PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Acts 3:17–20 (NIV)
“Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus.
CONSIDER THIS
Talk about a plot turn in Peter’s proclamation. The guy who had never walked a step is leaping and dancing. The people are standing in amazement and wonder. Peter is telling them that it wasn’t their power that healed the man but the love of Jesus. Then this (from yesterday’s text):
- You handed him over to be killed,
- And you disowned him before Pilate,
- even though Pilate was going to let him go
- You disowned the Holy and Righteous One
- And you asked that a murderer be released instead
- You killed the author of life,
- But God raised him from the dead.
We are witnesses of this.
At a moment when most of us would be slapping high fives and snapping selfies with the healed guy, Peter does something completely different. He preaches the gospel. And he made it personal. I’m no grammarian, but by my analysis, four (4) times Peter uses the second person personal pronoun, “You.” Not “they” or “them” or “him” but you.
When someone levels an accusation at you, you must ask the question, “Me?” And you must face the reality of “Yes, You!”
And the beautiful thing about the second person personal pronoun is by naming none of us, he includes all of us. This is the ultimate story that the law of sin and death is writing through unredeemed humanity: “You killed the author of life!”
How do you deal with that? Can you own some of the responsibility here? Until you do, you will never get on with the gospel of becoming a real Christian. In fact, maybe that’s part of the problem. I think I should only own “some” of the responsibility. We hear sentimental sayings like, “If I were the only one Jesus would have still died for me.”
And Peter makes clear even our ignorance is no excuse. My sin is responsible for Jesus’s death, (as they say for effect), period. If my sin is responsible for Jesus’s death then I must own total responsibility for the death of Jesus. Same for you. It is not a little bit of me and a little bit of you. It is all of all of us. I killed the author of life, and you did too, and God raised him from the dead.
What if the limit of our progress in the transformational life of the gospel of Jesus is the extent to which we have owned our responsibility for making it necessary? Said another way, what if I cannot go any further into the miraculous life of the gospel until I own my responsibility for making the gospel necessary?
Yes, I did it. I killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead.
THE PRAYER OF TRANSFORMATION
Lord Jesus, I am your witness.
I receive your righteousness and release my sinfulness.
I receive your wholeness and release my brokenness.
I receive your fullness and release my emptiness.
I receive your peace and release my anxiety.
I receive your joy and release my despair.
I receive your healing and release my sickness.
I receive your love and release my selfishness.
Come Holy Spirit transform my heart, mind, soul, and strength so that my consecration becomes your demonstration; that our lives become your sanctuary. For the glory of God our Father, amen.
THE QUESTION
Have you come to the place where you are taking personal responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus? Why or why not? Why might this be essential? How about you? You killed the author of life. Can you own it? You can start right now. It is the only way to the life you desperately long to live.
THE HYMN
Let’s sing one of the songs we are accustomed to singing during Holy Week each year, “Were You There?” It is hymn 249 in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise.
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
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4 Responses
Today’s post brings to mind a hymn that I recall singing at Good Friday services. It’s an old hymn (1630), based on an an 11th century Latin meditation. The second verse captures the essence of Today’s central theme: “Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee! ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee; I crucified thee.
Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended
1 Peter 2:24
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
My sin was the reason Jesus came.
My sin is the reason He died.
My sin is the reason He was resurrected.
My sin is the reason He’s coming again.
1 Thessalonians 1:10
And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.
All to free me of sin, its wages, and its wrath.
1 John 3:8
Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
Staying 💪’n Christ
Ephesians 6:10
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
“My sin, not in part but the whole” nailed Christ to the Cross.
All we human beings (like sheep) have gone astray from God, each one to his own way, and the iniquity of us each one of us has taken away the life of Jesus. In a contest to determine “the chief of sinners,” we are all equally tied with Paul of Tarsus as: “O wretched man that I am,” and “I know that within me, that is within my flesh, dwells no good thing.”
When Peter calls for repentance, He’s calling for us to accept the full responsibility for our individual sins and for their consequences. If our personal sins were the only sins in the world, they would have still required Jesus to go to the Cross. This is actually good news. When I deeply realize the grave depth of my sins, I begin to recognize the amazing depth of God’s great love for me. Then because I am aware that I have been forgiven incredibly much (as much as anyone else in the world), I overflow with much grateful love and astonishing awe and adoration for the risen Jesus.
If I’ve never fully accepted the responsibility for all of my sins and their role in the execution of Jesus, and humbly repented, I’ve probably never experienced wholehearted adoration of the present and living Jesus Christ. However, true and deep repentance, that no longer self-justifies, but humbly cries out for mercy in total brokenness, receives and lives in never ending floods of God’s mercy which produce ongoing and unrestrained adoration for the risen Jesus. “O come let us adore Him!”