups of us continue going through the study, “Profoundly Christian, Distinctly Methodist” written by Dr. Jason Vickers and Rev. Ryan Barnett, God is revealing a number of things to the folks. This week I want to focus on Christ’s purpose on the cross. This act of sacrifice on behalf of God and Jesus Christ, demonstrates the depth of agape love (love that uses words, touch, and presence). We often associate agape (love) to Christ-like love. But I believe it goes deeper. It is a Godly love that shares words of affirmation, demonstrates physical touch, and a presence that produces quality time. This is what God displayed, this is what Jesus displayed and this is what the Holy Spirit continues to display. But why should we be supervised? God is three-in-one, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. One cannot separate the three.

So, this agape love of God was demonstrated on the cross through what we call “atonement.” There are many different ways to describe Christ’s atonement. The dictionary defines atonement as “reparation for a wrong or injury.” This is in fact what Christ did. He provided a preparation for our brokenness. Some may say that Christ’s death ransomed us from the Devil. Christ paid the ransom with his life. This is true.  

Others may say that Christ was a substitute for us on the cross. It should have been us who die in our sin, but instead Christ did it for us. This is also true. John Wesley never focused on one explanation of what Christ did. Instead, he believed that Christ did pay a ransom that we could have never paid and did take our place on the cross.

This all happened because of God’s agape love for His creation. In the first lesson we talked about our proclamation of who God is based upon the Nicene Creed and our Catechism teachings, “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.” On one of the days our study led us to the topic of “How God is Almighty.” We learned that God’s attributes are infinite and perfect.

The Apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might because the righteousness of God

(1 Corinthians 5:21). Christ took upon himself our sins, he may have never sinned, but that day he understood what sin felt like. He understood the burden of sin. He understood the wages of sin. He understood the separation from God because of sin (My God, My God, why have your forsaken me). But sin did not have the last word. Satan didn’t achieve his goal. Christ defeated death through the resurrection.

The Death of Christ was able to make us “one with God” again. The word Atonement can be broken down At One Ment, meaning the moment Christ died, not the cross was the moment we had the availability to be one with God. Of course, this can only happen when we profess Jesus as the Son of God, and Lord of our life. 

Church family, I pray we have all professed Jesus as the Son of God and the Lord of our lives. I pray that we continue to share the Good News so others will follow in our footsteps. May we keep moving forward. Keep praying. Keep the Holy Spirit front and center in everything you do. For this is God’s perfect will for us!.

Have a blessed week.

Shalom, 

Pastor Frank