Yesterday, we celebrated the Passion of Jesus. To celebrate it - his humiliation, beating, suffering, piercing, suffocating, and ultimate excruciatingly painful death - seems crazy to the unbeliever, I'm sure. It sounds weird as I write it. But it's the most incredible thing to happen in all of history.
God made a way.
God provided the replacement sacrifice for us. We were to pay the price for eternity, but He loved us so much that He said, "No! I will pay the debt!" A debt owed to Him. He paid it. That is crazy-talk to the world.
But just as God provided a ram at the last minute to Abraham so that Isaac could be spared, God provided the perfect, spotless Lamb to be sacrificed... not just because we were sinners in the past, but while we were still sinners!
This is Amazing Grace.
So we celebrate the brutal death of our Savior, because it is that brutal death, by our hands - as though we whipped him, we beat him, we spit upon him, we drove the nails through his hands and feet, we laughed at him and yelled, "If you are God, save yourself!" - that saved us. If not for the Cross, we are doomed. We are destined for eternity in hell, away from God. Darkness, agony, regret, searing pain... forever.
But God...
God, thank you for the Cross. Thank you, thank you, thank you for Jesus. It is in His perfect name I pray. Amen.
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