Only God

Only God could have figured this one out.  What is beyond our finite ability to figure out is something set forth by the Apostle Peter in one of his letters to the church.  His first epistle is a favorite of many because of the strong and certain call to live a holy life.  Holiness is much misunderstood and misinterpreted by many church folks of our day.  Another thing about which Peter wrote that troubles some folks is found in I Peter 2:24.  In that place the Word of God says, "He (Jesus) Himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness..."  What Peter is talking about has been the subject of many who have written volumes and there are still more volumes to be written.

 

Without aiming for naïve simplicity as some might say, it just seems there are some things which only God could figure out how to do.  On my best day of  theological clarity, understanding how our sins could have been borne by Jesus on the cross, even before we were born to commit them, is a mind boggling consideration.  But, I long ago came to the conclusion that I do not have to have clarity about what God has done and is doing in order for it to be a reality upon which life can be based.   What I do believe in the core of my being is that the death of Jesus on the cross in some mysterious way has provided a way for me to live as one seen not as an unacceptable sinner, but a loved child of God. 

 

The Word says Jesus bore our sins on the cross so that we might be free from our sins.  No one will argue that committed and un-confessed sin is a  powerful force which robs us of our life.  It under minds our own sense of personal worth; it keeps us looking over my shoulder to see when the hammer is going to fall; and it taints our every relationship.   There is, therefore, no way for us to live without a heart full of gratitude to God for what He has mysteriously done for me and for everyone through the death of Jesus on the cross. 

Nothing Withheld

When viewed through our 21st century lens, no Biblical story seems stranger or more difficult to understand than Abraham going to Mt. Moriah to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God.  Abraham had waited twenty-five years for this son of promise to be born.  God had promised Abraham many descendants and the old centurion patriarch surely knew that Isaac was the one through whom it would happen.   But, in that moment God spoke saying, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering..." (Genesis 22:2)  Though he must have gone to the edge of not doing this unthinkable thing being asked of him, Abraham finally did what he had been doing for a lifetime.  "So Abraham rose early in the morning...and went." (Genesis 22:3)

 

It was only in that final moment when Isaac was on the altar and Abraham's knife was in the air about to come down into this only son whom he loved that God stayed the old man's hand and then provided a substitute offering from the nearby tangled bush.  The blood of Isaac was not necessary.  Abraham had made it absolutely clear that nothing was more important to him than his relationship of obedience with God.  He would withhold nothing in order to prove it. 

Fast forward to another high place where an only Son, much loved by His Father was put on the altar of sacrifice.   This time, however, it is the Son of the One who stayed Abraham's hand on Mt. Moriah.  Even as Abraham was willing to withhold nothing from God, so did God speak to sinful humanity saying that there was nothing He would withhold in order to express His love.   Not even an only Son whom He loved was withheld.  And this time there was no deliverance for the Son on the altar.  Instead, through His death came deliverance for each one of us.

Think About It

As horrible as was the cross, it is still the most powerful image of the love of God for each one of us.  As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Christians, it is understandable that someone might die for a good person, but it is not easy to figure how someone would die for a person who had chosen to waste his or her life.  One might choose to die to save a child, but who would choose to die for a serial killer, an abuser of others, and someone guilty of the worst kinds of sins against good people.  It would be an one thing to die to save a great peacemaker and still another to die for a terrorist.

 

What the Apostle Paul wrote is an amazing truth about God's love.  In verse 8 of chapter 5 he wrote, "But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us."  Think about that single word for a moment.  God does not wait until we are good to love us.  He does not wait for us to prove we are worthy of His love.  He does not allow our sins, no matter how terrible they might be, to keep Him from loving us.  In fact what the Word says is that even while we were choosing the way of the evil one, He was loving us.  Think about it for a moment.  There has never been a time in our lives that God was not loving us.  Even in the worst day we have lived as a sinner, even when we disappointed Him the most, He was loving us.

 

Is that not what Simon Peter learned that morning on the beach when he had breakfast with the  risen Lord?  Three times Jesus asked Peter about his love for Him.  Three times.  Surely, it was not lost on Peter that he had very recently denied Jesus three times.  Jesus was intentionally bringing that moment to mind, not to condemn Peter, but to let Peter know he was forgiven and still loved.  Think about it a moment.  He does the same thing for us. 

Near the Cross

Most folks would rather sing, "On a hill far away,..." than "..near the cross."  When it comes to the cross, far away is better than near.   When it is far away, it seems like a small icon on the horizon.  Kinda like the ones we see in the bottom corner of a computer screen.  Benign is how it appears.  Not much to it.  But, near is different.  Near reveals things not seen from a distance.  Near shows us the dying form of One who has suffered beyond the boundaries of endurance.  Near brings too many horrible things into plain view.  Far away is comfortable.  Near is painful.

So, do something uncomfortable this Lent.  Find some time to be near the cross.  Maybe today.  Maybe now.  If not, then soon.  But, find some time to be near the cross.  Sit quietly as one very near that cross of Calvary.  See those things which are not seen when the cross is far away.  See the blood coming from the nails in His feet and hands.  See the blue bruises all over His body.  See the gashes across His skin from a whip with iron pieces in the end.  See the chest rising and falling as life seeks to seep out of a beaten body.  See the eyes as they look around from face to face.  Feel the spit as He gasps and struggles to breathe.  Hear the words uttered from deep in His soul to those watching and to the Father.  Feel the darkness that overcomes that place. 

Ask God's Spirit to guide your mind and your heart as you envision this sacrifice on the cross.  Seek nothing but the moment of experiencing what it is like to be near the cross.  See Him.  See the Holy One.  See the Lamb of God who sacrificed Himself for the sins of the world, yours and mine.  See Him.  See the love being made known.  Know that it was all necessary because of sin, yours and mine.  Be near the cross for a time.  Weep and mourn.   But, most of all choose to live.  It is why is He went to that place for you and for me.

Theological Talk

One of the problems with theological words is not that they are so difficult to understand, but instead, that we make them so difficult to understand.  Too many times we preachers preach not toward the simple definition but toward the more exhaustive one which will prove that we have the larger understanding of all the possible nuances of some theological word.  The words like justification, salvation, redemption, and atonement drift by the average pew sitter who really only needs a word that can simply penetrate the heart and not the head.  This is not a suggestion that our minds need to be left at the door when we worship, but simply a confession that we preachers have largely forgotten the power of a word for the heart. 

One of those theological words so important to the season of Lent and its central symbol, the cross, is the word "justification."  Simply stated, justification is that act of God which causes Him to see us just as if we had never sinned.  Justification is first and foremost an act of God.  It is an act of God which makes humankind to be accoiunted as just and righteous, free from guilt and the penalty of sin.  The act of God which makes this simple, profound, and life changing truth reality is the cross.  To say we are justified has nothing to do with us and everything to do with God.

In Romans 3:24-25 there is this Word of God which says, "...they are now justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by His blood, effective through faith."  God has acted for the sake of humanity through the horrible cross death of His Son.  He changed the game completely for us so that it is now possible for us to stand before Him as one who has never sinned.  Would you dare believe such a thing?  Dare to believe it.  Dare to believe this eternal truth which only awaits the human response of faith to be stamped as effective, not for the world, but for you and me.

Servants First

After the Mount of Transfiguration experience, Jesus started His final journey to Jerusalem and the cross which was beginning to loom large before Him.  As we read gospel accounts of that movement from the mountain of transcendent glory to the hill of crucifixion, we know that Jesus began to speak to His disciples of the reality and the necessity of His impending sacrifice.  They never seemed to get it.  Maybe it was too horrible a possibility for them to consider.  Or, maybe their pre-occupation with themselves and their positions of greatness kept them from seeing the self-sacrificing servant who was walking ahead of them on the road to Jerusalem. 

 

What we know is our own aversion to following the Suffering Servant if it means sharing too much of the suffering with Him.  In our mind hard times cannot possibly be a part of God's plan for us.  Life is supposed to be good for the disciple of Jesus and when we begin to experience the difficult moments of life, our first inclination is to pray for deliverance instead of seeking His purpose in allowing us to live in such a hard place.  In our Christian life, we are too quick to go after our own plans which in the end always make our life easier and better by the standards of the secular community instead of going after God's plan which might put us in a place of sacrificing any right to self or even our own life.

 

The important question in life is not "What must I do with my life?" but "What does God want to do with my life?"  Had Jesus not been into seeking the answer to the second, He surely would have found a route that would detour around Calvary. The disciples were into the first as they walked with Jesus to the cross while arguing over personal greatness.  Like many of us, they failed to get it that following Jesus was about being a servant of the Father's will. 

Deliverance

When we behold the One John the Baptist called "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29) dying on the cross, our minds often take us to that night in Egypt when Moses instructed the enslaved Hebrews to slaughter the lambs which had been living as a part of their households for four days.  As each family did this, the blood of the slaughtered lamb was placed over the doorposts of the house so that deliverance instead of judgment would come to those within it.  The Hebrew Passover comes from this night.  The blood of the lamb provided deliverance.

 

There was blood shed that day on the cross.  It was blood of the Holy One from heaven, the Son of God, the One who was born for the expressed purpose of saving His people from their sins.  While we would rather think of Jesus dying there in some sanitized and clean fashion, it was dirty and bloody business which was enacted on Calvary that day.  As the slaughtered lamb and the blood on the doorpost reminded the Hebrews that deliverance was costly, in an even greater manner the slaughtered bloody body of the Lamb of God reminds us that our deliverance is not without great price.  Jesus has died for each one of us.

 

But, to take it a step further is to recognize that Jesus died not just for the masses of humanity, but for the single individual whom we see each time we look in the mirror.  Jesus took upon Himself the punishment which is rightfully mine as a result of my sins.  The punishment deserved for sin is death and separation from God.  His shed blood and His death is not what He deserved, but what I should get from God because of my sin.  But, because of the blood of the Lamb of God, I stand now as one who can receive the free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:23)  Such is my deliverance and such is the power of this shed blood of Jesus.  Thanks be to God!