\u201cRejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.\u201d (Luke 15:6)<\/p>\n
We turn now to look at another aspect of Christianity\u2019s uniqueness \u2013 the issue of personal salvation. The vocabulary of salvation is distasteful to those of other religions and many insist we should give it up. They say, \u201cIt smacks of spiritual smugness and arrogance.\u201d But before we answer this criticism we must realize what Christianity is all about. Christianity is essentially a rescue religion; it is the announcement of the good news that God has come in the Person of His Son to save us from the power of sin, the penalty of sin, and one day in the future the presence of sin. In the passage before us today we see that God likens Himself to a shepherd who leaves the rest of the sheep in order to go after one sheep that is lost. The Divine Shepherd, far from abandoning the sheep in the hope that, bleating and stumbling, it may find its own way home, puts His own life on the line to search it out.<\/p>\n
Judaism denies that Jesus is the Messiah and that His sin-bearing death is the only ground on which divine forgiveness can be offered. One Jewish scholar, C. G. Montefiore, goes so far as to generously refer to the \u201cgreatness and originality\u201d of Jesus in His attitude to sinners that \u201cinstead of avoiding them He actively sought them out.\u201d However, though Orthodox Jewish teaching recognizes that God receives sinners who return to Him, it fails to see that He also seeks them out. How utterly amazing. The One who seeks and saves is God.<\/p>\n
PRAYER: O Father, what a thought: You did not send an angel to seek us out and save us. You came Yourself in the Person of Your Son. I can never put my gratitude into mere words. Help me show it by my life. In Jesus\u2019 Name. Amen.<\/p>\n
FURTHER STUDY:
\n Luke 19:1-10; Matthew 18:10-14; John 1:43; 5:14; 9:35
\n 1. What was Jesus\u2019 message to Zacchaeus?
\n 2. How did Jesus illustrate the heart of the shepherd?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cRejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.\u201d (Luke 15:6) We turn now to look at another aspect of Christianity\u2019s uniqueness \u2013 the issue of personal salvation. The vocabulary of salvation is distasteful to those of other religions and many insist we should give it up. They say, \u201cIt smacks of spiritual smugness and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2473,5134],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}