Random Quotes & Articles to Provide Food for Thought
Scripture: 2 Cor. 5:14-21
The verses I just read to you are from one of my favorite passages of Scripture. Paul is talking about that great subject that was never far from his thoughts: the reconciliation of God and man through the death of Christ.
A key verse in this passage is the one that’s probably best known from this chapter—verse 17: “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (or a NEW CREATION): old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” What does Paul mean? He means that the man who has been reconciled to God through Christ has new life, new senses, new faculties, new affections, new appetites, new ideas, and new conceptions. He is like a new man in a new world.
Tonight, I just want to look very briefly at one of the ways in which we are changed when we become a new creature in Christ: The person who is a new creature in Christ has an overwhelming sense of indebtedness to the Saviour. I would go as far as to say that it’s the hallmark of every truly born again soul, that he has this sense of the tremendous debt of love that he owes to Christ; and I would also go as far as to say that anyone who has never experienced this tremendous sense of indebtedness has never truly seen the extent of his sin and has never been born again and never been constituted a new creature.
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The focus of the Gospel is Jesus. There will always be a tug in Christian preaching and teaching to talk about our own experience—and a modest amount of this makes such speaking credible and interesting. But personal experiences can soon and subtly become self-centered preaching. Personal experience is like salt: a little is tasteful, a lot is noxious. –Frederick D. Bruner in The Christbook
Read Isaiah 53
On December 7, 1941 a Japanese squadron of 360 planes launched an all-out attack on Pearl Harbor, an act of aggression that launched the Pacific War. The commander of that Japanese Squadron was a man by the name of Mitsuo Fuchida. He was considered to be Japan’s most skilled combat pilot. As the commander of the squadron, he was the one who gave the command to attack Pearl Harbor. Fuchida continued in the war for the next four years, and miraculously escaped death four times.
Fuchida was not a religious man, but after the war his thoughts turned to God. One day at a railway station in Tokyo he was handed a Christian pamphlet. The pamphlet was entitled “I Was a War Prisoner of Japan.” It was the testimony of Jacob DeShazer, an American, telling how during his imprisonment in Japan he started to read the New Testament and was converted and his whole life transformed. Immediately Fuchida’s interest was sparked, and he, too, started to read the New Testament.
Soon he came to the story of the crucifixion. He read of how Jesus forgave His enemies from the cross when He prayed, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Fuchida says that his heart broke when he read this account. He couldn’t understand how someone could pray for their enemies and ask for their forgiveness. At that moment, Fuchida opened his heart to Christ and eventually became a Christian evangelist. What a powerful testimony of the wonderful grace of God! Captain Fuchida later came to America and traveled around apologizing for the war and preaching forgiveness through Jesus Christ. Read the rest of this entry »