Sunday’s message took us on a journey back to the very beginnings of God’s relationship with mankind to find the origin of blood sacrifice. The premise of the message is that even God could not merely declare His love for us, but that He had to “demonstrate” it (Romans 5:8) We observed that the way that God demonstrated, or proved His love for us was through the shedding of blood, and specifically through the bloodshed of Jesus Christ on the cross.
We pointed out that God’s love for us was also revealed in His great tendency to enter into covenants with mankind. In our small group meeting Sunday afternoon, one of the participants drew a most significant distinction between a covenant and a contract. In a contract, we are concerned mainly with how much we are going to receive from it. In a covenant, we are concerned primarily with what we will give, or contribute to the agreement. I thought this was a great statement. The culmination of God’s covenant-making tendencies can be seen in the covenant Jesus described at the Last Supper– as he lifted the cup of wine, He said, “This is my blood of a New Covenant.” It was the ultimate demonstration of God’s love!
In the end, we were challenged to consider the sacrifices we are called to make in order to demonstrate love in any relationship. I would be interested in exactly what forms you consider these sacrifices to take.
IT’S YOUR TURN. . .
