God Must Pay The Price

"God created man, created him to be His own... God set him in Eden to live in fellowship with Him, but man sinned. Man became the slave of evil. He cannot break free. This is precisely the situation that the ancient world saw as calling for an act of redemption. We who belong to God have gotten into the power of a strong enemy from which we cannot break free. If I can say it reverently, God, if He wants us back, must pay the price.
And the great teaching of the New Testament is that God has paid the price. He has redeemed us. Christ became our Redeemer.... To release the slaves of sin He paid the price. We were in captivity. We were in the strong grip of evil. We could not break free. But the price was paid and the result is that we go free."
--Leon Morris, quoted in Humility: True Greatness

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C.J. Mahaney's book, Humilty: True Greatness, is something else. There have only been a few Christian books that I have read where I have had to brush away tears from my eyes and set the book down. I'm not even half-way through this small book. This last chapter described James and John and their request of Jesus detailed in Mark 10. And what transformed these two men from self-confident, prideful disciples into humble servants and martyrs?

The Savior had died as a ransom.
The James and John we see back in Mark 10 were emphatically not laying down their lives for others, but they would be wholly transformed. And the explanation for this transformation wasn't just our Lord's example but our Lord's sacrifice. His sacrifice was a ransom for sin, and its effect was a liberation for James and John from their selfishness and patterns of pride.
Here were two men transformed into humble servants of the gospel and servants of the church by the Savior's sacrifice. Two men who ended their lives truly great in the eyes of God.
Why? How?
"The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28).
--C.J. Mahaney, Humilty: True Greatness

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In other random news...

Well, let's just say that God is very good! Joy runs rampant!


I know, I know... I didn't give you any decent, juicy, or personal information. If you ask me specific questions - I'll be more than happy to answer them... but not via xanga. I'll have to be careful answering questions over the phone too, now that I think about it. My cell phone minutes have been depleting exponentially this past month. *gasp*

::choose joy::