Easter has always been a special time for me, even before I
let go and really trusted in Jesus. It is a time that I always saw the beauty
of the resurrection and the story behind it.
It is interesting to me that I have a better understanding
of the events of Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, and the glory and real
beauty and sacrifice, yet now I realize how horrific that day at the cross
really was. Our guest speaker last Sunday, Simon Leigh-Jones, gave a sermon
(complete with his English accent) called “A Despicable Savior.” He described
the horror, the pain, the relentlessly tortured and beaten Christ, hanging like
a piece of meat on that cross. How, because of his great love for us, God
allowed his Son to be sacrificed in this way, the only way, to absorb our sin,
our pain, and our suffering.
John 3:16-17
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. For God did not send his Son into the world
to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
God did this for us. Even though I know it, and I believe
it, I cannot fathom it. My finite little brain cannot wrap around the love that
God has that is so all encompassing and complete that he would allow this. He
did it, though. It was not enough to
just be beaten; it was not enough that He was scourged; it was not enough that
Christ would be hung with criminals to die. The total package was required, so
that we could live through it. Just as the prophets told us hundreds of years
before that this had to happen:
Isaiah
53:2-9 NIV
He
grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He
had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that
we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of
suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and
bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and
afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our
iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds
we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to
our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was
oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb
to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not
open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his
generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the
transgression of my people he was punished. He was assigned a grave with the
wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was
any deceit in his mouth.
But the story of the cross does not end with His death, it
begins there. He rose, just as He said.
Matthew 20:17-19
And as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he
took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way he said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be
delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to
death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and
crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
Even knowing He would rise again, He
still prayed that the burden be lifted from Him, then agreed that the Father’s
will be done. That is where I find the real beauty. He knew what was coming,
even before He left God’s side and came here as fully man and fully God, and
that it was going to be an awful day. Yet He did it . . . for us. There is no
truer love than that.
No matter what is going on in my life,
whether all is well, or under attack, I know that my joy is in Him, and that He
has paid for me. He is in control. Anyone who can suffer and die, and be raised
to glory, is more than capable of taking care of me. I remind myself that I do
not have to be happy to be joyful.
This Easter season, remember not just
that Christ died and rose for you, but He suffered all things so He can know
our sufferings. He knows our suffering better than we know ourselves. He paid
for us. He loves us like nobody else is capable of loving. All you have to do
is ask Him.
It is a beautiful thing.
Yours in Christ,
Michael
