Acts 7:1-8:1 - The Gospel is One Rescue Story with God actively, aggressively and unstoppably pursuing his meandering people throughout time and space to give us righteousness, hope and life. His pursuit is consistent, with me in rebellion from the inside (sin) and persecution from the outside (trials) because we demand to create our own manageable rightness so that we can get credit without help from him. The final and inevitable solution was God sending Jesus, the personification of Righteousness, to exchange our perpetual unrighteousness with his eternal righteousness. And, just like we did to all the prophets before him, we killed Jesus. In so doing, we actually and inadvertently ushered in the Great Transfer of Rightness: Jesus’ to us, and our un-rightness to Jesus. Now he “stands” at God’s right hand as our Divine Defense Attorney declaring to the Father that all of his children are just and right. This declaration gives us the hope to live boldly even when the world’s (and our own) courtroom declares us guilty.