Gospel

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Imagine just for a moment that you are royalty and have been sent on a mission of mercy by your father, who is a king. You come to live among your people in anonymity for awhile but eventually you reveal your true identity as the King‘s son. When you do, few believe you. Soon, a conspiracy rises against you and you are arrested and accused of a crime for which you are not guilty. In the process you are horribly beaten numerous times. You are taken through the humiliation of a kangaroo court–even though you are obstetrically on trial, the outcome has already been determined and you are sentenced to die.

Imagine that you went into this town knowing that this would be your fate and that your father decreed it out of mercy for his people who are living in rebellion to his rule. Your father demands a severe penalty for those who have treated his rule with contempt. By the King’s law all of the townspeople are all doomed to die for their rebelliousness (but they don’t quiet grasp their fate, even though they have been repeatedly warned). However, your father, is not only righteous but loving and out of love for the law-breakers, has determined to punish you, his only son, in their place. Imagine that, as your father watches, you are repeatedly beaten and publicly whipped and then are nailed to a tree and left there to die. He does nothing to stop it; in fact, he withdraws from you. Even though your father knows of your innocence and he loves you, he offers you no kindness. He pours out his anger on you and, along with it, the punishment that the entire town deserved. Picture a dam 10 miles high and 10 miles wide–then picture the dam breaking and pouring out on you; that‘s the way his wrath pours out on you. His anger towards the law breakers, stored up until this day is now all unleashed in holy fury and it is all reserved for you, just for you–even though, you alone have done nothing wrong.

Now suppose just for a minute that it doesn’t have to be this way for you have the power to free yourself of it all…you control your destiny. Even though you are sentenced to be tortured to death, you have the power to escape it…what would you do? Your father wouldn’t actually force you to go through with this–you could stop, return home and be done with the whole ugly mess. Even though your father has said that this is the only way to save the people, suppose you didn’t want to save them, you just wanted to save yourself. How long could you endure endless tortures knowing that you didn’t have to? What shame would you be willing to suffer, if you didn’t have to suffer any shame at all? What public humiliation would you endure if you didn’t have to? What if you didn’t have to be laughed at, mocked, spat upon, stripped, beaten, tortured? How long could you endure a whipping that had left men dying, their bodies torn to shreds, with their guts exposed–if you didn‘t have to go through it at all? How long could you hang by your own weight–suspended by three nails that tore your flesh and sent blinding pain through your arms and legs? How long could you endure on the cross, nude, dehydrated, in agonizing pain, slowly suffocating, shivering in the cool spring air that buffeted your wounded and naked body, abandoned by all? How long could listen to the ridicule being heaped upon you when you didn’t deserve it–after all, you are the innocent one and you were here to help them? How long could you endure your father’s wrath being poured out upon you when you yourself had done nothing to incur it?

What if you were doing it on behalf of many others who had no hope without you–but they didn’t know it? What if you knew that you could easily get out of the humiliation, pain and death, but, in doing so, everyone else would have to suffer? Could you endure? WOULD you endure? What if you knew you could call angels, 12 legions of them, thousands of them, to release you and stop all of the insanity and prove, once and for all, just who you really were? What if, you could do all of this…free yourself, stop the pain, escape your father’s wrath, go back home to your father’s kingdom–but, in doing so, many others would have to die? Or, as in the case of Jesus, not just a town full of people would have to die if you chose to save yourself…but every single person who had ever lived, or would ever live, would be doomed to death…not only physical, but spiritual, not only now, but for all eternity. What would you do, if you could save yourself but not the world…or, if you could save the world, but not yourself?

That’s a picture of what Jesus did for us. He left heaven to come to earth, giving up all of His rights, in order that He might fulfill His Father’s will that He take the punishment that we deserved. In doing so, He unleashed a new system so powerful and so radical that it turned the world upside down. Everything changed. Jesus’ followers were originally called “the followers of the Way” because Jesus made it clear that there was only one way to God and He was IT! They understood that following Jesus meant fully yielding to Jesus as Savior AND as Lord: to acknowledge Him as Savior but not as Lord was to have Him as neither. It’s the same today. Jesus demands that we give up all for Him because He is ALL and has given up all and suffered all and paid all for us. He alone is infinitely worthy of our complete devotion and obedience.

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