{"id":5239,"date":"2014-04-15T00:05:56","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T07:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=5239"},"modified":"2014-04-14T22:51:22","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T05:51:22","slug":"good-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2014\/04\/15\/good-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Good News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cYou have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, \u2018You shall not murder\u2019; and \u2018whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.\u2019 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, \u2018You fool,\u2019 you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.\u201d (Matthew 5:21\u201326)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tThe Pharisees had thought long and hard about who deserved to go to Hell. They had come up with an obvious list of crimes: for instance, murder. <\/p>\n

\tBut Jesus indicated that it wasn’t a question of who deserved judgment. The question was, is there anyone who doesn’t deserve judgment? Jesus explained that even the best people of all still deserved God\u2019s condemnation. Everyone has been angry with someone. We’ve all called people \u201cfools\u201d or worse. The word rendered \u201cfool\u201d simply means, \u201cempty headed.\u201d Calling someone \u201cstupid\u201d or \u201cidiot\u201d is not okay just because we didn\u2019t call them \u201cfool.\u201d You’re just being worldly–that is, legalistic, you know, like a lawyer or a politician. Jesus\u2019 point was that it was wrong to insult people at all. Doesn’t fit in with the whole loving people which is the whole point of the Bible (Matthew 22:37-40, Romans 13:8-10, Galatians 5:14, James 2:8, Matthew 7:12, Colossians 3:12-14).<\/p>\n

\tThen Jesus turned up the heat. Even if we\u2019re not angry with someone, there might be someone who is angry with us, so we\u2019re still in trouble with God. We\u2019re simply never free of guilt.<\/p>\n

\tJesus wants us to understand that we all deserve God\u2019s judgment. No matter how well behaved we are, we still fall short of perfection and there is nothing we can do about it. But God has a solution. He came up with a way for us to avoid his judgment: by punishing someone else in our place: Jesus Christ, his Son. Thanks to Jesus dying on the cross, God forgives us of all our bad deeds and even our bad thoughts, which are legion. He knows we’re bad. So he took care of the issue:<\/p>\n

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8\u00a0But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. <\/p>\n

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God\u2019s wrath through him! For if, while we were God\u2019s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11\u00a0Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:6-11)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cYou have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, \u2018You shall not murder\u2019; and \u2018whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.\u2019 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5239"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5242,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5239\/revisions\/5242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}