"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"  Luke 10:27  (NIV)

"That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself."  Luke 10:27  (Message Bible)

In 1 Corinthians 2:2 Paul says:  "For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified."  (KJV)

"I deliberately kept it plain and simple: first Jesus and who he is; then Jesus and what he did --Jesus crucified."  (Message Bible)

What Jesus did on the Cross of Calvary  2000 years ago is the cornerstone, foundation of all scripture; the Old Testament points forward  to the cross, the New Testament points backward  to the cross. The Jesus cross event is central to all past, present, and future dealings that God has with us. Without that  cross event, all would be lost, we would have nothing. With that cross event we have everything.

No scripture can be untied from the cross event.  Our salvation and daily victorious living depends on what happened to Jesus on the Cross of Calvary. That is  the greatest event of all time in this universe.

What happened at that Jesus cross event is the Good News for all humankind. It is the beginning and the ending for all God's people. Able and Moses looked forward by faith to the cross event, they believed in what was to come for them; Paul, Peter, and we look backward by faith to the cross event, we believe in what has already been done for us. And this means everything to us.

Everything God wants for us is in the Jesus cross event. All of the Old Testament Jewish laws given by God, the sacrificial animal temple worship, all pointed forward to that which was better.  Jesus Christ was and is the perfect Lamb of God. His sacrifice on the cross event fulfilled all of Biblical and God's requirements for us. The blood of animals could never wash away the sins of the Old Testament believers, only cover them. Jesus was God who became a Man who was perfect in all ways. The blood of Jesus does wash away our sins and makes us pure in God's eyes. God forgives us and remembers our wrong doings no more. If God does not remember our short comings, why do we remind God of them? We must forgive ourselves and love ourselves just as God loves us. Jesus lived for us, Jesus died for us, Jesus arose for us, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit of God for us, Jesus will come again for us. All because of, or made possible by, the Jesus cross event, which only happened once. Jesus Christ only was slain once, only crucified once, only died once for our sin. The blood of animals had to be continuously applied. The blood of Jesus Christ was applied only once, and is more than enough for all time and place. And right now Jesus is still living for us as our High Priest. Understanding the Old Testament is quite central to understanding the New Testament. And understanding the New Testament sheds light and understanding on the Old Testament.

What does all this mean to us here and now? We can do nothing to earn any good thing from God;  Jesus already paid all in full at the cross event. Jesus paid for all our sins and mistakes. Jesus paid for all our healing and good health. Jesus paid for all our victorious daily living and faithful walk with God. Jesus paid for all our joy and happiness. All the benefits of the Jesus cross event are freely given to us; we can only accept and receive them and believe in Jesus Christ! That means the Holy Spirit of God is also freely given to us as we ask for it. Everything we need for this life is wrapped up in the Jesus cross event, freely given to us by God because of what Jesus did for us on that cross.

Do we have proof that the Jesus cross event satisfied all that God required? Yes, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ proved that the finished work of Christ was complete, paid in full. We can add nothing to it, nor take anything from it. All we can ever do is believe in Jesus and accept what He has done for us.

God loves us too much to let us die without hope. Hope in God; hope in Jesus!  Reading, studying God's Word, and praying, talking and listening to God gives us hope, and gives us blessed assurance of God's love for us, and of God's acceptance of us as we believe God's Word, believe in Jesus, and accept what God has already done for us. God pours God's love over us and fills us with God's love. God loves us first; that is why we love God. As we begin to love God, somehow the love of God begins to make us love ourselves, lets us to begin to be compassionate about ourselves in the same manner as God loves us. Then we begin to be filled up with God's love, and God's love begins to overflow to all the other peoples' lives we come in contact with in our daily living.

When God looks at us, who does God see? If we are believing in Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross, God only sees Jesus. We are complete in Jesus, we are perfect in Jesus, we are sinless in Jesus. Not because of anything we might do, or have done, but because of what Jesus did at that cross event. Praise God! Thank-you Jesus Christ! May the Holy Spirit of God ever remain in you! God bless you in the Name of Jesus! Amen!

(Some thoughts from listening to Jimmy Swaggart Ministries SonLife Radio, and Chap. Denise Leopold  Sunday, 3-2-08, from John 9, Jesus healing a blind man, during Lent Season.)