"For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us . . ." 1 Thessalonians 5:9,10
Oliver Cromwell once ordered that a soldier should be shot for his crimes at the ringing of the evening curfew bell. For some reason that night the bell did not toll. The incident has been immortalized in poetry and song. It seems that the girl whom the condemned soldier was to marry had climbed up into the belfry and clung to the great clapper of the bell to prevent it from striking. When she was called by Cromwell to give an account of herself, she only wept and showed him her bruised and bleeding hands. Cromwell's heart was touched and he said, "Your lover shall live because of your sacrifice. Curfew shall not ring tonight!" So too all of us are rebels against God and under a sentence of death. Another, Christ, has intervened in our behalf. We too are saved, but only at the expense of His blessed Person. When skeptics questioned the truth of substitutionary atonement after His resurrection from the dead, Christ showed them His hands - His bruised, nail-pierced hands! If you claim Him as the Lover of your soul, the curfew of eternal death will never toll for you!
A converted Japanese woman was once trapped by a prairie fire. Seeing that it was going to catch up with her and the child she carried on her back, she laid the little one down, desperately scooped a hole in the earth with her hands, and with trembling haste laid the child in it, covering its body with her own. Later they found the two. The poor woman was dead, but the child was saved. A Christian Japanese who discovered them said with tears, "So too Jesus died that I might live. He put His blessed body between me and the everlasting fire." He had caught the truth of 1 Thessalonians 5:10.
Can you say with confidence born of faith in Christ and His Word: "He died for me"?
"Bread For Each Day"
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