“Because of Christ and our faith in him, we can now come boldly and confidently into God’s presence.” Ephesians 3:12 NLT
I’m currently trying to read the Bible in a year, and last week it was all about the necessity and rules for sacrifice, as laid out in Leviticus; everything the people of God had to do, the many animals they had to present to the priests to kill, in order to be made right with God, to come anywhere close to His presence. And I’m asking God, what relevance is all this to me today? What I was reminded of was how abhorrent sin really is to God. It’s what has separated us from Him and it does not and cannot have any place near His holy presence. We have so sanitized sin tho, so excused it, become desensitized to it, and in some cases celebrated it, that we’ve lost that sense of how utterly destructive and fatal it has been to our relationship with God. And yet He still Ioves us! So He made a way for His people to get close to Him. The sacrifices were brutal in order to pay for the people’s sin, that’s for sure, showing me how seriously God takes this, but it was only for a time until Jesus came to present Himself as the ultimate sacrifice for us once and for all! And because of Him, praise God, we don’t have to go through all that ritual of animal sacrifice anymore to get made right with God and to get close to Him. We now have open access to God through Christ, and we can come, anytime, boldly and confidently into His presence knowing we have already been made clean through the cross! Lord, thank You for Your great love to us, and for never giving up on us. Thank You for making a way to deal with our sin, to bring us close, so we can live free and in a right relationship with You. Help me never to take this for granted but to revel in Your presence today. May I truly understand what it is to be ransomed, healed, restored, and forgiven! Amen 🙌🏼❤️