"The Worst Thing, the Best Thing"

(From 2012)

   

    The worst thing that will ever happen to us has already happened to us.

     "Christ died" (Romans 5:6).

     No "worst case scenario" we can imagine will ever compare with that horrific day when the Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died at the hands of the humanity He so loved.  We put to death the only perfectly innocent person who ever lived, after inflicting upon Him shame, rejection, forsakenness and a misery of soul and body none other will ever know.  It matters not that we weren't even born when the crime took place.  Our sins made necessary the cross, and we are all complicit in the worst and most unjust event of history.

     The marvelous grace of God, however, transforms for believers the worst thing into the best thing.

     "God raised Him from the dead… If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Acts 13:30; Romans 10:9-10).

     Having atoned for our sins by His death, the Lord Jesus came forth from His tomb in a newness of life not only for Himself, but for all who trust in His redeeming work.  "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new" (II Corinthians 5:17).  The cross led to the empty tomb, which leads to our full hearts, as inhabited by the Holy Spirit when we believe.  Indeed, the worst thing made possible our becoming "the habitation of God through the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:22).  While we don't fully realize the enormity of such a gift at present, the day will come when a long eternity stretches forth in which we will forever exist as the very home of God.  In that day, we will better understand that the worst thing made possible our reception and experience of the best thing.

     In this holy light, all other challenges and difficulties fade in comparison.  Indeed, if God can birth the best thing from the tomb of the worst thing, then surely He can cause every other darkness to serve as the lamp of His light.  Regardless of the nature or the severity of the difficulty, the risen Christ will meet us as we look to Him in faith and expectation.  An empty tomb resounds through the ages to declare God's redeeming grace.  Yes, the worst thing became for the believing heart the best thing.  Little wonder that the Apostle Paul exultantly proclaimed of every darkness and difficulty…

"In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us."

(Romans 8:37)

"You, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind through wicked works, hath He now reconciled in the body of His flesh through death to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight."

(Colossians 1:21-22)

Weekly Memory Verse

    For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life."

(Romans 5:10)