The Knife That Killed Your Beloved.

Imagine for a moment that one of your loved ones was kidnapped.

Maybe your son or daughter.

Maybe a mother.

Or a father.

Husband.

Wife.

Imagine that your beloved was stripped naked, beaten, whipped, humiliated, and tortured for three days. Bruised, cut, bleeding, slowly dying in excruciating and undeserved pain. Finally the killing blow is mercifully administered with a swift slice of a knife across the jugular.

They bleed out.

All is silent.

Imagine now, that one day you arrive home and at your door there is a white box with big bow on it, a gift to you. You open the box to find the knife that killed your beloved. Still stained with the blood. Inside the box you also find a little card describing in gruesome detail, how it was used torture and finally kill your beloved.

Would you try to wash the blood off and put it in the drawer with your other utensils?

Would you take that knife and set it on your table?

Would you use it to prepare your meal?

Would you slice your meat with it at dinner?

No!

Every time you looked it it would repulse you, because it was what killed your beloved.

We are staring at that knife, every time we face temptation. When we sin, we are picking up the knife that killed our Lord Jesus, our beloved, and plunging it further into his side. Every time we indulge in that “pet” sin, we slice a little deeper into the flesh of our beloved. If we have a besetting sin, an addiction, a sin which we continue to return to, one that continues to wage war in our hearts and minds, we do well to remember the death on Cross that Jesus died for our sins.

It was our sin that sent him there.

It was our sin that held him there.

It was our sin that caused him to die.

But he volunteered to die. For us. He took it, he asked for it. So that we could be forgiven and restored. So that he could call us His beloved.

Put the knife down.  Stop playing with the knife that killed your beloved.

You don’t need it.

He already took it.

He already beat it. He won. Look to him, stop looking at the knife.

SDG

This post first appeared on the One Christian Dad Facebook page.