"My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?"
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, ESV)
Sin was a major problem. It is still a problem, but now in time and space it is a problem with a solution. God decided that in our inability to make things right between humankind and Himself, He would take away the penalty and potency of Sin. Humankind's self-rule/self-worship had a penalty which was death (Gen 3:19, Rom 6:23). Blood was needed to satisfy the penalty of our Sin to bring reconciliation, to bridge the gap. Jesus was a sacrifice for sin, not unlike of the blood sacrifices of that which are reported in the Old Testament (See Leviticus). God has always been bailing us out of our self-love, our self-obsession to self-rule and self-worship ourselves.
The active ingredient of the phrase "substitution atonement" is grace. It is a bit simplistic, but God has never accepted anything that we have made with our bloody, sin-stained hands to offer to God that wasn't already His.
God had allowed His people, His imperfect people to sacrifice the blood of animals for their sin. Yeah, his people would slit the throat of the best of his herd and offer it to God an offering for atonement for his or her sin, but it was God's lamb. It was God's cattle--His creation. Innocent blood not tainted by man's curse that was needed to make things right for a while. Yet, no animal's blood could completely cure God's desire for justice for sin's heartache. God's Justice is the judgment of sin for man like the sentencing of a man convicted for murder of an innocent. Crime deserves punishment.
God did in human form the deed that settled the score for all time. Looking back to the past, the here-and-now present and the future going forward: God supernaturally claimed the Sin of ALL-TIME when he died so that we could have life.
The Scriptures confirm it. 2 Cor 5:21 says, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
Isaiah 53:6 says, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way;and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all."
God chose to do this voluntarily and purposefully destroyed the power of sin over humankind to bring them in fellowship with Himself; All this to, in effect, win us over.
Literally, God's action and good news is explained in full in Colossians 1:13 by Paul: He (God) has delivered us (by His own power and will because we aren't ABLE) from the domain of darkness (He has taken us from self-rule and self-governance which leads to death) and transferred us (and God has mortgaged Himself as the blood sacrifice) to the kingdom of his beloved Son (from the realm of death to the realm of life. Jesus is the vehicle through which God gives us real life.)
We are often numb to images of Jesus physical death on the cross in this image-driven generation. This week, look briefly at the physical torment and horror and solemnity of humankind's mistake in wrongfully murdering the God of the universe and then focus straight on to the supernatural act of God to intentionally adopt us as family no matter the cost of sin for all mankind. How much of a price was His death? Physically, it was horrible and excruciating. The truth is, we'll never know how much it hurt to take on the entirety of blackness taint and sickness of sin that Christ, God of the universe in human form had yet to ever experience until death was upon his earthly body
Remember Jesus' words in John 19:30, "It is finished" and may it bless you this week.
[Devotional thought written by Josh Lynch]
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