The Twelfth Day of Advent

The Twelfth Day of Advent

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Which of the prophets 
did not your fathers persecute? 
And they killed those 
who announced beforehand 
the coming of the Righteous One, 
whom you now betrayed 

and murdered. . . .”

Acts 7:52

Little words in the Bible, as in any literary work, are often critically important. So it is with the verse above. Stephen, who would be martyred moments after speaking these words, didn’t say that the one who had been promised was a righteous one but the Righteous (or just) One! He was not going to be just another Moses or Joshua or David – not simply one more just man. This one who had been promised was the just one, the promised Messiah whom they had killed!

No wonder they stoned Stephen! He had just accused them of killing, of doing away with, of eliminating the Promise of God! And as Stephen died, he, like his Lord before him, cried out in prayer for them, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them (v. 60).” Surely those words caused some to remember Christ’s last words on the cross.

The Righteous One, or as the King James Version of the Bible states it, “the Just one.” He was not just any good man, but the only one who had ever been or would ever be completely right, completely just! That’s who lives on for us now and who interacts with us now according to his own right and just nature! He cannot be unjust because he is the just one. He cannot be unfair because he is the just one. So when we come to him, he does not give us what we deserve but what his absolute just and fair and right personhood demands that he give us. If we have accepted what he did for us on that ugly cross, in all justness he must give to us his just nature and his righteousness – as though we had never sinned!

People today still want to kill him, to blot him out of our lives, to remove him from our schools, to erase him from our vocabulary. And we must ask ourselves, “Will we stone the messengers who say he lives, or will we die like Stephen praying for them who would deny our just Christ, our promised Messiah?” 

God’s gift to us was a very expensive one. We must decide how carefully we will protect it and treasure it.

Father, we thank you for Jesus, our Just and Righteous Savior. Thank you that he has borne on himself all the punishment we deserve, and that he deals with us by grace. There is, indeed, no other like him. Amen.

The Light of the World
prepared for Homosassa United Methodist Church, 2008,
by Patience Nave, Christian Education Coordinator.