The Price Paid

Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?  For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.
1 Corinthians 6: 19-20 NKJV

If someone were to ask me just where I stand with God, I would tell them that I have pretty good standing with my creator with His risen Son dwelling within me.  Most people may not understand this statement, for there is a misconception out there that we, as christians, still bear the stain of our sins upon us.  It is this guilt and shame which ultimately causes us to continually seek our Lords forgiveness for sins of the past.  viewing ourselves as simply sinners saved by grace, we live in a perpetual state of guilt.  Somewhere there must be sins for which Jesus has left unforgiven.  And so we make it a practice to continually seek our Lords forgiveness.  It is if we do not comprehend the very gift which God has bestowed upon us with the death and resurection of His Son.  We once were, and still must be, sinners.  The fact that this is a popular teaching from todays pulpits doesn't make our situation any easier.  However, is our guilt and shame somehow misplaced?  Most definately.  For to finally be free of this indwelling guilt we must first understand just what it was which made us free.

Knowing this, that our old man was crusicied with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.  For he who has dies has been freed from sin.  Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.  Death no longer has dominion over Him.  For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.  Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6: 6-11 NKJV

One of my favorite television shows of all time was the original Battlestar Galactica series which aired in the late 1970's.  Without fail, I would await each new episode.  In one such episode titled "The long patrol," the colonial fighter pilot Starbuck flew a experimental space fighter on a routine deep space patrol.  However, this turned into a mission which was anything but ordinary, for the colonial pilot managed to get his new fighter stolen by a smuggler.  Somehow, Starbuck follows the smuggler but is taken prisoner by yet another combat ship.  Forced to land on the distant planet of Proteus, Starbuck awakens to find himself in a prison cell surrounded by some most unlikely fellow prisoners.  For the names of these prisoners denoted the crimes of their origianl ancestors.  Forger 7, embezzler 10 and even adultress 58.  To his shock, Starbuck discovers that all of the cell doors of this prison are unlocked!  He soon learns that the cells have been unlocked for generations.  Starbuck is told that the prisoners in Proteus are ancestors of the "Original sinners" who were first sentenced to the prison.  Like their ancestors before them, they serve out  a sentence of guilt.
Like the prisoners of this science fiction story, many christians today continue to live with the guilt of original sin.  However, those prison walls have long since been broken down by the blood of Christ Jesus.  It is the selfless sacrafice of Jesus which paid the price of ALL SIN past, present and future.  For God required a blood sacrafice for our sin, and Jesus became the price which was paid for our very sin.  This is what the apostle Paul refered to in 1 Corinthians 6 when he claimed "For you were bought at a price."  And if we were purchased at a price, then satan no longer can lay claim to us!  We are no longer sinners simply saved by grace, but a new creation formed from the death and resurection of Christ Jesus.  This was the price which was paid.

~Scott~