Are You His Brother?

"Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him."

Romans 4:7-8

In the old gangster movies we learned how to provide an alibi. “Joe was with me all evening from seven to midnight. So how could Joe have been the one who committed the crime?” Of course, usually Joe was the one who did the deed and his friend was simply “covering” for him. In old gangster movies the bad guy always got caught and “truth and justice prevailed.

In our culture individual responsibility has ranked very high on our list of priorities. “You do the crime, you serve the time,” was our motto. The other side of that coin was the “Self made man” and all the glory that went along with that. Somehow in our “Christian” nation we have yet to realize that both of those concepts stand at odds with the life and message of Jesus.

Jesus came to “serve the time” for the crimes that I have committed. I was as “guilty as sin,” but the blood of Jesus covered me. There is a song which I haven’t heard for years which says:

“He paid a debt He did not owe,
I owed a debt I could not pay.
I needed someone to wash my sins away.
And now I sing a brand new song,
Amazing Grace!
Christ Jesus paid the debt that I could never pay.”

Also, being a “self made man” is not part of what Jesus was all about. Christianity is not a “self improvement” course. The illustration is poor at best, but some think that Christianity is like a body builder who works hard every day to impress everyone with his “tight abs.” In reality followers of Jesus come under the knife of the great plastic surgeon. It is not by my power, dedication, persistence or discipline that I am changed into the image of Jesus. It is because of His amazing grace as He empowers me to be like my Master!

So Jesus stands before the Father and pleads my case. The truth is all He presents and the truth is that as guilty as I am and as worthy of death as I may be Jesus lets the record show that my death has already been accomplished when He went to the cross. So I will not have to die for my sins!

The rest of the story is glorious. Someone will look at me and say “You look just like Jesus. Are you His brother?” And the answer of course is a miraculous YES!