In the mornings, I like to come downstairs to make coffee for April and me. As I'm waiting for the water to heat up and the coffee to brew, I like to sit quietly for a few moments in my thoughts or to pray. Usually, its nice and quiet, but some mornings it's hard to concentrate because our son's room is adjacent to the living room, and he likes to go to sleep watching shows on his TV. Sometimes that TV is *loud*, and I have to find ways to drown out the voices. I'll put a fan on, or I'll turn on the living room TV and crank some white noise. Still, the voices bleed through.
There's another voice that we like to drown out, too, but it is even more relentless in how it cuts through our attempts to drown it out. It's not an audible voice, but it is no less real. This voice haunts us with reminders of how we fall short of our humanity. We try to cover it up with bravado. We try to turn it into a motivational voice for self-improvement. We go to therapists to help us cope with it. We try to dull it with booze, drugs, money, and relationships. Many of us just silently despair with it. But in the end, that voice always does one thing: it accuses us.
It accuses to death, quiet literally. The wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23). That voice of accusation will not rest until to goes all the way. And this is why Jesus came. Though innocent, He came into our world as one of us to die as the accused one. The law went all the way onto Him, it exhausted itself upon Him to the point of death.
Or do you not know, brothers...that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? (Romans 7:1)
Through faith, His death is our death, and the claim of the Law no longer hangs upon us. And His resurrection is our resurrection, to a new creation, to a new life that extends into eternity. We are free. They say dead men tell no tales, but in Him, we are dead men who are truly alive.
Sometimes, I just have to stop and try to fathom this.
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