Day 25 – Sacrifice

I watched a movie episode recently that was entitled “Sacrifice”. Between warring clans, inequities had been meted out and people had been unjustly killed.

In order for the inequities to be righted and justice to be done, a sacrifice had to be made by the Queen. She had to surrender herself and her powerful sword.

This wasn’t a Christian movie, but it makes a statement about justice and sacrifice that sounds similar to the story in the Bible!

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

In the Old Testament, God set up an atonement system, so people could bring their sacrifices to him. Their offerings before God would remove the damaging effects of their sins and restore their relationship with God.

In the New Testament, Jesus’ death on the cross became the ultimate and final sacrifice for sins.

Through sacrifice God “atones for” and “covers over” our sins. He removes the barrier created by our sins and restores our relationship with him.

You and I were excluded from God’s holy presence by the defilement of our sins. Yet Jesus gave himself as an atoning sacrifice to bring us to God! Justice has been carried out! Our sins are covered over!

Lieutenant Commander Edward Henry “Butch” O’Hare was the Navy’s number-one ace in the Second World War and the first naval aviator ever to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport is named for him.

What “Butch” O’Hare became, however, was made possible because someone else made a great sacrifice.

That someone else was Butch’s father, Edward O’Hare, a slick lawyer for the gangster Al Capone. “Artful Eddie,” as he was known, had money and power, but one day he squealed on Capone.

The reason for this sudden change of heart? He wanted to give his son a break, he said. Before long, the mob silenced Artful Eddie with two shotgun blasts.

But because of Eddie’s courageous change of heart, his son Butch was accepted at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Eddie’s confession and subsequent death satisfied the admissions people that the family’s mob connections were severed.

Artful Eddie paid with his own life for his son’s chance to make good, something that Jesus Christ did for each of us on the Cross.

Question: Christ’s atoning sacrifice – how would you describe it?

This is God’s Word for you today,
Pastor Dave