Eleven Nails

Look at this photo that I happened to run across today…..It really has me thinking.

I have been doing a lot of praying and thinking lately about the twelve disciples of Christ. And there is a lot to be learned from Judas who betrayed Christ “with a kiss.”

When I gazed upon this image, I noticed there were eleven nails. I don’t know if the person who took it meant for it to be that way or not. But it immediately stood out to me.

Any one of us could choose to be a Judas, couldn’t we? And if not one of us reading this today, I would venture to guess we all know at least one person who is making that choice.

Yes, any one of us could make the choice not to accept Jesus Christ and His offer of forgiveness for our sins and leave it nailed into that cross that He died upon for our sakes.

To leave it with Jesus – with His blood that He shed for us – with all the love, pain, anguish, torment and utter suffering. To leave it nailed in.

To celebrate the fact that He died for us but then rose again – and we have the opportunity to live with Him forever – for all eternity – if only we leave that nail where it is supposed to be.

I am not a bible scholar, but the little I have studied in the Word about Judas indicates that he was unique in that he had, like the other disciples, a certain bond or closeness to Jesus, but then denied it.

He, in other words, didn’t sin more than the other chosen followers of Christ prior to denying Him, but did ultimately choose (while knowing the path to grace and salvation) not to accept grace. He willingly chose death instead. This breaks my heart and I cannot imagine how it broke our Savior and Lord’s heart.

Isn’t that the risk we all undertake when we play around with grace? We end up bearing bad fruit instead of accepting the beautiful and dearly paid for gift of salvation –  through the grace, mercy, and sacrifice that Jesus made – and not departing from it.

We are all going to have our struggles and our trials. We are all going to go through seasons of confidence in the Lord, as well as seasons in which we struggle, stretch, or even resist changes He is trying to bring about within us.

But we need never choose death and destruction over grace and eternal life.

Those eleven nails prove it. They prove that there’s a choice.

Don’t be the missing nail. It was meant to be right up there with all the others.

If you, or someone you know is thinking about trying to remove their nail from that blessed cross, pick up a hammer and remind them where it belongs, and where it should stay.

It should remain up there with the other 11 billion million trillion nails multiplied infinitely –  and beyond.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” Galatians 2:20

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