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ስብከቶች፤

Subject 22 : The Gospel According to LUKE

[Chapter 8-2] The Flow of Blood Stopped By the Lord’s Power (Luke 8:40-48)

The Flow of Blood Stopped By the Lord’s Power
(Luke 8:40-48)
“So it was, when Jesus returned, that the multitude welcomed Him, for they were all waiting for Him. And behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue. And he fell down at Jesus’ feet and begged Him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter about twelve years of age, and she was dying. But as He went, the multitudes thronged Him. Now a woman, having a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any, came from behind and touched the border of His garment. And immediately her flow of blood stopped. And Jesus said, ‘Who touched Me?’ When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, ‘Master, the multitudes throng and press You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’’ But Jesus said, ‘Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me.’ Now when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before Him, she declared to Him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched Him and how she was healed immediately. And He said to her, ‘Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace.’”
  
 

Was She Healed of Her Flow of Blood?

 
My fellow believers, it is now fall. The weather and my mood are good because it is cool. You may fall asleep because of the good weather and doze your time away. But that’s no excuse to sleep during sermons. Brethren, you, too, are very glad that it’s fall, aren’t you? We don’t mind working and thinking it would be great to play soccer. Exercising is hard in the summer because it’s so hot, but we want to do so now that fall is here.
Today’s Scripture passage is the account of a woman who had a flow of blood met Jesus and the disease was cured. It is recorded that while Jesus was on His way to heal the daughter of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, a woman who had been afflicted by a flow of blood for twelve years touched the border of Jesus’ garment and was healed.
What kind of disease was the flow of blood that this woman had? It is called a flow of blood because a person with the disease wouldn’t stop bleeding; it was a very exhausting disease. If a person caught this disease, he or she would never stop bleeding. If you and I put ourselves in this woman’s shoes, we might feel miserable every moment we bleed.
Actually, before we were born again, we were also spiritually just like this woman who had a flow of blood. Like this woman, we, too, couldn’t help but live committing sins everyday; we were people who couldn’t guarantee we wouldn’t commit sins again and couldn’t help but commit them continually, no matter how often we wiped them clean through prayers of repentance. We were those kinds of human beings before God. But it is written that this woman who had been afflicted with a flow of blood for twelve years and couldn’t be healed by anyone touched Jesus’ garment by faith and was healed.
Before, you and I also lived in this world continually committing sins; there wasn’t a day we didn’t. We committed sins, offered prayers of repentance, committed more sins, and offered more prayers of repentance everyday when we were leading religious lives in Christianity. And some non-Christian religions say that your sins disappear if you conjure spells, and some say that you must perform duties of service as the price of sin. But since people’s sins don’t disappear by those things, we always continued day by day with no way to break free of sin’s bondage.
But the Bible says that healing power came out from Jesus as soon as this woman who had a flow of blood touched His garment and she was healed immediately. The cleansing of our sins was the same. It was the same to both you and me. Until the time we became the righteous by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, we spiritually had a flow of blood; we couldn’t help but commit sin everyday; and we could not help but live wiping those sins clean again and again, piling them up in the backyard of our hearts without end. But we remember that our sins stopped and totally disappeared all at once by believing in the righteous work of salvation that our Lord had performed. We are actually people who believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit that is like a miracle, and it is our duty to believe in it and spread it. Our Lord came to this earth in order to save us from all our sins, was baptized by John the Baptist in order to fulfill all God’s righteousness, thus took all the sins of the world, hung on the Cross and died for us vicariously there, and saved us from all the sins of the world at once and for all, by being resurrected from the dead. Everyone who knows and believes in this merciful salvation can be cleansed of all his or her sins.
Some people might think that the gospel of the water and the Spirit is just merely a doctrine of Christianity, but that gospel Truth of power is not a doctrine of Christianity and is actually amazing. If we think of our past, future, and present, we really cannot help but say that the work our Lord had done to eliminate all our sins at once and for all through the gospel of the water and the Spirit is the truly amazing gospel of salvation. If we know the righteousness of the Lord who came to eliminate all our sins, if we know and believe in the righteousness of the Lord who accomplished God’s righteousness through the gospel of the water and the Spirit, we must realize that all our sins have been taken care of.
This gospel is something we are truly grateful for; that is because all we did was believe in our Lord’s baptism and His blood of the Cross with which He came to this earth and took all the sins of the world for us, and all the sins that were in our hearts disappeared all at once. Before we were born again, those many sins we had didn’t go away even though we offered prayers of repentance while fasting, did good works, made a lot of donations, and went to a lot of meetings in order to eliminate them. But they all ended at once when we just accepted the Word and work of Jesus, that He carried all the sins of this world at once by being baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, went and died on the Cross, and was resurrected from the dead. It is just as you read here about the flow of blood from the woman going away. This woman couldn’t be treated by any physician in the world, either, but she could be healed by meeting and having faith in Jesus who is righteous.
My fellow believers, we have also received the remission of all our sins at once by the power of the Lord’s gospel of the water and the Spirit. The Lord’s gospel of the water and the Spirit is truly powerful and amazing. In order to save us from the sins of the world, the exalted Lord saved us believers from all curses at once by coming to this earth, being baptized by John the Baptist, shedding His blood on the Cross, and being resurrected from the dead. We can know how we could become sinless people now by pondering on the gospel of the water and the Spirit. We are very thankful for the Lord’s mercy and for His powerful gospel. If we had lived until now with all our sins, we would probably have gone crazy and be about to die.
Long ago, I thought salvation was only in the blood of Jesus shed on the Cross and clung to that idea, no matter how much I researched the Word of God and thought about the cleansing of mankind’s sins. And I offered prayers of fasting, meditated on the Word of God in order to learn the true gospel, and wondered whether or not this or that was the Truth, but I ultimately gave up because I was tired of thinking about it. No matter how hard I tried to solve the problem of my sins, it ended up in vain finding no way out. I could figure out the solutions to most problems by organizing my thoughts, but I couldn’t figure out the solution to the problem of my sins.
We believed in Jesus and His blood of the Cross, but what ultimately happens if we committed sins again? We would have to offer more prayers of repentance, but we would become shameless after doing so and have desires that the Lord go back on the Cross and shed His blood and die for us again. However, we still could not but commit quite a lot of sins. But our Lord eliminated all our sins once and for all by coming to this earth, taking all our sins at once and for all through His baptism, hanging and shedding His blood on the Cross, and being resurrected from the dead. He is truly powerful, and in order to eliminate our sins by that power, He completely saved us all at once by coming to this earth, being baptized by John the Baptist, shedding His blood on the Cross, and being resurrected from the dead.
 
 

This Is the Power of the Lord’s Gospel of the Water and the Spirit

 
The power of the Lord’s gospel is just like the power of the Lord that stopped the woman’s flow of blood that she had for twelve years. All she did was come up behind Jesus and lightly touch the border of His garment. It is just like all the sins that were inside us being completely eliminated by faith in the gospel of the water and the Spirit that came to us. So, we have come to live righteous lives in which we have to spread God’s righteousness. We have now become people full of the Holy Spirit by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. All our sins were remitted completely and at once by the baptism Jesus received in the Jordan River.
We always commit sin because we are weak people, but all of our sins were eradicated through the Lord’s righteousness. Both the woman who was healed of her bleeding by touching Jesus’ garment and we who have been cleansed of all sins by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit have truly put on the same grace of salvation. The works of the power of God that were brought about to this woman have now arisen to us believers in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. The Lord said, “Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace” (Luke 8:48); we have likewise received the remission of all our sins at once by faith in the righteous work of salvation that the Lord performed. My fellow believers, have you received the remission of all your sins at once by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit?
All we did was believe in the work of atonement that the Lord accomplished, didn’t we? We just accepted the gospel of the water and the Spirit in our hearts by faith, and that faith wasn’t even very strong. But what has happened to our spirits? All our sins were completely eradicated at once with nothing left. The Lord eliminated all our sins at once by being baptized by John the Baptist and shedding His blood on the Cross in order to save us from the sins of the world. This is God’s righteousness and the gist of the gospel of the water and the Spirit. Jesus Christ who is God loved us, so He eliminated all our sins at once by being baptized by John the Baptist, shedding His blood on the Cross, and being resurrected from the dead. If you read John 3:16, it says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son”; He so loved us that He gave His Son and saved us all at once by having Him be baptized by John the Baptist, having Him die on the Cross, and having Him be resurrected from the dead. God’s beloved Son came to this earth because He so loved us, carried the sins of the world by being baptized by John the Baptist, and hung and died on the Cross. God so loved us that He was resurrected from the dead and thus saved us from all our sins once and for all. This is the amazing power of God’s gospel. We were saved from all our sins by knowing and believing in the power of this gospel of the water and the Spirit which is the Truth of salvation.
However, there are still many people who haven’t received the cleansing of their sins because they don’t believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. This is the problem. God did this work of salvation because He loves all humanity. Then, what is so good about them that they have a reason not to be able to believe the good news of salvation that God gave? What is there for them to obtain by their thoughts? God saved us from all our sins by the power of the gospel of the water and the Spirit; can’t they figure out whether or not they have sins through the gospel of the water and the Spirit? All of us had sins before God, but didn’t all the sins of the world go over to Jesus Christ when He was baptized by John the Baptist? And can’t we know that He received the judgment of all those sins and eliminated them?
My fellow believers, what kind of conditions are needed when you receive this love of God? God loves us out of His compassion; He doesn’t demand anything of us in return. God’s love requires nothing from us. It is unconditional. Isn’t it? That is the love that God gives to human beings. In other words, He shows us His love of salvation without price. God gave us the love of pure salvation that does not demand compensation. God the Father loves us with His absolutely unconditional and merciful love because we are in the likeness of His image. In order to eliminate all our sins for once and for all, God the Father saved us from all our sins at once by sending His only begotten Son to this earth, having Him be baptized by John the Baptist, having Him die on the Cross, and having Him be resurrected from the dead. Because God thus loved us absolutely and unconditionally, He made it so that you and I could obtain salvation from all our sins by knowing and believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. We must realize that the Lord saved us from all our sins at once because God loved us unconditionally and regarded us with compassion. This is the salvation and power of God.
We arrive at the salvation from all our sins when we believe in God’s righteousness, but even so, many people still don’t believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit that is God’s righteousness. People like that have truly stubborn hearts and rely more on their good works than God’s. They are very vicious people. In Luke, someone came up to Jesus and said, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18) Such people are prone to reject Jesus’ good works because they think they have much of their own righteousness. Many people go to hell for standing against God’s righteousness because they still believe that their own thoughts are right. Our uprightness is nothing before God’s righteousness. We have no goodness but rather have only sin. Mankind does good works and makes sacrifices for themselves, but they don’t have true goodness. Human goodness is false and fake. Mankind lives in existences that cannot love without price or conditions like God. We must keep in mind that only God can regard us with compassion and love us unconditionally. Only the Lord regarded you and me with compassion, loved us unconditionally, and saved us from all the sins of the world through His righteous love and the gospel of the water and the Spirit. He loved us with unchanging love. We must believe in the salvation with which He saved us from all our sins by the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit. We must know and believe that the gospel of the water and the Spirit is the Truth of salvation.
Today’s Scripture passage says that the woman here who had a flow of blood lightly touched just her finger to Jesus’ garment and was healed at once. That woman was healed with faith in the power of the Lord. God is the God of power. He doesn’t lie, and our Savior Jesus Christ is God. God the Father loved us, so He sent Jesus Christ who came to this earth, was baptized, died on the Cross, was resurrected from the dead, and saved us. We must believe in that fact. We must believe in the work of salvation that Jesus Christ had done. A person cannot have the grace of the remission of sins if he doesn’t believe in the work that Jesus Christ accomplished.
This woman was healed of her illness by the power of the Lord when she touched His garment by faith. You must also believe in the work that the Lord performed by thinking, “Oh, He saved us through the gospel of the water and the Spirit! So, I have no sins, all the sins I had went over to Jesus at once, and He received all the judgment for them.” We must believe, “So, our Lord is our Savior who saved us from all our sins, and He is our Redeemer.” This faith is that which is referred to in the Word when it says, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20). The Bible says, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith’” (Romans 1:17).
Did you know how sinners become the righteous? The Bible said, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.” No matter how unilaterally God saved us or no matter how unconditionally He has saved us with His love, salvation has absolutely nothing to do with us if we don’t truly believe that fact from our side. The Bible said, “From faith to faith.” We have received the remission of sins only by faith in God’s righteousness. And we have obtained eternal life. Therefore, the Bible said, “The just shall live by faith.” We now live by faith in God’s righteousness. We become God’s laborers if we believe in God’s righteousness and unite with God’s Church even if we come up against difficulties. This faith isn’t theoretical; it can actually be working when we have faith in the gospel of God’s power.
 
 

The Lord Bestows the Power of Salvation on Those Who Know and Believe in His Righteousness

 
Therefore, the biggest sin in this world is not believing in the work of salvation God has done for us by His unconditional love and the gospel of the water and the Spirit. Can God lie to us? He can never lie. So, why do people not believe in Him? The works that God did are also written in the Bible; how can people not believe in their own salvation even after looking at the gospel of the water and the Spirit from the Bible? They can’t believe by reading the Word of God, so they need visions and miracles before they believe in Him? People who are to believe in God only by those things aren’t trying to believe in God’s righteousness but are instead trying to believe in their own righteousness. They will come to believe in the power of outrageous mysticism that comes about by Satan doing his works. Those people think that God’s power and miracles are more important than His righteousness. God permits these people to fall into destruction by allowing them to observe and believe in these false miracles preformed by Satan.
That kind of faith is not believing in God’s righteousness. We must know God’s righteous work of salvation: We have to believe in our hearts that He became our Savior in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. When we believe in God’s righteousness, that power falls upon us and we are saved. We thereby come to be able to live before God according to His will by faith after we have been saved from all our sins. You have now become able to live by faith in God’s righteousness even if you come across unexpected difficulties.
 
 

The Most Wicked People in This World Are Those Who Advocate Their Own Righteousness. People Who Think Their Own Thoughts to Be Righteous Are the Most Wicked in This World

 
The most wicked and rude people before God are those who thus ignore and don’t believe in the Word of God. It says in today’s Scripture passage that this woman went to many physicians but could not be healed. That means that our good works and those of many other people could not eliminate our sins. The faith of those who think themselves as practitioners of goodness is like the tunics of fig leaves of Adam and Eve. They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings after committing sin against God. Such faith is useless and ripped out easily no matter how carefully they care for it. People who believe that they do good works have faith like that of Adam and Eve in the Old Testament era making and wearing skirts of fig leaves. These people are the same as people who are trying to cover their sins with their religious lives. When a person makes clothing of fig leaves and wears them, the leaves completely dry out and break up after two or three days of wear so that he can’t wear them anymore. Contrary to the tunics of skin that God made for them, garments made of fig leaves dry out and break up when they are exposed to sunlight because they are of plants.
Man’s righteousness and good deeds are the same as those fig leaves. So, the clothing of fig leaves imply the righteousness of man in the Bible, while the tunics of skin that God made for Adam and Eve spiritually refer to the righteousness of God that never wear out. God wanted to make and clothe man in the clothing of His righteousness. The clothing of His righteousness is that of skin. It is the same as fulfilling God’s justice by transferring sinners’ sins to a sacrificial animal by the laying on of hands and killing it vicariously. This was the offering in which God had the sacrificial offering receive the transference of man’s sins, had it killed, and received its life as the wages of sins.
God allowed people who believe in the Truth of salvation appointed by Him this way to be saved from all their sins. This is the way God saved us. Therefore, people who don’t believe in God’s righteousness but rather believe in their own righteousness are of Satan. The faith that God wants is one that believes in and depends on His righteousness, not ours. It is the same before and after we receive the remission of our sins.
There are some people who stay in God’s Church for a little while and then leave. They do so because they don’t recognize God’s Church. But people staying in the Lord’s Church by faith devote themselves to the work of saving sinners with the gospel of the water and the Spirit. If you left God’s Church because you didn’t believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit even though you had heard it, you would come to eternally fall away from God. We must know that it is a truly great blessing that you and I received the remission of sins by believing in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. We could not help but live our whole lives buried in sin, but we can now live for the work of God by faith because of God’s righteousness.
My fellow believers, how agonizing was it for us to be bound by sin? Have you ever been tormented because you were bound by sin? Didn’t you think that you had to do something yourself to get away from them? There was a person who thought that he had done a lot of good, went up to Jesus, and challenged Him, asking, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18) Turn around and believe in God’s righteousness if you are like the young man who said, “All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?” (Matthew 19:20) Then, God’s righteousness, not yours, will save you.
You must now come back to God and believe in God’s righteousness. There are many people who must abandon their own righteousness even after they have believed in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. Those are people who say, “Try to be as good as I am.” All of us are people who truly can’t do good before God whether it is before or after we have received the remission of sins. You must know that we are those kinds of beings.
Is there anyone who is still tormented because of one’s hypocritical goodness? God breaks to pieces all those people’s good works by making them suffer, and He makes them give up before His righteousness. God wants to make you as such that you only depend on and hold onto His righteousness. This is His will that shows His righteousness. People who may advocate their false goodness before God are the same as people who hand-shovel before an excavator. I don’t know if the comparison is exactly right, but they are like people who shovel before an excavator. One move of the bucket of an excavator sends large rocks out of the way, and it gets rid of large piles of dirt in just a few movements; can a person before that excavator say that he shovels well? This is the way it is for people who advocate man’s righteousness.
No matter how much man offers prayers of repentance and does good works, can they eliminate as many sins as when Jesus took all the sins of the world by being baptized by John the Baptist? No, they can’t. Isn’t that true? Try shoveling hard for a month. A bulldozer coming and only pushing dirt around once is much better. This comparison isn’t exact, but that is the difference between mankind’s work and that of God. How much work can man do? And how many things are there that man is good at? There is absolutely nothing to be proud of before God.
So, we must believe in God’s righteousness, and there is no other choice. We must believe in Him like the woman who merely touched Jesus’ garment and was healed of her flow of blood. If we just believe in our hearts in the work that Jesus had done for our salvation, that is, the gospel of the water and the Spirit, all the sins that were in our hearts are just gone all at once. We become God’s children by faith in His righteousness. And I believe that all our problems are solved if we just believe in and rely on God’s power. Therefore, it is extremely important to know the gospel of the water and the Spirit that is the profound Truth of salvation, and people who believe in it are wise.
If there are any among you who don’t believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, first abandon your righteousness. And concretely think of your wickedness and sins before God. People who don’t believe the Word of God because they are evil must be very wicked people. There are usually a lot of people like that who think they are good before God. They must first remove their righteousness and hypocrisy by the knowledge of the Truth. They must concretely think of their mistakes and which commandments they broke before the Word of the Law of God.
If you speak to those people as though you don’t care about them at all, they know nothing of their wickedness and don’t try to listen to God’s exhortation. They listen to the Word of God inattentively and ignore most of it. If someone went up to them and said, “I am insufficient,” those people would counter with “Yeah, you’re insufficient, but I’m not.” If we think a person we are speaking with is someone who advocates their own righteousness and tell them that we are insufficient, we must know that they will ridicule us. They will ridicule us, saying, “Go ahead and believe in that, you dumb ass. I don’t think I need to. From what you’ve said, it seems that Jesus is a good match for you but not for me.” Actually, the Lord’s gospel of the water and the Spirit perfectly matches everyone; even though Jesus is the Savior of all people, some people don’t believe in His Word because they think they have a lot of their own righteousness. You must remember that your good works are never enough to show off before God. You must know the fact that only God is righteous and good.
My fellow believers, we’re having revival meetings and doing the work of the world mission this fall as well. We work and pray in order to serve the Lord’s righteousness, and the day the Lord will come is not far away. Since I’ve already delivered the Word in Revelation sufficiently to you, I don’t want to speak of what will happen in the end anymore if possible. Even so, if I were to say one thing, you see that the world’s economy is starting to decline, don’t you? And the decline is unfolding more rapidly as time goes on. You probably also have a good understanding of how fast all the things in the world are changing. The world changes extremely quickly. So, I don’t think that there are a lot of opportunities left to spread this gospel of the water and the Spirit to the whole world. Now that there is still peace, we must spread the gospel of God’s righteousness to all the population of the world. We won’t be able to spread the gospel of the water and the Spirit when the time of tribulation comes.
When we cannot spread the gospel of God’s righteousness and when the time comes that our bodies can barely keep living, I think that the only thing left for us then is that we will be martyred. My fellow believers, after we have spread this gospel of righteousness to a certain extent, there will be signs that the Lord is coming. Then, the Lord will come soon after that. We have that kind of faith and it is certain. Before that, we must spread the gospel of the water and the Spirit to as many people as possible. We must spread the gospel of the water and the Spirit to all people and pray for them, including people who act smart, those who are blind, and those who have flows of blood. If they pretend to have done a lot of good works, you will also have to do so even though you are not inclined to. People are actually all the same if you compare them to one another. Anyone is as good as they are. Anyway, people’s good works are nothing before God, but I think everyone is about the same when we compare people to one another.
There is a Korean saying that goes, “Rain water dripping from the eaves can make a hole on a corner stone.” If you persistently spread the gospel of the water and the Spirit, other people will also at sometime believe in it and come to receive salvation. No matter how many good works a person might have, they will believe and come to obtain salvation if they awaken to the Lord’s righteousness. If we try for a long time, they will realize they have no righteousness of their own, and they will come to be saved by believing in God’s righteousness. But most people who have nothing to show off are prone to hold onto their hypocrisy; actually, the only reason for that is that they want to hide their insufficiencies. We must shatter those thoughts for them. That is the way to truly help them. What will happen to them if we can’t shatter their hypocrisy with the gospel of the water and the Spirit? Then the only thing left for them is to be thrust into the fires of hell. We must help them through the gospel of the water and the Spirit before that happens.
As such, there are many people in this world who hold onto their own righteousness; however, there are also many people on the other hand who give up their lives completely due to their lacking. There are people who think, “I am a person who only commits sin and can’t do anything because I am insufficient.” They are people who will believe in God’s righteousness for that reason. My fellow believers, we must spread the gospel of the water and the Spirit to them by adapting to the states they are in because there are several kinds of people in this world.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m being sentimental now because it’s fall, but I often have thoughts about things that happened to me before I received the remission of sins. I was so tormented then because of my sins, the days were really hard for me. So, I wanted to know the Truth of the genuine gospel and asked a lot of people, but there was no one who knew of it. Especially, I wanted to know why Jesus had been baptized by John the Baptist. But no one tried to concretely figure out the reason why Jesus was baptized. And there was no one who knew the Truth when I asked them about the gospel of the water and the Spirit after I came across the Lord’s righteousness, either. I always had a lot of interest in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. So, I had read through the Bible several times and studied theology, too. The question in my heart that was the hardest to figure out was why Jesus was baptized. I couldn’t figure out why He was baptized by John the Baptist. So, I asked countless questions to famous theologians and pastors, prayed and supplicated countless times, and bought and read books about this subject. However, my sins could not be cleansed through the gospel of the water and the Spirit because I didn’t know about it.
Then, just as a beacon does not shine on its own base, the answer of the Truth is in the Scriptures: I finally obtained the answer to my question in the Bible. In Matthew 3:15, it says, “Thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness here is ‘Yi’ (義) in Chinese characters; and this letter is composed of two component letters—that is, ‘Yang’ (羊) which means ‘sheep’ and ‘Wo’ (我) which means ‘I.’ In other words, it means, “I have become a righteous person because of a sheep. That is, I have become a sinless person thanks to the sacrificial love of the Lamb.” It is very interesting that taking apart this Chinese character is similar to the will of the Lord.
Let’s take a closer look at it through the Greek, the original text language of the New Testament. The word ‘for thus’ is ‘οϋτως γάρ’ (hutos gar) in Greek, which means ‘just in this way,’ ‘most fitting,’ or ‘there is no other way besides this.’ This word shows that Jesus took the sins of humankind onto Him irreversibly and most properly through the baptism He received from John the Baptist.
In other words, Jesus had to be baptized by John to fulfill all of God’s righteous work or, in other words, our salvation by all sins going over to Jesus. All of my sins left my body the moment I awoke to God’s righteousness in the Word of God. All my sins ended after I concretely knew all the meaning of that Word through the gospel of the water and the Spirit. In an instant, my sins withdrew and my soul became brightened by the light of God’s Truth that I came to know. It was just like a dark room becoming bright as soon as I flipped the switch. My heart that had been gloomy and dark because of my sins became peaceful; peace like a river that cannot be fully expressed in words came to my heart. And all my questions were resolved as the Word of the Bible entered my heart. All the Word of the Bible came to me as new enlightenment. “Oh! That’s what this Word means!” The Words of the Truth in the gospel of the water and the Spirit resolved all the sins that were in my heart at once.
My fellow believers, God saved you and me from all the sins of the world by His righteousness. When I think of the grace with which God saved you and me from all our sins, all I can do is be thankful. God saved you from all the sins of the world just like He saved me from all my sins, and He saved all the people around you and all the people of the world through the gospel of the water and the Spirit just like He saved you from all your sins. Therefore, people who don’t believe in God’s righteousness cannot avoid going to hell.
You must be saved from your sins by believing in the Lord’s righteousness. Not believing in God’s righteousness is the biggest evil. And it suffices for you to live relying on God’s righteousness after you believe in the true gospel and receive the remission of sins. Of course, there will be times of distress in your body and spirit even after being born again. It is also evil for you to not rely on the Lord’s righteousness and to try to live by your own strength in such times. The Bible said, “Now the just shall live by faith” (Hebrews 10:38). I hope that you will also rely on God’s righteousness.
If we rely on and believe in our Lord’s righteousness, miraculous works will arise by His power. I give thanks to God who saved us from all our sins. Do you give thanks to Him, also?
It is really nice that the wind is cool now that it is fall. Spiritual and physical difficulties always come to us, but I hope that they will all be resolved in the Lord. I believe that the Lord will resolve them all if we hope and ask for that. But since we don’t rely on the Lord’s righteousness and live whatever way we want, God gives us difficulties to teach us how to rely on Him. God gives us difficulties to help us stop being stubborn, help us live seeking His righteousness, and in order to guide us.
My fellow believers, if you look to God’s righteousness, believe in it, and wait. Then, you will see that He will resolve all your problems. We are living by that kind of faith in God’s righteousness.
I give thanks that God gave us His righteousness. Hallelujah!
 
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