Nails have a curious function in life. It was with nails that God wrought our salvation.

I’ll never forget an experience I once had with a nail.

My first job after graduating from a two year teachers college in Paraguay was in Tres Palmas, a German speaking community in East Paraguay. It was during the time when Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil were constructing a large earth filled dam on the Rio Parana to provide electricity for many of the rural communities that had no power. As the river was dammed, the reservoir of water that backed up flooded many districts almost overnight, including Tres Palmas.

Tres Palmas was a community that was located on two hills that were divided by a road. When the land flooded, the road was washed away and the two hills were now divided by a huge lake. Life changed quite drastically. A school bus was replaced with a school boat. The main means of transportation from one week to the next changed from cars and motorcycles to boats and canoes.

One Sunday evening I was getting ready to go to a youth outing. From my house I could see when the big motor boat docked to take us to church. I was talking to my colleague with whom I shared the house.

“Don’t you want to come along this evening?” I asked Basilisa.

“No, I’ve got some grading to do. I’ll rather stay here,” she said. As we talked, she stooped down and picked something up from the ground.

“What’s that?” I asked her.

“A nail.” She fingered the smooth nail while we talked and when I heard the boat’s horn down at the dock, she handed me the nail. “Here,” she said. “Take this.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You just might need it.” With that she unzipped my purse and plopped the nail in it’s depths. I shrugged my shoulders and almost immediately forgot about that nail as I ran down the hill to catch the boat.

The boat was a big old cumbersome thing that could hold at least fifty people. I don’t remember where Tres Palmas had come up with this boat that was used to transport children to school during the week and parishioners to church on Sunday. Since the transportation mode had changed so quickly, the boat was not equipped with enough life jackets for everyone and who knows whether paddles even went with it.

It was a beautiful evening for a ride on the lake in a boat. The going was always slow because the driver had to be careful not to get the motor stuck in tree tops. We must have looked like Noah’s ark carefully making our way across flooded land. But for us young people, it was an adventure. We sang and laughed as one responsible young man maneuvered the boat to the other side of the lake to where the church was. After the boat was docked, we all ran up the hill to the church where the celebrating continued.

Once the youth gathering was over, we made our way back to the boat and exuberantly clamored on again for a romantic ride across the lake in the light of the moon. Silver shadows danced on the water and the few tree tops made shiny ghostlike reflections. The songs of the excited crowd of young people became mellow as we slowly made our way home across the lake. Suddenly in the middle of the lake the gentle hum of the motor stopped. Silence echoed from the trees.

“What’s the matter?” one person asked.

“I don’t know,” the driver said.

We all crowded around the motor, almost demanding an explanation from it. The motor obviously did not respond. A few young men started tinkering with it and coaxing it. The rest of us watched. How quickly the silvery water lost its romance and the moon its friendly face. It was nice as long as we were moving along, even slowly, but no one was interested in spending the night out there.

“A screw fell out of one of the motor blades,” one young man announced. “Now what?”

“Any paddles on board?”

We all busied ourselves to look around on the scarcely furnished boat. It didn’t even have benches. It didn’t take long for us to figure out that there were no paddles either.

“Can we fix it?” someone asked.

“Not without another screw.”

“Did it drop on the ground?”

Another search on hands and knees for a lost screw ensued. Empty-handed we got up.

“Can something be substituted for the screw?”

“Temporarily perhaps. But it has to fit exactly in this tiny hole. Maybe a pen tip. Anyone have a pen?”

A girl pulled a pen out of her pocket. The driver tried to fit it into the Lilliputian hole. It might have worked but the tip got fat before it could wiggle it’s way into the hole. Calling for help would be useless. We were too far away from the shore for anyone to hear us. Thoughts of spending a cold night on a boat in the middle of a lake ran through everyone’s mind.

Suddenly the driver asked, “A nail would do it. Does anyone have a nail?”

“Yeah, we all go walking around with a nail in our pocket.”

“Well you Marvin, you’re a carpenter. Don’t you have a nail on you?”

Marvin did search in all his pockets to appease everyone. “I’m sorry–I don’t take my nails to church.”

Suddenly I remembered the nail in my purse. “I have one.” My yell was met with stares of disbelief. My disbelief matched theirs. My nail would probably never fit anyway.

I rummaged in my purse and produced the nail Basilisa had given me earlier that evening. The young man put the nail in the hole where the screw had been. It was a perfect fit. Nails come in all shapes and sizes; this one happened to fit exactly. The hum of the motor then, was one of the sweetest sounds of the evening.

God handed down a little piece of serendipity in the shape of a nail, once again.

I think it was a gentle reminder.

Easter is a wonderful time of remembering the salvation wrought for us with nails and Christ’s blood. Celebrate the season!

I remember several years ago standing behind the curtain during our church’s Passion Play.

People ask why we celebrate the Resurrection. The main reason is that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, is alive. No other religious leader who ever lived and died can make that claim. For that matter, every single leader or celebrity who has died—political, academic, or artistic—remains buried, unless his or her body has somehow been removed by man. Their tombs are often honored as places of national or religious pride.

But of what do we Christians boast? We boast of an empty tomb because the Person we love, the Person we follow, the Person we serve is no longer there.

Now, if Jesus Christ rose from the dead, where is He? Scripture tells us precisely where He is: He is seated at the right hand of God (Hebrews 10:12). It also informs us exactly what He is doing: when we pray, He intercedes with the Father on our behalf (Hebrews 7:25). Moreover, we know from John 14 that Jesus is preparing a place for you and me in heaven and that one day we will be with Him there (verses 2-3). In the meantime, He is arranging all the events necessary for His return.

The Bible gives us more reasons to rejoice. According to 1 John 2:1-2, Jesus Christ is our advocate. You see, when the Son of God saved you and me, He knew we would not live perfect lives—He knew there would be times we would sin against Him. So He stands between us and the Father to present our case. This defense is based not merely upon our confession and repentance for the forgiveness of sin, but upon the fact that Jesus Himself laid down His life and paid our sin-debt in full. When He went to the cross, He died a substitutionary, sacrificial death on our behalf. So we can be absolutely confident that our sins are totally forgiven. Salvation has nothing to do with our behavior, but it has everything to do with the grace of God, the love of God, the goodness of God, the mercy of God, and the blood of Jesus Christ. Now that’s cause for celebration!

What’s more, we are eternally secure in our Lord. There’s not a single verse anywhere in Scripture indicating we were saved only for a season. Notice what the Bible says: The Lord gives believers eternal life, and we will never perish (John 10:28); we are “sealed for the day of redemption,” which means the ultimate day when God calls us home. (Ephesians 4:30) We are assured that no one can snatch us out of our heavenly Father’s hand. (John 10:27-30)

So let me ask you a question: Do you think you have the power to take anything out of the hand of Omnipotence?

Once you’ve trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you may have doubts or fears in your life. You may rebel and sin against Him. But that in no way means you have lost your salvation. If it did imply such a thing, what could God possibly have meant by “I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish”? (John 10:28) This isn’t license for sin; this is reason to rejoice, to praise God, to walk holy before Him, and to obey Him. If Jesus had not risen from the grave, we might have reason to doubt our eternal security, but the fact that He was resurrected settles once and for all the truth of everything He said as well as the guarantee of everything He promised.

When you and I trusted Jesus as our Savior, we didn’t just receive forgiveness of our sins; we received His very life. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus is right now abiding inside of us (John 15:4) to help each believer live the Christian life (Galatians 2:20). He promised that He would not leave us as orphans, fending for ourselves (John 14:18), but instead, He would send us another Helper—the Holy Spirit—who would be with us forever, dwelling not only with us, but in us (John 14:16-17).

We receive another aspect of His life when we place our trust in Him: eternal life. That’s the difference between believers and unbelievers: the unbeliever has life on earth, but we who believe have life after death because we have Christ’s life. Jesus is, was, and always will be—He will live forever, and the eternal life He offers is likewise of infinite duration. In addition, He gives us the quality and nature of the life He Himself possesses—it is glorious, abundant, and indescribable. He has given us Himself.

So, if He has given us eternal life, will our bodies get old? Will our muscles weaken and our hair become gray? Yes, the body will change with time, but our soul and spirit will mature and become stronger. Scripture tells us that Christians are going to live forever, but not in their earthly bodies. Every single believer is going to experience a bodily resurrection! We know this, not only because Christ Himself was resurrected, but also because He told us, “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:39). If you belong to Christ, you are going to experience a bodily, physical resurrection.

Why else do we celebrate? Hebrews 9:27 says that “it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.” Every single person will one day stand in the presence of Jesus Christ to give an account for his or her life. Scripture speaks of two coming resurrections, the first being “unto life,“ which guarantees reward to every believer. (Revelation 20:6) The other resurrection, which is reserved for all people who have rejected the Lord Jesus, is unto judgment and condemnation. It results in eternal separation from God, which the Bible calls the “second death” (Revelation 20:11-15).

One other reason we celebrate is that the resurrection of Jesus Christ has given us a very definite purpose for being alive. He has saved us so that we could reflect His life in our work, our ways, our words, and our walk. That is why you and I are the body of Christ. He is looking through our eyes, hearing through our ears, speaking through our voices, and helping through our hands. Having created us for Himself, He desires that you and I walk in holiness and righteousness before Him. We are to be Christ’s representatives, pointing people to Him and reflecting His light to a dark world that desperately needs Him.

To all of us who know Him as personal Savior, He has entrusted the most awesome and glorious message, unmatched by anything else in history. And that message is so simple: Our unconditionally loving heavenly Father sent His only begotten Son Jesus into this wicked, vile, sinful world to die on a cruel Roman cross. There, Christ paid the sin-debt of all mankind in order to reconcile us unto God and make us His children. When you by faith receive Him as your personal Savior, your eternal destiny is transformed in a split second—one moment lost; the next moment saved. Formerly headed for hell; now with a home in heaven.

Every once in a while I hear somebody casually say, “Well I guess I’m just going to hell when I die.” No one in his right mind should speak so carelessly! Everyone is going to spend eternity in either heaven or hell—there is no escape. No disintegration. No annihilation. There is not a single verse of Scripture that says you can become nothing once you have been born. Let me say this: It would be better never to have been born than to die without Christ!

So why do we celebrate the Resurrection? Because it is all about assurance, confidence, and boldness. It’s about where we are in life, where we are headed, and where we are going to end up—in the very presence of the living God instead of eternally separated from Him.

Revelation 21:27 says that no one can enter heaven except “those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” How do you get your name inscribed in that book? By accepting the Lamb of God—the person of Jesus Christ—as your personal Savior, based on the fact that He died on the Cross, paying your sin-debt in full. Three days after He was buried, He rose again. Believe it . . . and celebrate!

Do you desire to live a life yielded to the control of God? If so, why not take the time right now to pray in faith and relinquish control back into your Father’s hands? The Bible tells us that ”[God] anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come” (2 Corinthians 1:22). We can rejoice that His Holy Spirit also helps us during our time on earth, molding and perfecting us so that we reflect Christ-like character.

Dear Father, I need You. I acknowledge that I have sinned against You by directing my own life. I thank You that You have forgiven my sins through Christ’s death on the cross for me. I now invite Christ to again take His place on the throne of my life. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit as You commanded me to be filled, and as You promised in Your Word that You would do if I asked in faith. I pray this in the name of Jesus. As an expression of my faith, I thank You for directing my life and for filling me with Your Holy Spirit. Amen.

If you prayed this prayer, we would love to hear about it!

Copyright © IN TOUCH MINISTRIES. IN TOUCH Magazine. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

We have now been justified by his blood. – Romans 5:9

[We] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. – Romans 3:24

We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. – Romans 3:28

Justified or forgiven?

Being justified before God and being forgiven by God are not identical. To be justified in a courtroom is not the same as being forgiven.  Being forgiven implies that I am guilty and my crime is not counted.  Being justified implies that I have been tried and found innocent.  My claim is just.  I am vindicated.  The judge says, “not guilty.”

Justifying is a legal act.  It means declaring someone to be just.  It is a verdict.  The verdict of justification does not make a person just.  It declares a person just. It is based on someone actually being just.  We can see this most clearly when the Bible tells us that, in response to Jesus’ teaching, the people “justified” God (Luke 7:29).  This does not mean they made God just  (since he already was).  It means they declared God to be just.

The moral change we undergo when we trust Christ is not justification. The Bible usually calls that sanctification – the process of becoming good.   Justification is not that process.  It is not process at all.  It is a declaration that happens in a moment.  A verdict:  Just!  Righteous!

Keeping the law?

The ordinary way to be justified in a human court is to keep the law.  In that case the jury and the judge simply declare what is true of you:  You kept the law.  They justify you.  But in the courtroom of God, we have not kept the law.  Therefore, justification, on ordinary terms, is hopeless.  The Bible even says, “He who justifies the wicked [is] an abomination to the LORD”  (Proverbs 17:15).  And yet, amazingly, because of Christ, it also says God “justifies the ungodly” who trust in his grace (Romans 4:5).  God does what looks abominable.

Why is it not abominable?  Or, as the Bible puts it, how can God “be just and the justifier of the one who [simply!] has faith in Jesus”  (Romans 3:26).  It is not abominable for God to justify the ungodly who trust him, for two reasons. One is that Christ shed his blood to cancel the guilt of our crime. So it says, “We have now been justified by his blood”  (Romans 5:9).

But that is only the removal of guilt.  That does not declare us righteous.  Canceling our failures to keep the law is not the same as declaring us to be a law-keeper.  When a teacher cancels from the record an exam that got an F, it’s not the same as declaring it an A.  If the bank were to forgive me the debts on my account, that would not be the same as declaring me rich.  So also, canceling our sins is not the same as declaring us righteous.  The cancellation must happen.  That is essential to justification.  But there is more.  There is another reason why it is not abominable for God to justify the ungodly by faith.  For that we turn to the next chapter.

John Piper, “The Passion of Jesus Christ:  Fifty Reasons Why He Came to Die”  (Wheaton, Illinois:  Crossway Books, 2004) Reason #10.  Used by Permission.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. – Isaiah 53:5

[He]  healed all who were sick.  This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah:  “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.” – Matthew 8:16-17

Christ suffered and died so that disease would one day be utterly destroyed. Disease and death were not part of God’s original way with the world.  They came in with sin as part of God’s judgment on creation.  The Bible says, “The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope”  (Romans 8:20).  God subjected the world to the futility of physical pain to show the horror of moral evil.

This futility included death.  “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin”  (Romans 5:12).  It included all the groaning of disease.  And Christians are not excluded:  “Not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit [that is, those who trust Christ], groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies”  (Romans 8:23).

But all this misery of disease is temporary. We look forward to a time when bodily pain will be no more.  The subjection of creation to futility was not permanent.  From the very beginning of his judgment, the Bible says God aimed at hope.  His final purpose was this:  “that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage and decay and obtain the freedom of glory of the children of God”  (Romans 8:21).

When Christ came into the world, he was on a mission to accomplish this global redemption.  He signaled his purposes by healing many people during his lifetime.  There were occasions when crowds gathered and he “healed all who were sick”  (Matthew 8:16; Luke 6:19).  This was a preview of what was coming at the end of history when “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore”  (Revelation 21:4).

The way Christ defeated death and disease was by taking them on himself and carrying them with him to the grave. God’s judgment on the sin that brought disease was endured by Jesus when he suffered and died.  The prophet Isaiah explained the death of Christ with these words:  “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed”  (Isaiah 53:5).  The horrible blows to the back of Jesus bought a world without disease.

One day all disease will be banished from God’s redeemed creation. There will be a new earth.  We will have new bodies.  Death will be swallowed up by everlasting life  (1 Corinthians 15:54; 2 Corinthians 5:4).  “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like an ox”  (Isaiah 65:25).  And all who love Christ will sing songs of thanks to the Lamb who was slain to redeem us from sin and death and disease.

John Piper, “The Passion of Jesus Christ:  Fifty Reasons Why He Came to Die”  (Wheaton, Illinois:  Crossway Books, 2004) Reason #18.  Used by Permission.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. – Revelation 1:5-6

Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. – Hebrews 13:12

Our sin ruins us in two ways.

1. It makes us guilty before God, so that we are under his just condemnation; and
2. It makes us ugly in our behavior, so that we disfigure the image of God we were meant to display.

It damns us with guilt, and it enslaves us to lovelessness.

The blood of Jesus frees us from both miseries. It satisfies God’s righteousness so that our sins can be justly forgiven.  And it defeats the power of sin to make us slaves to lovelessness. We have seen how Christ absorbs the wrath of God and takes way our guilt.  But now how does the blood of Christ liberate us from the slavery of sin?

The answer is not that he is a powerful example to us and inspires us to free ourselves from selfishness.  Oh, yes, Jesus is an example to us.  And a very powerful one.  He clearly meant for us to imitate him:  “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another:  just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another”  (John 13:34).  But the call to imitation is not the power of liberation.  There is something deeper.

Sin is such a powerful influence in our lives that we must be liberated by God’s power, not by our willpower.  But since we are sinners we must ask, Is the power of God directed toward our liberation or our condemnation?  That’s where the suffering of Christ comes in.  When Christ died to remove our condemnation, he opened, as it were, the valve of heaven’s mighty mercy to flow on behalf of our liberation from the power of sin.

In other words, rescue from the guilt of sin and the wrath of God had to precede rescue from the power of sin by the mercy of God.  The crucial biblical words for saying this are:  Justification precedes and secures sanctification.  They are different.  One is an instantaneous declaration  (not guilty!); the other is an ongoing transformation.

Now, for those who are trusting Christ, the power of God is not in the service of his condemning wrath, but his liberating mercy.  God gives us this power for change through the person of his Holy Spirit. That is why the beauty of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control are called “the fruit of the Spirit”  (Galatians 5:22-23).  This is why the Bible can make the amazing promise:  “Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace”   (Romans 6:14).

Being “under grace” secures the omnipotent power of God to destroy our lovelessness (not all at once, but progressively).  We are not passive in the defeat of our selfishness, but neither do we provide the decisive power.  It is God’s grace.  Hence the great apostle Paul said, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me”  (1 Corinthians 15:10).  May the God of all grace, by faith in Christ, free us from both the guilt and slavery of sin.

John Piper, “The Passion of Jesus Christ:  Fifty Reasons Why He Came to Die”  (Wheaton, Illinois:  Crossway Books, 2004) Reason #29.  Used by Permission.

How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. – Hebrews 9:14

Dirty conscience

Some things never change.  The problem of a dirty conscience is as old as Adam and Eve.  As soon as they sinned, their conscience was defiled.  Their sense of guilt was ruinous.  It ruined their relationship with God – they hid from him.  It ruined their relationship to each other – they blamed.  It ruined their peace with themselves – for the first time they saw themselves and felt shame.

All through the Old Testament, conscience was an issue.  But the animal sacrifices themselves could not cleanse the conscience.  “Gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation”  (Hebrews 9:9-10).  As a foreshadowing of Christ, God counted the blood of the animals as sufficient for cleansing the flesh – the ceremonial uncleanness, but not the conscience.

No animal blood could cleanse the conscience.  They knew it  (see Isaiah 53 and Psalm 51).  And we know it.  So a new high priest comes – Jesus the Son of God – with a better sacrifice:  himself.    “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God”  (Hebrews 9:14).  The animal sacrifices foreshadowed the final sacrifice of God’s Son, and the death of the Son reaches back to cover all the sins of God’s people in the old time period, and forward to cover all the sins of God’s people in the new time period.

Cleansing the conscience

So here we are in the modern age – the age of science, Internet, organ transplants, instant messaging, cell phones – and our problem is fundamentally the same as always:  Our conscience condemns us.  We don’t feel good enough to come to God.  And no matter how distorted our consciences are, this much is true:  We are not good enough to come to him.

We can cut ourselves, or throw our children in the scared river, or give a million dollars to the United Way, or serve in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, or perform a hundred forms of penance and self-injury, and the result will be the same:  The stain remains, and death terrifies.  We know that our conscience is defiled – not with eternal things like touching a corpse or eating a piece of pork.  Jesus said it is what comes out of a person that defiles, not what goes in  (Mark 7:15-23).  We are defiled by pride and self-pity and bitterness and lust and envy and jealousy and covetousness and apathy and fear – and the actions they breed.  These are all “dead works.”  They have no spiritual life in them.  They don’t come from new life; they come from death, and they lead to death.  That is why they make us feel hopeless in our consciences.

The only answer is these modern times, as in all other times, is the blood of Christ. When our conscience rises up and condemns us, where will we turn?  We turn to Christ.  We turn to the suffering and death of Christ – the blood of Christ.  This is the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give the conscience relief in life and peace in death.

John Piper, “The Passion of Jesus Christ:  Fifty Reasons Why He Came to Die”  (Wheaton, Illinois:  Crossway Books, 2004) Reason #16.  Used by Permission.