Taking Responsibility For Yourself
Jeremiah 31:29-30 “In those days, it will never again be said, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. ’Rather, each will die for his own iniquity. Anyone who eats sour grapes—his own teeth will be set on edge.'
We're always looking for someone to blame. My dad was a mess. My mom was always riding me. My sister and brother had everything easy, I was left behind. My family abandoned me. The Devil made me do it. Anybody we can find to take the blame for our own inaptitudes and dangerous appetitites and behaviors.
It's a two edged sword...God no longer measures the people as one, as generations of a nation. Instead he makes a new covenant in which each person must take responsibility for himself and...“I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin." (Jer 31:34b)
It might seem like an unbearable burden, but Christ brings about a new covenant, a better understanding of God's grace and Spirit as he changes the challenges and expectations of faithfulness. He dissolves the sacrificial orders and becomes the scapegoat. No longer will the individual person be expected to continually sacrifice the lives of other creatures as penence, (essentially blaming that creature for their own sins). Now the penitent person takes responsibility for themselves. They sincerely confess their own sinful ways and call upon The Lord to receive his forgiveness.
This is the new covenant, the Lord’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." (Jeremiah 31:33b)
The Lord takes responsibility for changing their hearts and minds by building up their inward person through the conscience by the work of the Holy Spirit. He quite literally recreates these people from the inside out.
So God takes on the sins of his people, he takes them onto himself because the law could only point out the human's sinful nature, it couldn't reconcile the law breakers with The Holy One. The law charged the guilty, but there was no advocacy in it. No one was going to come to the lawbreaker's rescue. No one was going to stand up and defend the sinner at the judgement.
So God sends his Son as our bringer of good news and he takes our place in the judgement. We haven't been made holy, Jesus Christ covered our lawlessness with his righteousness. The judge accepts Jesus' atoning sacrifice. God's wrath is appeased in Christ's death and he takes it even further. At Jesus' ressurection he makes Jesus' sacrifice into a new everlasting life...a new heaven and a new earth. Everything is made new in Christ. Your heart is made new. Your soul is made new. Your future is made new. One day you'll even have a new body (spiritual body or something more?). God says he makes ALL things new.
All this has happened already as far as God sees it...we're just living through that recreation day by day.
This is life in the new covenant.
And as for the individual person, all that recreation business has been set into motion when first that penitent person took responsibility for their state. First that person gritted their teeth and took responsibility for the sour grapes they cultivated into their lives. They surrendered themselves to the authorities. They turned themselves in. They fell to their knees and threw themselves on the mercy of the Lord.
Repentance: Grappling with the powers of darkness.
They essentially say, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42)
I don't want to be you God. Your will be done. I'm finished trying to be you. I want you to be my God. I accept your grace and ask that when you come into your kingdom you'll remember me.
Jesus took that cup from you.
He drank in your darkness.
He ate your sin.
Everything you did...and you know what you did...everything was put on him, he took it from you. And he covered you in his righteousness.
And he said, "as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him." (Psalm 103:12-13)
And it's all gone forever. So far gone, that God cannot remember.
Hebrews 8:12
"And I shall purge them of their evils, and I shall not remember their sins again."
It is finished.