It was for Freedom

 

“For my eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples.” (Luke 2:30)

 

Simeon spoke these words of prayer to the Father as he held the baby Jesus in his arms. And it is to those words I want to draw our attention for just a few minutes as you read this because Simeon’s words have DIRECT application to you and me in 2023.

 

“My eyes have seen Your salvation.”

 

During this first week of Advent, I want to say it again as clearly as I know how: God is not mad at you.

 

Whoever you are, whatever you have done, and how often you’ve done it – God is not looking for ways to pay you back for your confessed sins. He has covered ALL of them – the little ones and the big ones – He has covered them all with His own precious and eternal blood. The idea that God still plans to take us to the proverbial woodshed is absolutely foreign to God's immutable words of promise delivered to us by His prophets and apostles from Genesis through Revelation.

 

God WILL NOT EVER punish us in the very least for ANY of our confessed sins. Indeed, the Holy Trinity brought about the first Advent of the Christ so God could and would treat our confessed sins as if they were never committed. That’s what the Greek word for the ‘remission of sins’ means.  

 

Let me give you an example: I’ve never committed first degree murder. Never. So, it is unthinkable that any human court would punish me for something I never did. But to an infinitely greater degree, God's ‘court’ – being so much greater in purity and righteousness – why should anyone think the Great Judge would punish someone for a sin which He Himself considers having never been committed?

 

Some joke among themselves about Catholic guilt, or Baptist guilt, or whatever guilt. But such things are nothing to joke about. Such ‘joking’ does nothing less than drag a dark shadow across our lives as we wait for God’s judgment to fall on us. So, when Simeon said to God: “My eyes have seen your salvation” – there’s a principle here I don’t want any of us to miss. And that principle is this:

 

We need to learn to hold Jesus in our arms – not the baby Jesus, but the crucified Jesus. We need to see ourselves on Golgotha’s hill. We need to see in our mind’s eye His bruised and bloodied body – bruised and broken in OUR place, as OUR substitute.

As the prophet promised some 700 years before Jesus was born: (Isaiah 53:5, ISV)) “But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.”

We need to see ourselves cradling his lifeless head as we kneel with Mother Mary, the apostle John, Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus, and the others. There, in our lap, we must see our dead Lord because He IS --  HE IS – our salvation.

 

Jesus’ first Advent brought humanity of the past AND of the present the means of salvation, the means of receiving the eternal remission of sins, the means of being completely, conclusively, and irrefutably cleansed of even the stain of those sins we’ve brought to Him in confession.

 

As St Paul reminded the Christians at Galatia: “It was for FREEDOM that Christ set us free.” (Galatians 5:1). And that freedom includes freedom from guilt and from fear of God's wrath against the penitent sinner.

 

Simeon said, “My eyes” have seen His salvation. So, my brothers and sisters: Have YOUR eyes seen your salvation?  Listen to it again: The first Advent is God's message to YOU and me: He LOVES you. And He has totally, utterly and forever CLEANSED you of your confessed sins.

Now – live for Him who died for you.