What do you think of when you see a cross? Do you think of an innocent man who paid for a crime he didn't commit? Do you see a pitiful end to a man who held such promise? Do you wonder if this was the strangest way to start a world religion?I recently came across another perspective that seems more accurate. It's from The Message of Galatians by John Stott.
“Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.”
The cross not only tells us about about the Man who died there, it also tells us something about ourselves. At the cross we come to grips with what Stott calls "our true size." That may sound negative, but it can be a very positive and liberating experience for us to realize that we have an inflated view of ourselves. It is more stable and spiritually healthy to find our worth in the greatness and love of the Man who died in our place, than to cling to the delusion that we are such good people that we really did not need Christ to do what He did for us.
Indeed we are a prideful, self-righteous people I am the worst and struggle with that sin daily. As I read the sermon a couple days ago from John 19:1-3 it struck me how calloused I can be, I thought to myself; "How can I read verse 1 and not weep out loud?"
ReplyDeleteJohn 19:1 Then Pilot took Jesus and had Him flogged.
The guards didn't just take Him and smack Him around for a few laughs, they pierced His skin over and over with scourging whips that had metal balls & broken bones tied to the straps, as Isaiah describes it in 52:14 Just as there were many who were appalled at Him His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and His form marred beyond human likeness.
The word flogging doesn't really bring a picture to my mind of what the Roman guards did to Jesus, incase you have never investigated what that punishment actually was I have attached a website that you can go to that describes it in it's true horror.
http://the-crucifixion.org/scourging.htm
Reading about it does bring me back down to "my true size". Thank you Jesus for taking what we deserved, and paying our debt. DS
I think I am going to print this one and post by my computer to read again and again.
ReplyDelete~JJM