The Broadway musical writer, George Gershwin, once commented, “The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible: it ain’t necessarily so.” What can we learn from such an opinion? To this day people think in their sinfulness that the solution to sin and God is to deny them or at least minimize their significance. Regardless of what man concludes, reasons and thinks, however, all remain “liable” to God for their debt of sin.
As the church year draws to a close, the thought of Christ’s return on the Last Day to judge the world comes to the forefront of our Scripture lessons. Jesus will return someday to “judge the living and the dead” as we confess in the Apostles’ Creed. Some deny this reality; others wait in terror.
As God’s people, however, we lift up our heads in anticipation as our final redemption draws near. We don’t have to deny God or be afraid of Jesus. Jesus came to win salvation for us by fulfilling the demands of God’s holy law for perfection, suffering and dying on the cross to pay for all sin and rising victoriously from death to assure He conquered our sin and defeated death.