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In 1980, in the United States, there was a murder an average of every twenty-three minutes, and robberies occurred at the rate of one a minute, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation report for that year. Thirteen million serious crimes were reported in 1980, fifty-five percent more than a decade earlier. As one sees these chilling statistics, one thinks: these are for one year, for one country. These are only the reported crimes. These do not include the crimes that people get away with. And what about the bad and ugly words, thoughts, and actions which cause hurt to people but which do not technically qualify as "crime"? What about sins against the First Table of God's Law: cursing, neglecting, forgetting, ignoring, defying God? What about all the sins and all the crimes of all the people of all the nations of all the ages? What about your sins and mine: all the times that we have betrayed God's trust, failed God's expectations, and fallen short of God's standard of what human life is meant to be? What a staggering sum of offensiveness to the holy and righteous God! What a depth of meaning this type of reflection puts into the words of Isaiah which prophetically describe the work of Jesus Christ and his suffering upon the cross: "All of us were like sheep that were lost, each of us going his own way, but the Lord made the punishment fall on him, the punishment all of us deserved" (v. 6) ... "He took the place of many sinners and prayed that they might be forgiven." (v. 12)
-- Clausen
In 1980, in the United States, there was a murder an average of every twenty-three minutes, and robberies occurred at the rate of one a minute, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation report for that year. Thirteen million serious crimes were reported in 1980, fifty-five percent more than a decade earlier. As one sees these chilling statistics, one thinks: these are for one year, for one country. These are only the reported crimes. These do not include the crimes that people get away with. And what about the bad and ugly words, thoughts, and actions which cause hurt to people but which do not technically qualify as "crime"? What about sins against the First Table of God's Law: cursing, neglecting, forgetting, ignoring, defying God? What about all the sins and all the crimes of all the people of all the nations of all the ages? What about your sins and mine: all the times that we have betrayed God's trust, failed God's expectations, and fallen short of God's standard of what human life is meant to be? What a staggering sum of offensiveness to the holy and righteous God! What a depth of meaning this type of reflection puts into the words of Isaiah which prophetically describe the work of Jesus Christ and his suffering upon the cross: "All of us were like sheep that were lost, each of us going his own way, but the Lord made the punishment fall on him, the punishment all of us deserved" (v. 6) ... "He took the place of many sinners and prayed that they might be forgiven." (v. 12)
-- Clausen
