Being With Jesus:
John 19:1-3
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.
The great essayist, Dorothy Sayers wrote, “What does the Church think of Christ? The Church’s answer is categorical and uncompromising and it is this: That Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God ‘by whom all things were made.’ His body and brain were those of a common man; his personality was the personality of God, so far as that personality could be expressed in human terms. He was not a kind of demon pretending to be human; he was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be ‘like God’; he was God.”
Yes, as Christians we believe that Jesus was God. But why would a God “by whom all things were made” permit what he had made to treat him thus: to brutally beat him to within an inch of his life with the barbaric Roman cat o’ nine tails, to press into his brow the crown of thorns, to slap him and spit upon him? What kind Creator would give the created even one second to mock him as they did? Where else could we find Deity submitting to the humiliation of the cross? What kind of God would allow that?
Only the one, true God! No other real god would do that—could do that—not a god that had any power, or goodness or love or divinity. The fact that Jesus surrendered to the pain and shame of the cross is evidence itself that he was not merely a man so good as to be like God; he was God. What kind of God who would allow that? Jesus!
Jesus was, and is, a God of patience. The fact is, it should have been sinful man who was brutally beaten, mocked, humiliated and publically executed like a common criminal. Our common sin made us offensive to a holy God. He had every right to wipe us out and begin anew—as he did in the days of Noah, or as he threatened with Moses on Mount Sinai—or to never make another creature with the freedom to choose. But so great is the patience of this God that he would submit to our utmost defiance. Thank you, O Lord, that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness; one who relents sending the calamity we deserve. (Jonah 4:2)
Jesus was, and is, a God of mercy. Rather than giving us what we deserve, he took what we deserved into himself as he was punished on the cross. We deserved the cross; he became the crucified. Thank you, O Lord, that you were wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities and that the chastisement that brought our peace was upon you. (Isaiah 53:5)
Jesus was, and is, a God of justice. Sin requires punishment, else God is not holy, righteous and just. Yet that sin was not atoned for by the guilty, but by the innocent. Jesus received the punished, endured the humiliation of a trial and hung upon the cross in our place not as a victim of man’s anger, but to satisfy the wrath of God. Thank you, O Lord, that the Father laid on you the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)
He was, and is, a God of love. It should never cease to amaze us that God, the holy One, wanted us, unworthy, guilty sinners, to live so much that in an act of extreme love he provided a way of escape from eternal death into eternal life. Thank you, O Lord, that you loved a sinful world so much that you gave your only begotten Son, so that by belief in him, sinners would have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
Jesus was, and is, a God who is for us. What more could Jesus do to prove his love for us, and thereby convince us that he has set himself to help us than by his substitutionary, sacrificial death on the cross. Should we ever again doubt that God is for us, that he will help us, that he will fulfill all his promises to us and bring us through the trials and tribulations of this life and one day bring us into his eternal Kingdom? Thank you, O Lord, that you who did not spare your own life, but delivered it up for us will also certainly and freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32
What kind of God would allow his created ones to inflict the cross upon himself? Jesus, that’s who—the God of patience, mercy, justice and love—the God who is for us and therefore, the One whom we should love, serve, trust and follow shamelessly and without reservation now and every day until the end of the age.
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“The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God!” (Oswald Chambers)
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