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Last year, my wife and I went to Fields of the Wood with some other saints from the congregation. After visiting the historical landmark, we decided to go to Cleveland, Tenn. There we met with a minister we have known for many years, who began to ask questions of us and our vision for God’s people today. He quickly proved that his intentions toward us were the same as those of the Scribes and Pharisees and Saducees of old toward Jesus, who were “laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him” (Luke 11:53-54).
When I began to answer one particular question, he jumped up gleefully and proclaimed, “I nailed you! I nailed you!” The Scripture passages that proved the answer to be true fell on deaf ears, because he was not seeking answers, he was seeking to “nail us.”
I am not the first person to have been “nailed” unjustly. Nearly 2,000 years ago, the man Christ Jesus fulfilled the ultimate purpose of His first coming, as He endured harsh punishment at the hands of His tormentors. He bore His cross to Mount Calvary, and there was nailed to it and lifted up on it, that He might draw all men to Himself.
Every stripe, every bruise, every drop of blood should have been mine. Every wound, every nail, every grief should I have endured that day for it is I, not my Lord, who earned them.
I join with Paul in considering myself nailed. For he said, “I am crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20). And again, “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rom. 6:5-6).
Thanks be to God, who offered up His Son for our sins, in whom I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
Dear friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, I exhort you all to consider yourselves nailed. Know this, that except Christ had died in your stead, you would die in your sins with no hope. But in that He died, we live and rejoice, knowing that He bore all of our transgressions and has given us the hope and promise of eternal life.
At Passover, which we will observe April 4, 2004, we will gather again to remember this great act of love, by which - if we believe and confess the Lord - we are ushered into the household of faith.
Now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
David M. McNabb
Editor & Bible Guy