That I May Know Him

Sin is a plague, yea, the greatest and most infectious plague in the world; and yet, ah! how few are there that tremble at it, that keep at a distance from it! —Thomas Brooks

The above quote has absolutely nothing to do with what is really on my mind, but it is a very good thing to think about, isn’t it?

What is really on my mind today is something Paul wrote in the 3rd chapter of Philippians. In verses 7 – 11 Paul says,

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

The part I want to focus in on is the first part of verse 10 where Paul states, “that I may know him.” When you think about the fact that Paul had his salvation experience while on the road to Damascus over 25 years prior to writing this, isn’t it amazing that he makes the statement that he is still in the process of “knowing” Jesus? Maybe I’m overly cynical, but it seems like in today’s age, within a week or two of a person’s salvation experience, they have it all figured out. Yes, I do admit that I am being overly cynical, but, it does seem that what Paul considered to be a lifelong pursuit is not sought as a first course today. If anything, it is more of an afterthought.

One of the marks of what you are passionate about in life is what you pursue. Is Jesus the first pursuit every day? Do you take the time to read the Word? Do you open your heart to pray over the Word so that it might be burned into your soul? Do you think about God and all that He has blessed you with throughout the day? If He is not a large part of your thought life; a large part of your reading life; a large part of your praying life, then maybe the sin talked about in the quote above is closer than you think.

 

Study to Show Yourself Approved?

2 Timothy 2:15

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

The Bible is full of what are known as “Imperatives” and “Indicatives”.  You can not read the Bible for very long without coming to grips with that.  You may not realize what they are, but you certainly understand the implications.  We use them all the time without thinking about them.  What do these words mean?  Well, an Imperative, basically, is a command or direction to do something.  An Indicative, on the other hand, is a statement informing us of an accomplished task.

An example would be something like this.  You turn to your 8 year old and tell them that if they clean up their room, you will allow them to watch TV for 30 minutes.  Or you say to your 18 year old, if you want to take the car out on Friday night, you need to mow the yard.  You are telling them what you will do (because you have the provision to do so) if they will do what you ask.   They are required (the Imperative) to do something and by doing so, will receive from you something (the Indicative) they desire.

So, let me lay it out for you in just one verse from Ephesians.  Ephesians 4:32 states:

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

The Imperative in the above passage can be broken down to the fact that we should live changed lives towards others.  The Indicative is summed up in the last part of the verse where we are told that we can live a changed life because, “God in Christ forgave you.”

So, what does this have to do with the title?  Well, if you don’t study the Bible to find the little snippets like Ephesians 4:32, you probably won’t be much of a Christian.  Now, I realize that that is a bold statement.  But, go back to my lead off passage.  The Imperative is to, “do your best to present (show) yourself to God as one approved,” and the Indicative is that we do that by “rightly handling the word of truth.”  Looking at this passage from a negative standpoint, it indicates that “if you don’t handle the word of God by studying it, you won’t be able to present yourself to God as one approved.”  This can also be expressed positively, “if you rightly handle (study” the Word of God) you will be able to present yourself as one approved before God.  Two ways of looking at the same thing.

So, this leads me to something I listened to this morning.  As best as I can tell, what I transcribed came from the sermon entitled Call of Duty 2 by Eric Dykstra from The Crossing located in Elk River, MN.  While I am not totally sure of what the title of the sermon is, it was featured on Pirate Christian Radio and the link to the podcast is located here.  If you don’t care to listen to the whole broadcast, fast forward to around the 34 minute mark and listen for the next 10 minutes or so.  I did not transcribe the whole thing, just a portion.  So, I do encourage you to listen in for yourself to make sure I did not take what Mr. Dykstra said to his congregation out of context.  It is a sermon that is dealing with the things that distract us from Jesus.  Here is the portion I transcribed:

We end up sidetracked from what God has called us too so easily, which is supposed to be Jesus.  We know this in relationship to bad things.  Bad things distract us.  Everybody understands that sexual misconduct will distract you from following God, right?  It’s going to mess you up.  Addictions are going to distract you, it’s going to get you sidetracked from following God.  Makes sense, right?  Bitterness, anger, gossip, gonna get you sidetracked from following God.  Everybody gets the fact that bad things distract us.  But, you know what, I don’t think it’s just bad things that distract us, most of the time I think it’s good things that distract us.  Good things that aren’t the main thing become bad things.  Let me just talk about that for a second.  What are some good things that jack us up and get us off focus from Christ?  How about this one; Learning the Bible.  Is it a good idea, church people in here, to learn the bible?  Absolutely, you should learn the bible, you should know your faith, you should figure that out.  But seriously, there are so many church people in particular that get so caught up in, “What’s this verse saying,” “what is this all about” and their nose is in the book all the time and now they are theology nerds.  And they are talking about stuff that nobody else on planet earth cares at all about.  And here is what I have to tell you, you are out of focus.

This was very confusing to me.  It sounds like he is saying that “learning the Bible” causes us to be distracted.  Then he says that we should learn the bible because it will lead us to know what we believe.  But then he says that we shouldn’t learn it too much because we will become theology nerds who are out of focus.  Now, in light of 2 Timothy 2:15, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit tells Timothy to show himself approved to God by handling (studying) the Word of God, which in Timothy’s case was the Old Testament Canon that was know in that time (The New Testament that we have today was not part of the Bible we have today).

So, what are we to believe by what I have written so far?  Are we to do what Scripture tells us, or follow the confusing double speak brought forth by Eric Dykstra, and believe me when I say this, Dykstra is not alone in saying stuff like this.  Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more common to hear pastors of church’s that are running thousands on the weekend say very similar things.  I kind of have my own hypothesis about this and that is that the pastors themselves are only passing along what they practice.

Since we live in a relativistic day and age, it is frowned upon to call things out in a black and white fashion.  But, let someone do you wrong and things become very absolute in your mind! The moment you have the attitude that what someone has done to you is wrong, you have crossed out of relativism and into an absolute, intolerable (in our modern age) mindset.  No way, you might say.  Let me clarify a bit.  You might believe and say that you don’t think there is such a thing as right or wrong, there is just no way that there is a standard of what is morally right, that there is an no absolute truth.  But you come home from vacation to find that your house has been broken into and your Plasma TV, your killer surround sound stereo, and several thousand dollars in jewelry are missing.  I guarantee that your first thought isn’t, “well, I guess whoever took it needed it more than I did.”  No, your first order of business is to call the police and file a stolen property report and hope that whoever broke in to your house left enough evidence that they are eventually caught.  See, if you really had a “relativistic” world view that believed no one was right and no one was wrong, you would not do anything but just go on with life.  The moment you have the thought that something “should” not or “ought” not to happen, you have just crossed out of relativism into an absolute mindset because, obviously, the person who stole your stuff didn’t think it was wrong.  So, who are you to push your values on someone else?

So, having said that, let me ask you when is the last time you heard a pastor tell his congregation that, “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20).  Yes, there is forgiveness (just keep reading in Ezekiel 18), but we don’t want to call sin for what it is because doing that makes us look at a standard that we have to live up to.  Maybe I’m reading into what Dykstra said, but it seems to me that he is saying we loose focus if we put our noses in The Book.  If that is the case, then were does that leave us, what do we who call ourselves Christ followers hold as our standard?  What exactly gives us focus.  I’m of the opinion that “putting ones nose in The Book” helps clarify ones focus.  To me, it sounds like Eric Dykstra is telling his congregation that really digging into the Bible will lead us to distraction, and that is not a good thing.  If that is the case, he doesn’t seem to give any suggestion as to what we are to really look towards.

John Piper posted a tweet yesterday that I think pretty much sums it up.  He said:  “A plea to all Christian book reviewers. Only the Bible is a “must read”. Really. Let’s drop this phrase forever. Seriously.”

Something has to be the standard.  I choose to be what Eric Dykstra calls a “Theology Nerd” over the alternative.  I’ll take the Bible as my standard and gladly wear the title, Theology Nerd.

 

Boldness

Luke, the physician, not only wrote The Gospel of Luke, but also The Book of Acts.  A careful reading of either of these books shows that Luke did quite a lot of investigative homework.  At times he was right in the thick of the action he wrote about and at other times he went back to the sources and did interviews with people who had been there and personally seen the things that Luke included in his narratives, which later became a part of the New Testament.

The Book of Acts is like an action adventure novel.  In it, Luke captured highlights of the early church that spans from the time right after Jesus’ resurrection to somewhere around the year 62 AD.  This morning we studied one of the highlights that happened during the very early, formative days of the Church that Jesus built through the boldness of the Apostles Peter and John.  The back story begins in Acts 3.  Peter and John were on their way to the temple to pray and came across a man who had been crippled all his life.  In that day, there was no welfare system to help take care of someone like this man, so he was left to beg for anything he could get from the people passing by to sustain his life.  As Peter and John walked by, the man asked them to help him out.  Unfortunately, neither Peter nor John had any cash on them, so they reached down, took the man by the hand and told him to rise up and walk in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth (Acts 3:6).

This was an amazing thing to all who saw it because all the people recognized the man and knew that he had sat for years at the gate, unable to walk.  But now he was walking, and even leaping in praise to God.  Peter, who not long before denied even knowing Jesus Christ, took the opportunity to preach the Gospel, the good news of all that God has done to redeem fallen, sinful man, through the life, death and resurrection of His son Jesus Christ, to the crowd.  As the Apostles were speaking, the priests, the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came and arrested them because they were annoyed that the Apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

The next day, Peter and John were hauled before the ruling council of Israel.  This council was composed of 71 ruling elders that were allowed to rule the nation of Israel by the occupying Roman super-power of that day.  They had temporal power over the nation and their recommendations carried quite a lot of weight, but all final decisions were made by the Romans.  During a council investigation, the procedure was to bring the accused into the middle of all the council member who were arrayed in a semi-circle around the accused.  According to the Intervarsity Press Commentary on the Book of Acts, . . . the council wanted to know by what kind of power (Acts 4:7) or in what kind of name Peter and John had healed the beggar. Thus, the council charged with distinguishing between truth and error in Jewish religion exercised its prerogative to test the basis for this healing. Their interrogation, however, was not unprejudiced. The emphatic placement of you in the question asked in Acts 4:7 lets us know the contempt with which they hold these unschooled, ordinary men.

“Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead – by him this man is standing before you all’” (Acts 4:8-10).  I’m sure that Peter and John were well aware that the Pharisees hated Jesus because of his harsh words towards them, and that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection.  So, by this BOLD statement, the Apostles declared war against the council.  In today’s vernacular, they certainly didn’t try to win them over to their side of the argument.

One of the questions asked this weekend during the 1^st Bold Sermon was, “Why don’t we see God working today like we read about in the book of Acts?”  The answer, at least in my opinion is that we do not have the boldness that we are exposed to when we read about men like the Apostles and others mentioned later in the Book of Acts.  Boldness, by definition, is behavior born out of belief.  This belief that leads to boldness is born out of knowing who our God is.  The way that we begin to know who our God is, is by spending time in prayer and studying the word of God. This is not something that will happen by spending just five minutes a day in prayer or reading a verse or two. It is a lifetime of commitment he studying the word and praying that God will open our eyes to a deeper understanding of it.

This is exactly what happened with Peter and John when they stood before the council. Their boldness was related to the fact that they had spent time with Jesus and much time in prayer.   Acts 4:13 brings this to light.  Luke writes, “. . . now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognize that they had been with Jesus.”  God gives ordinary people extraordinary boldness but this only comes through a deep relationship with Jesus Christ.

One of the last things that was brought out in the sermon this weekend was a circular graphic.  At the top of the circle was the word “time” and that signified time spent in prayer and study the Word.  This “time” then lead to an increase in “faith”, which in turn led to “boldness”, which led to “results” just like we read about in this passage from Acts chapter 3 and 4.  But with the “results” the circle completed by going back to spending more time in prayer and study the Word and the cycle started all over again in a deeper way.

My challenge to you is to begin to spend more time in prayer and study of the word of God so that this boldness may be evident in your life because of the faith you have in who God is and what he has accomplished in the death, burial, and resurrection of his son Jesus Christ.  With this boldness we can begin to see mighty things take place for the kingdom of God and more people ushered into salvation.

 

Intimacy of the Church

I can’t say that this is an original thought because it isn’t.  I shamelessly ripped it off from a facebook post by Elizabeth C.  She posted, “I don’t pretend to know what loving others is like for everyone, but I can tell you what it is for me; to love others is knowing everything (good and bad) about someone, and still wanting to be there for them!”

So, why am I even writing this?  Well, it could be because a couple of days ago I didn’t even know who Elizabeth was.  Had I seen her picture or seen her in person, I would have known her face as someone who has recently started coming to the same church I go to.  I remember looking into one of the classrooms this past weekend and seeing a new, dark headed volunteer in there working with my children, but I didn’t know her name.  Can you imagine that, someone working with my kids and I don’t even know who they are.  Then, this morning, she asks to be my friend on facebook.  I had to ask my wife who she was because I didn’t know her.

So, that got me to thinking off and on as I sat at my desk this morning about how we know those around us, yet we know so little about them.  The older I get, the more convinced I am that the only way we as a church are going to shine the light of Christ to this lost and dying world is to be more involved with those around us.  I’m not saying that we have to conform to the lifestyle of the world, but there is a huge separation of those in the Church and those outside of it.  There is a pastor I know who says, “found people find people!”  The only way to find those people is to get involved in their lives and personally minister to them.

Now it’s confession time!  I don’t get involved with people very well.  I used to, but along the way, I’ve been injured, hurt, stomped on and a whole host of other things.  So, I’ve pulled myself into a little shell and drawn up boundary lines that will only allow people to get so close to me.  Yet, the funny thing is, I crave the closeness that can happen when people open themselves up to another.  You read in the Bible about Jonathan and David how they were so close to each other.  You read about Jesus getting into the lives of his disciples.  I mean, think about it, he literally spent 3 years with 12 men, traveling the countryside, teaching, talking, eating, and sleeping beside these men.  I realize that the Bible talks about the inner 3, Peter, James and John, but I don’t think for a minute that when Jesus rebuked Peter, He did it privately (Mark 8:33 kind of bears that out).  So, the disciples all knew each other’s business.  They knew Matthews good points and bad points as well as the rest of them.

So, my question is why is it so hard for us to “Do Life” like that today?  Why are we so easily offended or put off when someone starts opening up to us with the hurts and trials of life?  Sure, we love it when they share the triumphs and highs they experience.  But we don’t want to hear about the lows.  I am so guilty of this!  Here is the sobering thing about all of this.  Sure, Jesus went to the cross to be the sacrifice for our sins, and I’m not making light of that, but he also gave his life to his disciples before He went to that cross.  He “Did Life” with them so that when He was gone, they would believe in Him and continue what He started.  Why in the world would they go on putting themselves in danger if it wasn’t real?  They saw what happened to their leader.  Some of them stood at the foot of the cross, and I really believe that others hid amongst the crowd that had gathered.  They saw the agony; they saw the shredded body; they saw the blood; they heard the anguish; they watched the life leave Christ.  Why would they continue on after having seen that?  Because it was real.  They had experienced a life that was real when they walked with Jesus.

I believe that our enemy wants to keep us, at all costs, from having those kinds of relationships because if we do, God will be freed up in our lives to move in ways that we can’t even begin to comprehend.  I heard it said not long ago that if we will just do what the Bible says, God will begin to entrust us with more.  While I have found nowhere in the Bible where it says, “Thou shalt have close relationships with those around you,” the implication is there.  God chose a heathen by the name of Abraham to have fellowship with.  What?  Abraham a heathen?  Yeah, take a close look in the book of Genesis and see for yourself.  In Genesis 11, the people all came together to build a tower.  God intervened and caused a language barrier to come upon the people and scattered the people over the face of the earth.  Now, I may be wrong, but I’m not thinking that God did that because he was happy with what was going on.  So, Abraham descended from one of the dispersed groups.

Then, in Genesis 12, God chose Abraham.  Can you imagine that?  The God of the entire creation coming and choosing one man!  That is astounding to me.  He didn’t need to, He wanted to.  He desires close intimate fellowship with us.  We are His creation and from the limited account in Genesis 3, God appears to make it a habit of coming into the garden and “Doing Life” with His creation.  He wants us to have real life.  Our enemy does not want us to have that real life, which is why we struggle with it so much.  It is definitely why I struggle with it so much.

Maybe it’s just me, but this struggle confirms my belief in who God is.  It seems like I always try and look at the why of the struggle.  If some part of me wants to have close relationships and another part of me doesn’t, to me, that somehow bears out the Bible as being true.  I know that sounds crazy.  But put your mind into it a moment and ask yourself a few questions.

1.       Why do I desire close relationships?

2.       Why do I struggle with them when they are available to me?

I have never yet seen a baby that after a couple of months of life didn’t reach it’s tiny hands up to it’s mother and signal in a way that is impossible to miss that it wants to be held.  That child wants to be near it’s mother or father.  That child craves the attention, the affection, the closeness.  Studies have shown that children that are neglected have major issues later in life (read more here:  http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/long_term_consequences.cfm).  So, that makes me wonder why it is later in life we push back so hard and don’t want to have that closeness, that intimacy.  Oh, but I don’t have that problem, I desire that closeness and intimacy, you might say.  Really?  Seriously?  Have you been divorced?  Have you had sex with someone outside of marriage or someone other than your spouse?  Right there is proof that you don’t really mean that.

Now before you go jumping off the deep end, don’t think I’m condemning you for any of these things.  Matter of fact, I’m divorced myself, so don’t think I don’t have a little bit of insight into this issue.  If you think about it, the reason divorce takes place is because of sin.  What?  Yeah, sin!  Divorce stems from sin because it is a lack of intimacy with God first and your spouse next.  Seriously, strip it all away and you know I’m telling it like it really is.  Maybe you didn’t want the divorce, but can you not see the lack of closeness that lead up to it. And sexual relationships before marriage and outside of marriage are just our attempt to find intimacy that will never be found outside of God.

So, to wrap this all up, our relationship and intimacy with God has to be solid before we can develop close, proper relationships with those around us.  But, this kind of leads to circular logic because we don’t develop a closer relationship with God without developing closer relationships with those around us.  Those around us help hold us accountable so that we can grow closer to God, which in turn, helps us grow closer to them.  By choosing not to develop close intimate relationships with those of like faith, those we are supposed to “Do Life” with, we are basically snubbing our nose at God and telling Him we don’t want a relationship with Him.

Wow, sometimes I hate thinking out loud and putting fingers to keyboard because I just made myself accountable for what I have written.  What about you, are you accountable for what you have read?

 

Condemnation

Romans 8:1-11(ESV)
¹There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ²For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.  ³For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  ⁵For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.  ⁶To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  ⁷For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.  ⁸Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ⁹You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.  ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  ¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

‘Condemnation’ is a word of tremendous import; and it is well fairly to look at its meaning, that we may the better understand the wondrous grace that has delivered us from its power.  Echoing through the gloomy halls of a human court, it falls with a fearful knell upon the ear of the criminal, and thrills with sympathy and horror the bosom of each spectator of the scene.  But in the court of Divine Justice it is uttered with a meaning and solemnity infinitely significant and impressive.  To that court every individual is cited.  Before that bar each one must be arraigned.  “Conceived in sin, and shaped in iniquity,” man enters the world under arrest – an indicted criminal, a rebel manacled, and doomed to die…He lies down and he rises up – he repairs to the mart of business, and to the haunt of pleasure, a guilty, sentenced and condemned man.  And should the summons to eternity arrest him amid his dreams, his speculations, and his revels, the adversary would deliver him to the judge, the judge to the officer, and the officer would consign him over to all the pangs and horrors of the “second” and “eternal death.”  “He that believes not, is condemned already.”  My dear reader, without real conversion this is your present state, and must be your future doom.

But from this woe all believers in Christ are delivered.  The sentence of death under which, in common with others, they lay, is absolved; the curse is removed; the indictment is quashed; and “there is, therefore, now no condemnation.” – from No Condemnation in Christ Jesus by Octavius Winslow

I read this that I have quoted above yesterday and my heart was just filled with thanksgiving to my God who has saved me by His awesome power.  And what a wonderful time of the year to be thankful.  Also, since reading this, two hymns of the church have flooded my soul ever since.  “Amazing Grace” is one that just about everyone knows.  I am so thankful for His Amazing Grace.  Those of us who have called on Him and have been delivered from the condemnation we used to live under have so many reasons to thank the One who brought us new life; a life without condemnation.

The other hymn that came to me has the following lyrics:

1. When I survey the wondrous cross
   On which the Prince of glory died,
   My richest gain I count but loss,
   And pour contempt on all my pride.
2. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
   Save in the death of Christ my God!
   All the vain things that charm me most,
   I sacrifice them to His blood.
3. See from His head, His hands, His feet,
   Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
   Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
   Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
4. Were the whole realm of nature mine,
   That were a present far too small;
   Love so amazing, so divine,
   Demands my soul, my life, my all.

-Isaac Watts – When I Survey the Wonderful Cross

This song was written 303 years ago and it still holds true today.  It is packed full of so much truth and I just stand in awe that the God of all creation loved me enough to reach down into my life and love me.

Has he touched your life?  Even if you don’t acknowledge Him, he has.  Every day that you live is a gift of His graciousness.  We so often think that to acknowledge God requires us to give up so much, and it does!  But what we gain is far greater.  Eternity is a long time and spending it in the presence of God is a much better reward than what we have to give up in these few short years of life here in this world.

Won’t you call on him?  Won’t you reach out and survey the wondrous cross?  I realize that it is foolishness.  It makes no sense.  Somehow we think that we just need one more thing in our lives to make it to heaven.  We are good people.  All we need to do is a little more and we will make it to heaven.  But that just isn’t the case.  What is that ‘one more thing,’ that little bit more?  No matter how much we ‘do,’ it will never measure up to perfection which is what God is.  That is why He came into this world and died upon the cross.  He became the sacrifice to bring us back to Him.

I’ll admit that for me the hardest part of coming to Christ was admitting that there was nothing I could do to reach God.  That is what makes Christianity so different from all the other religions of the world.  All the other religions make heaven, enlightenment, nirvana, etc, something that man can obtain by doing something.  Mankind will never reach that perfect state by anything he does and if we will take a deep look inside, the condemnation we feel when trying to do that thing makes it abundantly clear that that is the truth.  Elvina Hall wrote a hymn in the mid 1800′s that sums it up:

Jesus paid it all

All to Him I owe.

Sin had left a crimson stain

He washed it white as snow.

When you survey the wondrous cross, you will begin to see that the sacrifice that God made that day thousands of years ago, paid our debt.  He is the one that came to us and made a way for us to come back to him.  He took all the guilt and shame and condemnation upon Himself to allow us to live free.  If you already have this freedom, thank Him for it!  If not, all you have to do is ask Him for it.  It is a free gift.