March 21, 2014
Give ‘n Take
It’s interesting how words
can be in the same context, but a change in the written order makes a profound
impact. I normally think in terms of Jesus taking
my sins, but inspirational writer Rich Maffeo reorders the words saying, “I
asked God to lay my debt on Jesus Christ and forgive me.” The phraseology vividly
moves me to the foot of the cross and makes me a participant in the crucifixion.
It is at the cross that Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not
know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Matthew 25:42b, “…as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to Me,” tends to indicate that Jesus feels what we feel. “For the LORD searches all hearts, and understands every plan and thought. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off for ever.“ (I Chron 28:9) God is in every place at every time. Nothing happens outside His awareness. That Jesus was a man did not entirely eliminate what He was as God. From elsewhere He saw Nathaniel sitting under the fig tree. He knew the Samaritan woman at the well. To God, time and place are escapable, and at once He can peer into every head everywhere at all times.
-----I often ponder what it was when the burden of all sin fell upon Him as He died. It wasn’t just that His death paid for those sins. I can see maybe an ability to experience what we experience opened for an instant in which He experienced all the sinning of all the world throughout all times as His life blinked out. Like they say your life passes before your eyes when you die, maybe in an instant all the world’s sins passed through His experience. But maybe it steps at least one stride further than just experiencing them. Paul says He became them. “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin.” (II Cor 5:21) Was it that somehow His participation in humanity by being man became a participation in all mankind’s sin such that He participated in all the sins without doing them? For we all know He did not sin. In one instant, did He perceive as His own deeds all the worlds sins entering His awareness?
-----Or was it infinitesimally simpler. Satan did not take His life. Nor did God. And the wounds of the cross did not claim Him. They couldn’t. Death is the wage of sin. He earned no wages; He was due no paycheck. Then was He destined to hang there on that cross forever? Of course not. He was God. He could lay down His life and die. But that would be a breach of God’s word as well. It would be stealing the pay He had not earned. So, was His surrendering His own life into death a sin? Was it the imperfection of His deeds which hitched up to all the world’s misdeeds and toted them into grace?
-----I still buy the Bible’s idea that He was without sin of His own. I also buy the idea that He created everything that was created. Then, did the baker who baked the cake murder the king whose cupbearer poisoned the cake? Most everybody says no. But the opportunity for him to share in the guilt remains open. As God, could Jesus take credit for the sins of man for having made man, and therefore not sin in dying for having actually done no sin, kind of a “the buck stops here” thing?
-----However and whatever, He became sin without actually doing sin. And now that your mind is acclimated to toy with even the zany, notice to where His becoming sin logically extends. Your sins were dumped upon Him with all the world’s other sins. So He became your sins, too. The same way He “drinks” what you drink and “eats” what you eat when you’re given drink and food, He “sins” what you sin. But for Him to have become all the world’s sins in that moment means He was in this moment, too, becoming this sin, too, and will be in all your other moments becoming those sins, too. This especially has a certain fit with reality seeing that we who turn to His Father through Him have become one with Him. So every sin we do we can know He is not only feeling, but is also being on the cross.
-----Again, why I so love your blog. You’re so right.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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