WINSDAY WISDOM 212
LOVE is the giving up of oneself as a sacrifice for the true good of someone else.
There is a spiritual danger that we become so familiar with the churchy words that we treat the cross as some history lesson or religious relic or holiday. The cross means much more than just salvation from hell and the hope of heaven. That is wonderful, but it is much more. The cross of Christ is the very power of God to change everything in your life.
When Christ died on the cross for sinners, he not only stood in my place, doing what I never could do (which is forgive my sin), but he also showed me and empowered me to execute/put to death my self-centered life to live a new Christ-centered life.
Jesus lives in me to lead me to others He intends to love first and love most through me.
The description of the most significant death in human history is expressed in essentially brief words: “There they crucified Him.”
“At the place called Golgotha (the Skull), There they crucified Him.” (John 19:18)
The historical event is based on eyewitness testimony that was thoroughly researched by people like doctor Luke who interviewed eyewitnesses. Matthew, Mark, and John had some degree of personal witness to the event. The entire account is inspired by the God Himself who hung on that cross.
At best, the description of it is restrained, even in its brutality, a restraint that is both purposeful and perfect. It is given to us in a very simplistic manner, not to invoke sympathy, but to help us to understand the certainty of our faith.
The death of Jesus was real but unusual, much like His life. There was a strange coalition of haters who desired Jesus’ death. But Jesus was not a helpless victim; He was not overwhelmed by evil men or cruel circumstances. His own words described this excruciating death as a necessity. “I willingly lay down My life.”
The gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection give us historical facts of what happened, but what does it mean? What does it matter to our lives?
The gospel accounts present the revelation of Jesus’ divine identity and mission. His name is Jesus, which means, “God saves.” His teaching climaxed with the question to his followers. “Who do you say that I am?”
When they answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of God,” Jesus responded, “God revealed that to you.” He began to explain to them it was a divine necessity for Him to go to Jerusalem, where He would be betrayed and condemned by the religious leaders and then handed over to the ungodly rulers. He prophesied He would be mocked, scourged, beaten, and then killed, murdered by execution, but rise again to life three days later.
Jesus explained His death would change everything.
Jesus went face to face with hell, our hell, so that we might go face to face with heaven. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus looked at the anguish, agony, alienation and aloneness of what it meant to drink the cup of God’s wrath against our sin and our wickedness. Jesus drank the cup and drained it so that we might be able to forever drink only from the cup of God’s blessings and still never be able to drain it.
The soldiers spit on Him as they blindfolded Him and hit Him with their fists. Jesus was scourged, whipped. The pieces of the strands of the whip had sharp objects to dig into the skin and literally rip flesh and internal organs.
The early church leaders said the Romans stripped Jesus and tied Him to a column with His back exposed. Six specialists who were professionals at inflicting pain, scourged Him. The first two took long rods of thorns and cut His back, tearing away the flesh. They continued until they were tired. The next two used whips made with long ropes, beating Jesus until they tired. Two more torture specialists used something like chains to whip Jesus. Then there was another round of beating, ripping out the flesh.
Nobody knows how many stripes, wounds, or amount of skin was torn away. Some disciples estimated several hundred times. One follower described it in the thousands and one early church leader said five thousand. To hit God once is incredible.
God’s Word just says Jesus was scourged. He took it without a word because He preferred to have His flesh ripped off than lose your soul to hell.
Jesus was left profusely bleeding, badly bruised, so lacerated, so cut up that He no longer looked like a man.
When Pilate said, “Behold, the Man!” he really did not understand what he was saying. This is THE Man. THE Man who perfectly showed how God planned for every man to live…loving God with all his heart and loving others as himself.
The Roman soldiers dishonored Jesus with a mock coronation, They placed a faded out scarlet robe on His back, and pushed a crown of thorns down on His head. They presented Him with a reed for a scepter before taking turns pounding the thorns deeper into his skull.
Each one of the six hundred guard detail bowed down in mock adoration with the greeting, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They rose to their feet and spit in His face. Six hundred.
The innocent Jesus was treated like a condemned criminal deserved to be treated. The guard escort led him and two condemned terrorists through the streets to a hill outside of the city of Jerusalem.
The hill’s Hebrew name was Golgotha. In Latin, it was called Calvary.
The word excruciating is the same root word for the word crucifixion. The painful torture was beyond human comprehension. They offered Jesus a medicated anesthetic which He refused. He would go through this clear-minded and feel all the pain due us. He was the Innocent One being treated as if He were a criminal, as if He had lived your life or mine.
They crucified Jesus.
The Almighty God was treated as if He were powerless.
The Romans had perfected this torture. They regularly used it as an open example against insurrectionists. They made a public spectacle of executing terrorists. Crucifixions were not rare during that time. It had become so commonplace that people might gawk as they walked by, much like driving by a serious wreck where drivers slow down to see something as they continue on their way.
However, the only individual who ever suffered this way and this much was the only one who never deserved it. Jesus suffered hell for all of us.
They stripped Jesus naked as part of the humiliation and public shame. The soldiers laid Him down on His back along the cross beam where they would drive a five or seven inch stake or nail into the wrist and then into the other wrist. Strapped to that crossbar, they would place it on the upright post and drop Him into place. They would cross His legs and drive another stake or two stakes in just above the ankles…so that He would literally be hanging by those two stakes on the wrists, with nothing to fall down upon except that stake between His ankles.
The first recorded words of Jesus on the cross were, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.”
This was a ghastly, horrible death. The body was forced into unnatural positions to contribute to the intensified, increased pain. The arteries would swell, causing the head to throb. The muscles would ache and cramp. There would be a burning thirst in the throat walls that became intolerable.
As the arms fatigued, the muscles knotted up. The lacerated flesh rubbed up against the splinters of the rough wood. Crucifixion was not designed to be a quick death; it was to be an agonizing torture. It was all designed to inflict the greatest amount of humiliation and pain possible.
Crucifixion was considered the cruelest, most painful, most degrading form of punishment ever conceived by humans.
The most excruciating aspect was the struggle to breathe. The person on the cross desperately needed to breathe but did not have the strength necessary to gain a brief breath. When you cannot breathe, the pressure goes to crush your lungs. You fight to strain for the strength to gasp for air. Every breath was based on the worth of the effort to delay the inevitable.
But breathing to survive is a natural instinct. The body, by its very nature, struggles. Even in drowning or waterboarding, one struggles for one more breath. Fluids gather around the sac of the heart as the compressed heart struggles to pump the thickening blood. With every pressured filled gasp for oxygen and every painful exhale, the body gets weaker, and the pain becomes greater.
I do not want to make more of the physical suffering than what the Bible does, because that was not the main point of this most important humanly unbearable event in history.
God chose not to emphasize the physical torture. The execution of the innocent Jesus is simply but powerfully stated, “And they crucified Him.”
But who is this Him? They crucified Him like He had no power whatsoever…and yet He was the Almighty God. They crucified Him like He was a nobody when He was the King of kings who could have crucified them all with just one word to His majestic angelic army.
Why did Jesus’ heart burst on the cross? Why did He suffer beyond human comprehension that day?
Before the glorious resurrection, there was an agonizing crucifixion. Why?
Someone had to pay for our sins. “God demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8).
For God so loved the world that He gave His only beloved Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life (John 3: 16).
GOD TREATED HIS PERFECT LOVING SON JESUS ON THE CROSS AS IF HE HAD LIVED YOUR SINFUL SELFISH LIFE IN ORDER THAT GOD MIGHT TREAT YOU FOREVER AS IF YOU HAD LIVED JESUS’ PERFECT LOVING LIFE.
There’s a spiritual reality behind the historical fact that they crucified Jesus. There was a great divine transaction…Your death is His. His life is yours.
Here is the application. Jesus’ death on the cross is the most significant death in all human history. It is the pivotal point of life, both earthly and eternally. This Volunteer Substitute on the cross is the only Person who can change YOU.
All the problems you have in life, all the broken relationships or difficult relationships you have in life, are solved by going to the cross again and again and seeing the love of God shed for you in dying in your place, treating you as if you had lived Jesus’ life, and taking that love and using it to love others first and love them most.
It is a new love for your spouse, your family, the needy, the poor, the neighborhood, the nations.
Every relationship, every problem, every difficulty you have is resolved by YOU BEING CHANGED. The only place to be changed is at the cross.
If this story is so familiar that it does not affect you, then this account was wasted. It is not information or entertainment. It is a life-changing message.
The preacher, Charles Spurgeon said, “Jesus looked down at the people he was dying for, some cringing like cowards, some snarling like dogs, all clueless and blind to what He was doing. And in the greatest act of human history, He stayed on the cross.”
JESUS STAYED ON THE CROSS.
The passersby and the people watching had no clue what Jesus was doing and, still, He stayed on the cross. Has that changed your life? Is it still changing your life for the better?
TESTIMONY: I was a little boy who heard this story, I guess, all my life. Somewhere, someday I began to understand that Jesus died in my place for my sinful selfishness.
There was a series of church services at our church. I remember telling my mom and dad, “Next Sunday, I am going to tell the preacher I want to give my life to Jesus.”
My parents asked me a couple of questions: Did I think I was a sinner who needed a Savior? Did I know that Jesus died for my sins? Did I know who Jesus is and what He did?
I knew the information; I needed the reality. I will always be grateful that my parents said this: “You do not have to wait until Sunday to give your life to Jesus.” That Tuesday night, I knelt down with my parents beside a little ugly, green, torn, vinyl footstool, and I thanked Jesus for being my Savior and my God.
These many years later, I am still sipping from the cup of God’s blessings with gratitude and hope. I know that there is a whole lot more sin in my life than what I knew at that age as a little boy. I do not love Jesus any less. I have all the reason to love Him more.
To anybody who does not personally know Jesus, you can ask Jesus to be your God and your Savior—right now, right where you are. It will change everything, inside you. The weight of your sin will be forever removed, and God will make you spiritually alive.
Jesus will come to live inside of you so that He might lead you to others He intends to love first and most through you.
Jesus proved He was our Savior who refused to save Himself.
Jesus also set for us a great example of how we are to live life. We will probably not be physically tortured but when we get hurt, it can feel like emotional torture.
There will be some days in your life that you are hurt beyond your ability to bear. What are you supposed to do? Follow Jesus. You don’t complain to God and you don’t quit; you never quit on God.
In this life, there will be people who will taunt and make fun of you. There will people who snip at you and snap at you and scream at you, and stomp on you. Jesus gave us an example to follow. You do not revile in return and you never act unkind.
When you are treated unfairly and unjustly, you do not retaliate. You do not try to defend yourself.
Jesus gave us an example on the cross…When your faith is tested, you never stop trusting God, even if you do not see or sense God being with you and for you.
Jesus gave us an example. But that is not why He stayed on the cross.
That subject captivated the old prophets. The greatest of minds cannot get their thoughts around the greatness and the glory of why Jesus stayed on the cross. It still calls the angels to explore and adore. The angels are a lot smarter than we are and have lived longer than we have, and yet they say this subject matter is inexhaustible and never boring!
The width, length, height, and depth of God’s great love is beyond our comprehension. That great love made Jesus stay on the cross to the finish line.
Jesus did not save Himself. He stayed on the cross to rescue us from the incomprehensible horrible punishment of God’s wrath which we deserved. Oh, the love of God!
Jesus would not save Himself because His love would not let Him. It was not a matter of the physical constraints or physical circumstances. It was a matter of love for His Heavenly Father in doing His Father’s will.
Save Himself or save us. Jesus chose you and me.
At the death of Jesus, the voice of the Roman centurion who supervised many crucifixions was heard to declare, “Truly this was the Son of God.” Who died on the cross that day? The Son of God. Why did Jesus die on the cross? Christ died for our sinful selfishness so we might be forever treated as if we had lived His perfect, loving life.
Jesus’ LOVE is the sacrifice of giving up Himself for the true good of you and me.
Does that matter to you?
BE SPIRITUALLY AWED BY A GOD WHO WOULD HANG ON A CROSS IN ORDER TO BRING YOU WITH HIM TO THE HIGHEST HEAVENLY PLACE OF HONOR, HAPPINESS AND HARMONY TO ENJOY LIMITLESS LOVE, INFINITE GOODNESS, AND INEXHAUSTIBLE JOY.
THAT WILL TAKE FOREVER AND BEYOND.
I hope we will both be more grateful today.
And when I think, that God, His Son not sparing;
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
And when Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation
And takе me home, what joy shall fill my heart
Thеn I shall bow, in humble adoration
And then proclaim: “My God, how great Thou art!”
LOVE FIRST...LOVE MOST 