Atonement

Isaiah feared for his life when he thought he had seen the Lord, at which point a seraph placed a live coal on his mouth and said:

“See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

I had another one of my funny feelings, so I looked up "atone" in Bible Gateway,  and to this point, this is the 97th time it (or atonement) had been used in the Bible. In every previous case, it referred to an act that either the people or the priests performed as a step toward forgiveness, but which is not the case here. This is one of the first times in the Bible that atonement is granted without some activity on the Israelites' part. This is a precursor to the Age of Grace that Christ's death and resurrection would usher in, which frees us from strict observance of the Law as a pathway to righteousness.

Dr. Pratt wrote extensively with regard to Isaiah 6:8, so I won't rehash it, but it is a direct response of Isaiah to the grace from the Lord--he wasn't willing to work out of obligation but instead because of thanksgiving. This is a pretty major change (and one that hadn't been implemented at the time of Isaiah's writing) and the one that will confuse the people the most in the time of Christ. God is introducing the concept of grace--even he knew that a stiff-necked and stubborn people would need some time to understand the message.

Did you ever stop and wonder what made it so difficult for the people of Jesus' time to comprehend and accept this change? Their ancestors seemed to worship idols at the drop of a hat, so switching from one religion to another should have been second nature. We have it easy today--all the work has been done for us, we just need to assimilate it into our lives and thank God for it. And so, as the hymn goes:

If you cannot speak like angels, If you cannot preach like Paul

You can tell the love of Jesus, you can say he died for all

If you cannot rouse the wicked, With the Judgment's dread alarms

You can lead the little children, to the Savior's waiting arms

One verse of a hymn gives you five potential service opportunities, and the spiritual gifts Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11 gives you several more. It doesn't matter which one you choose, as long as you:

Answer quickly when he calls you, "Here am I, send me, send ME!"

Scott