Worrying how feeble I am. I haven't exactly achieved a lot this week. On Wednesday - STOP THE PRESSES - the sausages I had thawed out to go with the mashed potato in the fridge turned out to be two chicken breasts! So I spent Wed morning making a chicken vegetable casserole. And that made my back ache. What doesn't these days? Then I spent the afternoon making lemon cake for the packed lunches. In between I slept on the sofa in front of the telly.
Yesterday I shopped in the morning - Waitrose again. Worn out by shopping, I dozed most of the afternoon.
Its worrying that I am so disasterously tired, and must ask about it at my Hospital appointment next week. I finally get to see my arthritis Specialist. Is it just a combination of old age and arthritis and trying to heal, or what?
Lovely meeting last night. Of course. We were looking at Jehovah's loving provision of the ransom sacrifice. And I thought back to my early days of talking to the JWs when I began to realise that it didn't make sense to say you were a Christian and a believer in evolution.
Why the need for the ransom sacrifice if we evolved? Why did Jesus need to come to earth as a perfect human, the exact equivalent of Adam before he sinned if we evolved and were evolving and Genesis was simply a creation myth? Why do the Christian Greek Scriptures tell us that "death ruled as king from Adam down", if there was no such person?
"That is why, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because they had all sinned—. For sin was in the world before the Law, but sin is not charged against anyone when there is no law. Nevertheless, death ruled as king from Adam down to Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the same way that Adam transgressed, who bears a resemblance to the one who was to come.
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by one man’s trespass many died, how much more did the undeserved kindness of God and his free gift by the undeserved kindness of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to many! Also, it is not the same with the free gift as with the way things worked through the one man who sinned. For the judgment after one trespass was condemnation, but the gift after many trespasses was a declaration of righteousness. For if by the trespass of the one man death ruled as king through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of the undeserved kindness and of the free gift of righteousness rule as kings in life through the one person, Jesus Christ!"
So, then, as through one trespass the result to men of all sorts was condemnation, so too through one act of justification the result to men of all sorts is their being declared righteous for life. For just as through the disobedience of the one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one person many will be made righteous."
Through the obedience of one person - Jesus Christ, the faithful witness - many will be made righteous.
Righteous by the way - not self-righteous. That is a very different thing.
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