神使那无罪的,替我们成为罪,好叫我们在他里面成为神的义。(林后五21)
罪是一种根本性的关系;不是指所犯的错事,而是错的存在,就是故意且强调脱离神而独立。基督教信仰是把一切建基在罪的积极、激进的性质之上。其他宗教对付许多罪行,圣经只对付罪性本身。主耶稣首先面对的,就是罪的遗传。正因我们传福音时忽略了这一点,使福音的信息失却了叫人扎心及爆炸性的能力。
圣经的启示不是耶稣怎样担负我们肉体上的罪,而是他担负了没有人可以触及的罪根和遗传。神叫自己的儿子成为罪,为叫罪人可以成为圣徒。在整部圣经中,我们看见主担当世人的罪,不是透过同情,而是透过与人认同。他特意把全人类的罪孽扛在自己肩头,亲自承担。“神使那无罪的,替我们成为罪。”正因他这样做,就为全人类建立了救赎的根基。主耶稣恢复了人类原来的地位,把他们放在神本来计划的地位上。任何人都可以因主耶稣在十字架上成就的,与神连合。
人无法自救,救赎是出于神,并且已经完全成就。救赎与个人的关系,在于这个人的反应。我们必须把救赎的启示,与个人生命中得救的经历清楚区别。
祈祷◆主啊,为着你今早赐给我的感动,我感谢你--可是,我却是那么令人惊愕地毫无生气和毫不美丽!不过,这个对自己的认识,只表明当你不在我里面时我的生命境况。
October 7: Reconciliation
“For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21
Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrong doing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God. The Christian religion bases everything on the positive, radical nature of sin. Other religions deal with sins; the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ faced in men was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the Gospel that the message of the Gospel has lost its sting and its blasting power.
The revelation of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took upon Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took upon Himself the heredity of sin which no man can touch. God made His own Son to be sin that He might make the sinner a saint. All through the Bible it is revealed that Our Lord bore the sin of the world by identification, not by sympathy. He deliberately took upon His own shoulders, and bore in His own Person, the whole massed sin of the human race – “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin,” and by so doing He put the whole human race on the basis of Redemption. Jesus Christ rehabilitated the human race; He put it back to where God designed it to be, and anyone can enter into union with God on the ground of what Our Lord has done on the Cross.
A man cannot redeem himself; Redemption is God’s “bit,” it is absolutely finished and complete; its reference to individual men is a question of their individual action. A distinction must always be made between the revelation of Redemption and the conscious experience of salvation in a man’s life.