meditations for an everyday relationship with Jesus

What is atonement?

Genesis 3:20-21 Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. The Lord God made clothing out of skins for Adam and his wife, and He clothed them.

To atone means to cover ... literally, to cover up a thing that is blemished. In the Old Testament it required the death of a sinless animal to cover up our shame. In the New testament Jesus Christ is slain, as the perfect unblemished lamb, to cover all of our sins and to bridge the distance sin has created between ourselves and God.

Hebrews 10:18 tells us that “Now where there is forgiveness of these (sins and lawless acts) there is no longer an offering for sin.”

Christ did once and for all the very thing that no animal or good work could ever atone for.

Does God make us choose Him?

Joshua 24:15 But if it doesn’t please you to worship Yahweh, choose for yourselves today the one you will worship: the gods your fathers worshipped beyond the Euphrates River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. As for me and my family, we will worship Yahweh.

Thematically, the importance of freewill in the Bible is bested only by the assertion that there is one God ... that He is sovereign and above all other gods.

Freewill, or choice, is how the Bible begins for humanity, and it is where it will end for each of one of us. In eternity we receive what we have sown in this earthly life.

Jesus on the cross paid the price for the privilege to choose our “forever.” The consequence of His shed blood is our grace.