There is a Land beyond the river. A perfect Land, not flawed like our own. But the journey is so difficult, it requires perfection. Since no one is perfect, no one is good enough to make it to the Land. No one. No matter how good they are. No one, that is, except the Landkeeper. Because of His perfect nature, He rules and dwells in the perfect LandHis Land. He's perfectly loving but also perfectly just, and perfect justice cannot admit the guilty to the perfect Land. And we're all guilty of many things. A perfectly just Landkeeper cannot allow guilt to go unpunished without ceasing to be perfectly justjust as a jury that has allowed a criminal to go free and commit further crimes has not served justice. So, the Landkeeper can't let us do whatever we want and just say, Aw, that's okay. Come into My perfect Land anyway. But because of His perfect love, He cannot stand to be apart from us either. Now, He has a dilemma (that is, for you and me it would be a dilemma, but the Landkeeper knows exactly what He's going to do). Perfect justice demands a penalty, but perfect love demands reconciliation. So, He decided to pay the penalty Himself. He sent His Son to our land. There, the Son willingly sacrificed Himselfexecuted in our stead to pay for our admission to the Land. But some of us have ignored the Land, the Landkeeper, and His Son's sacrifice. The problem is this: all of us will one day have to cross the river and face the Landkeeper. And only those who recognize the Son's sacrifice will be admitted to His Land. • Warren Kramer Today's allegorical story points to the true story of the gospel (or good news): God created us to live in relationship with Him and others, but we rejected Him and chose sin, causing brokenness and death. But, through Jesus, God has made a way for us to be free from sin and death so that we can be with Him and His people forever. To dig deeper into the truths shared in today's reading, check out Genesis 1-3, Isaiah 59:2, John 3:36; 14:6, Romans 8:22-24, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 1 John 2:1, and Revelation 21:1-8. If you have questions, who is a trusted Christian in your life you can talk about these truths with? All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him [Jesus] the sins of us all. Isaiah 53:6 (NLT)
Read Verses:
John 3:16-18; Romans 3:23; 6:23
