The Pawn Shop

The man entered the door of the pawn shop and scanned the interior. He was tall, erect, authoritative, obviously looking for something. He scanned the displays of jewelry, household items, musical instruments, farm implements. Antiques and keepsakes. Remnants of peoples’ lives who had fallen on hard times. Items that brought far less than they were worth, but provided enough for one more day. Testimonies of broken lives, failed hopes and dreams. As the man wandered from item to item, his eyes filled with pain, then anger, at the brokenness, an overwhelming compassion for the stories behind each one. Not sure what the man was looking for, the proprietor saw an opportunity to score. Eyes flashing with greed and something dark, a coldness, a cruelty behind the veneer of cordiality, he approached the customer. “Looking for something particular?” “Yes,” the man said, “something of inestimable worth.” Rubbing his hands together, the proprietor began to point out his most expensive pieces.

“Stop,” the man said, “I’ll take it all.”

“But that’s a price you likely can’t afford. I can make you a great deal.”

“Trust me,” the man said, “I can pay the price. Now, take this seal and mark each one. I will give you a down payment and return to collect my prizes in the near future.”

The above story is a kind of parable, an earthly story to illustrate a divine truth. Jesus is the Man, of course, the Devil is the proprietor. Jesus entered the world, the pawn shop, to redeem us, the broken, tarnished, hopeless prizes. He considers us worth it. He paid the price to set us free from slavery to sin and has set His mark, His Seal, in the Person of the Holy Spirit, upon us, holding us until He comes again to take us home.

 

We Were Made To Live Forever

As I grow older and daily look for the appearing of Jesus, I tend to pull back and look at human history through a big-picture lens. The details of life become less in focus and God’s overall plan more evident. The concept of Original Sin is a stumbling block for many people. After all, how can a just God blame me for what Adam and Eve did! The fallacy of that thinking lies not with God but with me. Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, sinless. But for their relationship with God to have any meaning at all, it had to be voluntary, purposeful, intentional. In other words, up to them if they would obey God’s one command: not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We call this free will. And nothing has changed in that regard.

When Adam and Eve willfully chose to disobey God, by believing a lie from the devil and eating the one fruit of all the garden they had been instructed not to, physical death entered the human genetic code. God had told them it would be so. The physical bodies meant to live forever were now subject to physical death. Because of death’s entering the genetic code of Adam and Eve, all subsequent human life is now under the same sentence. There would be no more perfect humans to put back in the Garden of Eden in Adam and Eve’s place. There couldn’t be. The “original sin,” willful disobedience, of Adam and Eve is in our very DNA.

Until Jesus, the perfect human/God man, who alone could pay the price for the sin endemic to all humanity to restore us to right relationship with God the Father. God, in His mercy, knew Adam and Eve would fail, as would all of us, so He planned a way out, an escape from eternal Hell, through His Son–before He ever created the world. But just like original voluntary obedience, so too is God’s offer of eternal life through Jesus, the Son. While eternal life is available to all, individual acceptance of it is still necessary. We must voluntarily ask for forgiveness of our own sin and believe that Jesus has paid the price for it. Heaven is not automatically available to anyone by “being good.” No one can ever be good enough. Thus, God sent Jesus, the Perfectly Sinless One. God allows us to get to Heaven on Jesus’ coattails, if you will, by calling us to believe in Him, seek forgiveness through Him, be restored to the Father through Him.

Precisely because God is a just God sin, disobedience, cannot go unpunished, unreckoned.  Scripture tells us that life is in the blood. For death to be overcome, defeated, only someone whose life-blood was untainted by sin could be offered in exchange for ours. As unfair as it may seem to be punished for what Adam and Eve did, that injustice disappears in the face what Jesus did. He was the Sinless being punished for the Sinful in order for each one of us to be reconciled to God, His sin-free blood in exchange for our sin-filled blood. Available to all, but only accessible individually. We must each make a willful choice to accept God’s sacrifice of His Son for our own salvation.

God created man for eternity. There are only two places to spend it: Heaven or Hell. Scripture makes clear there is no oblivion, no nebulous netherworld. Only Heaven. Only Hell. Did you know Jesus spoke more often of Hell than He did Heaven? Jesus is St. Peter’s Gate, He is the Door to Heaven. We only gain access by believing in Him. God created us for Eternal fellowship with Him. He longs for each one of us to accept that we are sin-condemned and that Jesus, and Jesus only, is the remedy. Do you?