No, really. At the risk of causing the rolling of eyes at another Sunday axiom ad nauseum, God the Father made it all about Him.
If we study the Scriptures, God reminds us time after time, moment after moment, in grace and in judgement, in the tectonic shifts of history down to the minute life changes of individual lives, He made it all about His Son, Jesus Christ.
And yet, here we are trying to turn it around and make it somewhat about ourselves.
Let’s take salvation, grace and judgement for example. When the angel of God passed each household within Egypt that very night to administer the final “plague”, while we are much aware that He would passover the house that had blood smeared on the door posts, most of us forget that it had nothing to do with the tenants within.
In other words, whether it was a murderer, rapist, tyrant, drug lord, witchdoctor, if he smeared the blood on his doorposts, his firstborn would be spared.
On the same note, it didn’t matter if the most righteous person of the land had sacrificed to God, prayed for forgiveness of sins, served the poor, attended every prayer meeting, etc. God was not checking for the righteousness (or lack thereof) of the people but for the very thing that symbolised His Son’s sacrifice that would appropriate righteousness.
That very night the angel of the Lord was only checking for one thing – was there blood on the doorposts? If yes, pass over. If no, take the life of the firstborn. Wash, rinse, repeat pattern until the whole of Egypt was covered. Only the one who appropriated His grace as experienced through the blood would be spared. Any Israelite family within Goshen that chose not to follow through would be very sad the next morning because the angel was not going to discern if this was an Israelite or Egyptian family, nor divide out into Goshen vs the rest of Egypt.
Where are you in that faith walk with God? Make it all about Jesus today.