“The Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
This is one of my favorite verses in this whole story. This verse seems like almost an afterthought when you first read it, but I think a good argument can be made that it reveals more important information about God’s character than anything else in this section. Let’s talk about why.
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“Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf: ‘Be reconciled to God.’” (CSB – Read the chapter)
If you are a follower of Jesus, have you ever wondered what salvation is for? Have you ever pondered why it is God has drawn us to Him through His Son? Well, the “why” is easy: His love. But what’s it for? In these verses Paul gives us an answer that’s as challenging as it is powerful. Check this out with me.
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“But because sexual immorality is so common, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman should have sexual relations with her own husband.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
This past Friday we started talking about sex. So far we have concluded two things. The first is that this is something we should be talking about. As followers of Jesus and given the state of our culture, we’ve got to be having a positive and productive conversation about how we should approach this touchy subject. The second thing was this: Sex is good and we should be enjoying it…but only in its proper context. It is a gift from God and like any other gift from God, if we use it as He intended, we will enjoy its rich fruits to their absolute fullest. The last question we asked was what we should be doing about this. Let’s talk about that now.
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“Therefore, whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to be pleasing to him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” (CSB- Read the chapter)
At the end of the last post I started talking about what we do in light of the fact that we have this assurance of life after death as followers of Jesus. Paul goes there next too.
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“And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Once we’ve walked a path of evil-hearted foolishness, experienced the pain of God-delivered justice, come to a moment of humbly-righteous repentance, what comes next? Well, that depends. On what, you ask? It depends on to whom it is we’ve repented.
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