Blog

Bill Lawrence

President of Leader Formation International

I am rather startled when I hear believers ask, what would Jesus do, as if we don’t already know what He is doing.

How can we not know what He is doing when He made it more than obvious by His very actions what He does? What He does is exactly the same as what He did when He was here on earth.  All we have to do to know what He is doing is to read the Gospels. The issue is not what He would  do, as if that is uncertain or unclear or indefinite or some kind of a mystery. The reality is that is more than clear. All we have to do is to look at what He did on the cross with two sinners and realize that this is what He will do with all sinners. After all, a sinner is a sinner, and His response to those two sinners is exactly the same as His response is to all sinners.

There were two sinners who died with Him, two sinners and those two sinners represent all sinners. They were not special sinners. They were simply ordinary sinners, two men condemned to pay the price for their sin on that day with Jesus who represent all sinners because they were like all other sinners. They sinned. That’s all there was to it. They did what sinners do. They acted out of their own interests the way all sinners act out of their own interests. They acted for themselves. Only their actions were above the ordiary everyday sin. Undoubtedly they started out in small ways, as we all do. But their sin got bigger and bigger and bigger. At some point they got caught in extra ordinary sin. They paid some kind of penalty, but the penalty must not have been big enough that the only way to stop them from sinning was to take their life away from them. They faced the death penalty. And they hung on across, one on the right and the other on the left side of the sinless Jesus.

It is at this point that we see, not what Jesus would do, but what Jesus does. He offers forgiveness to both of them and gives it to the one who accepts it.

So we see that forgiveness is available for all, but is only given to those who accept it.

Thus it is that I give you two steps as we stand before the cross of Jesus.

The first is to offer forgiveness to any who have not accepted it.

Even though you may not be as sinful as the thief on the cross, all of us have sinned, and none of us is as righteous as the Lord Himself. Thus we need to trust Jesus for eternal life. It’s amazing how overtly Jesus dealt with sin on the cross. Yet to see it directly confronted and at the same time completely overcome is still overwhelming. After all, that’s why He was there. But we must still realize that con-demnation was replaced by forgiveness for all who will receive it. This is why I plead with you if you have not yet received it to accept forgiveness now and know what it is to have eternal life.

There were two men on the cross with Jesus, and both of them, like us, deserved the penalty they received. One was bitter beyond belief, but the other knew they deserved to be there and said so (Luke 23:39-42). He said to Jesus, Jesus, remember me when You come in your kingdom. Jesus responded to him, Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in paradise. So it is with you. If you confess your sin and acknowledge the reality that you, like all of us, are a sinner, you are in a place to be forgiven. The Lord who died for you wants to cleanse you if you will call on Jesus to redeem you now and forgive you, you have eternal life, and He lives in you and enables you to bear eternal fruit in temporal form. So now I plead with you to trust  Jesus for eternal life. If you refuse to make this decision all you have is eternal death. All your wealth, all your position, all your power, all your fame, everything you have is gone the moment you leave temporal life and enter eternal reality. This is why I plead with you to realize that Jesus died for you, that He now lives for you, that He wants to give you eternal life, and that is yours if you will trust Him.

Thus I ask you to join that thief on the cross who recognized Him as the one who offered Him eternal life and invite Him to be your Savior, the one who will and give you the forgiveness that He died to give you.

The second step I ask you to take is for you who have accepted the forgiveness given to you, even if you have just done it now. That means you have also been given eternal life. The fact that you have been given forgiveness and eternal life means you have freedom, great freedom from hiding sin in the corners and closets of your life. That in turn, means you don’t have the fear that anyone will find out things about you that you don’t want them to know. You don’t have to hide anything from anyone any more. You do have privacy, but that’s different from secrecy. You have a right to privacy, the right to have well selected leaders who share the truths that make you who your are. That’s very different from the secrecy of sin. You have a new privacy that builds you and strengthens you as a leader to step forward with confidence as you lead the followers the Lord gives to make a difference through His insight and grace.

Now live eternal life even as you continue to live temporal life. Everything you do now bears His fruit if you trust Him and live life His way through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus it is that you need to grow through the power of the Spirit and bear the fruit of the Spirit and have the impact of Jesus through you as you fulfill His reason for being here on earth. While you are here to have your family, be part of your church, pursue a career, impact your community, and influence the part of the world the Lord gives to you, you bring all of this together and make disciples.

You see, we are here on earth to Jesus’s place. Thus He works His way through us as we

Love each other—even those we don’t like

Abide in Jesus—through radical, desperate dependence on Him

and

Make disciples