Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

            The season of Lent has our minds focusing on God’s Love and how it is shown to us again and again throughout our lives.  We are preparing ourselves for Holy Week when we walk through the pages of the Gospels that tell us just how far Christ has gone to deliver us from condemnation.  A judgment that our sins have deserved.  Sometimes we try to falsely justify ourselves or explain our own faults in the kindest of ways.  We might begin to treat repentance as behavior modification, but that is not a realistic view of our sinful nature.  It can be deceptive and misleading.  The feelings and temptations might even have welled up within our own hearts, but what we have to test them against is not how we feel about them or ourselves; instead, examine ourselves in the mirror of God’s Law, the Ten Commandments. God’s law is perfect, and it cuts straight to the heart of a person to dismantle any false sense of self-justification that we may attempt.  When we look at our lives in light of the Law of God, we recognize our brokenness and sinful nature all the more clearly.

            Only at the cross of our Lord Jesus, are our sins dealt with correctly.  We repent in dust and ashes at the foot of the cross.  We see just how much it cost our Lord on the cross, and the Love of God demonstrated for the world to see.  Our sins always have a consequence.  Sin separates us from God, which is why Jesus took our sins upon His own shoulders to bear that weight of judgment that we could never bear on our own. 

            A quote from the Reformer, Martin Luther humbles us as Christians but points out the need to repent and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “God made man out of nothing, and as long as we are nothing, He can make something out of us.”-Martin Luther.

            It started at Creation and with the fall of mankind, our appropriate response to sin in our lives is repentance then faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.  There is enough room for everyone at the base of the cross.  No matter how badly or how often we have transgressed God’s Law, the cross of Jesus has paid all of the world’s debt of sin.  It has been paid in full.  All that is needed to bring our baggage to Jesus, leave it at the foot of the cross, and not try to come back and pick it up again later.

            As we continue our Lenten Journey, we focus on God’s Love it is what motivated Christ’s final sacrifice, and it in turn God’s Love is what inspires us to worship the LORD and show His love to our neighbors both near and far. God can and wants to make something special out of each of us, He has redeemed us from judgement and called us to be like a lamp on its stand, or a city on a hill which cannot be hidden. Let the Gospel light shine in and through us to others as we walk in this darkened world.

In His Peace, Pastor Ryan H.