The word ‘but’ changes whatever comes right before it. A ‘but’ is not always pleasant, like when somebody says to you, “I think you have a good idea, but…” It doesn’t matter what comes after a but like that, it isn’t going to be good.
But a ‘but’ is beautiful when it changes a bad beginning into a good end. For example, “I was sick last week but I got better” or “I once was lost but now am found.”
Here are some of my favorite buts in the New Testament
Matthew 4:4 – But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” (Quoting Deut. 8:3)
John 1:17 – For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
John 3:17 – For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
Romans 5:8 – But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 11:22 – Behold then the kindness and severity of God ; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness ; otherwise you also will be cut off.
1 Corinthians 15: 56-57 NKJV – The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 John 4:10 – In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Revelation 21:27 – and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Each of these verses contrasts two different states of being. Death and Life. Romans 6:23 makes this clearer, perhaps, than any other verse in the bible. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I think this is the most beautiful but in the Bible.
Here is where I usually spend time summing up the point, but my words are useless. Read God’s word through His servant Paul.
Ephesians 2:1-10 – And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved ), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith ; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
Truth.
